Baltimore (AFP) – New Zealand and South Africa collide in a heavyweight finale to their four-match series in Baltimore on Saturday in the latest ambitious bid to grow rugby’s audience in the United States. After a bruising first three Tests in South Africa, the All Blacks and Springboks will face off at the M&T Bank Stadium — home of the NFL’s Baltimore Ravens — with South Africa defending a 2-1 series lead.
A sellout crowd will pack the Maryland arena for what is by some distance the most high-profile rugby match ever staged in the United States. The All Blacks have played several one-off tests on US soil before, notably a 2016 classic against Ireland at Soldier Field in Chicago, while the Springboks have played stateside only three times since 1981, most recently against Wales in Washington in 2018. Yet this marks the first time a US fixture has been incorporated into a meaningful Test series between two of rugby’s superpowers.
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The conclusion to a series hyped as “Rugby’s Greatest Rivalry” is part of broader efforts backed by World Rugby to build interest in the sport amongst American audiences. The United States is hosting both the 2031 Rugby World Cup and the women’s Rugby World Cup in 2033. World Rugby chief executive Alan Gilpin has suggested that Saturday’s fixture could become a regular occurrence leading into 2031, and has raised the possibility of a Six Nations match being staged in the United States in future.
“In terms of the match-day economics, (South Africa vs New Zealand) is like a Six Nations match,” Gilpin told Britain’s The Daily Telegraph newspaper. “It starts to show that (financial return) is not the barrier. So if there is the appetite to take some of these big matches in the future to the US, we can now.”
Gilpin floated the idea of staging a Six Nations game between Italy and Ireland as the kind of fixture which could generate interest amongst American fans. “This isn’t a live discussion of an Italy versus Ireland game. But why we use that as an example is because you’ve got two fantastic fan bases in the US of Irish and Italian fans,” Gilpin told the Telegraph. “If you could take a Six Nations game to the right place, to a Boston or to a New York, where there’s a lot of those fan bases, you can definitely drive the economics.”
The economics of Saturday’s fixture in Baltimore have led to some dubbing the match as “The Money Game”. Gilpin has said ticket prices will average around $200 in a stadium with a capacity of around 70,000. The financial returns for both New Zealand and South Africa are expected to be substantial, with one estimate suggesting the two unions will split $8 million more than they would have done had the match been played in South Africa.
“This game was always about finding an option where we could make as much financial gain as we could,” South Africa Rugby Union (SA Rugby) chief executive Rian Oberholzer said. “At SA Rugby, it is essential that we keep working on our financial stability. To do that, we have to take our brand wider than South Africa.”
Back on the pitch, neither side is fazed by the prospect of playing in the United States. “A neutral ground is still 70 by 100 metres,” Springboks coach Rassie Erasmus said this week. “The only thing that we will really miss is our home support. And they will also miss their home support. But we have played on neutral ground many times before in World Cups, Twickenham pool matches, World Cup semi-finals, finals and things like that.”
© 2024 AFP
