Emergence of Women’s Professional Sports: Women’s Elite Rugby

The Women’s Elite Rugby (WER) league played in their inaugural season this past spring, and I was lucky enough to be a part of it. I have played rugby for almost a decade now, and am in the USA international player pool, so I have a vested interest in this league's growth and success. Like many startups we faced our fair share of challenges in this first year, but we also proved that there is a real market for professional women’s rugby in the United States. Our first home game was a cold and rainy night in April, and yet we still almost filled the stands at Veterans Memorial Stadium. In this paper, I will discuss the creation of the league and those that came before it, how social media and broadcasting impacted viewership, the challenges the league and players faced, and what the future of the league looks like.

Glendale, Colorado is known as “Rugby Town” for a reason. Title IX passed in June of 1972 and the first ever collegiate rugby match between the University of Colorado and Colorado State University took place that fall. From then on, more teams started to pop up across the country and by 1977 Chicago hosted the first National Invitational Championship (Heffernan, 2025). In just four years the country went from zero college teams to a national championship. The game had rapid growth in the 80s despite the lack of support from established Men’s programs and committees. I get taken aback sometimes when I learn about all the sexism and brutality that these women faced just for wanting to play rugby. Terrence Lee was quoted in the Rugby Magazine saying “Seemingly no effort was made by USARFU to have an official on site for a world championship in which their team was favored to win.” (Heffernan, 2025). The article continues to reference the lack of support from USAR and how one of the biggest challenges in becoming an established international squad was dealing with men who didn’t want it to happen. It’s really cool to see that they persevered and found ways to make playing accessible, not for money or for fame, but because they loved the game. That dedication set the foundation for the WER to be built and to set the standard for high level rugby in the US. Fun Fact: my current club coach is Eagle #7 (meaning she was on the first US international team that played in ‘87) and the author of the article referenced above.

Before the WER was the semi-professional Women’s Premier League (WPL) which lasted from 2009-2024, founded by Kathy Flores and Alex Williams (Women’s Elite Rugby, 2025). This was a pay to play system where teams would travel across the country, I’m talking weekend trips from Boston to California, to play one game per weekend and the season lasted 12-14 weeks. I can tell you from personal experience, the seasons were long, the travel was rough, and the financial demand on players was draining. It wasn’t sustainable, and if the league wanted to expand and become profitable, the next step was professionalizing.  

The WER consists of six teams (the WPL had seven, two in California), has a board consisting of seven members, and a player committee with two player representatives from each team (Women’s Elite Rugby, 2025). The goal of the player committee was to create a bridge between the players and the board to communicate important information from both sides. This group of players was also involved in the creation of the league, providing insight and opinions to the board on things like branding (logos, mascots, and team colors), ideal practice times and locations, how to go about renting field space and organizing game day logistics, and more. In the past, each team had their own board made up of current players who were responsible for everything the team did and needed. Renting fields, paying coaches, requesting officials, providing medical coverage, and all the behind the seems work that gets done. The WER was founded as a single-entity league (Young, 2025) meaning the league owns all the teams. Being structured this way puts all the responsibilities on the league and the board, not the players. While this structure did take the burden off of the players, it had a ripple effect of unforeseen challenges. The board became responsible for scheduling practices and games for each of the six teams, and it’s not like we had our own private training facilities to make life easier. Annecdotaley, I was the field organizer for Beantown in the WPL, so I know how difficult it is to find field space in advance in and around Boston. Now imagine doing that in Boston, Chicago, New York, Colorado, Minnesota, and The Bay. This led to some pretty inconvenient practice times. Some teams were going 6-8am and others from 9-11pm, three days a week for the entire length of the season. Not ideal for players who work full time jobs, have families, and are trying to perform and compete at the highest level every week.

Speaking of jobs, let’s talk about money. Who pays for all this from a league starting from zero? When the WER was first organized they relied on fundraising and investors to get it off the ground. Most notably are Deb Henretta, former Proctor and Gamble executive, and Chasing Rainbows, a venture capital firm who invests in LGBTQ+ founded companies (Pengelly, 2024). From there, they were able to partner with Pinto Capital LLP, Destination Sport Group, IDA Sports, and DAZN (Women’s Elite Rugby, 2025). Where did all that money go? Not to the players. In our contracts, it was made clear that we might not get paid. Player payment all depended on how profitable the league was from ticket and merch sales and what was left over after everything was paid for by the league. So many things took priority to make sure the WER actually had a product worth selling. Paying the coaches, officials, medical staff, field rentals, booking flights, booking hotels, and buying jerseys all had to happen before any money could be considered for the players. On the bright side, for the first time since its inception in the US, players didn’t have the financial burden of travel during the season. Not having to pay for flights and hotels relieved a lot of stress for players which allowed them to focus their mental energy towards the sport. It’s unfortunate that players weren’t paid, but it’s the reality that we had to accept if we wanted to be a part of the inaugural season and help the league grow to a profitable place. Like many before us, we continued to play for the love of the game.

A key contributor to the success of a league is how its broadcast and covered in the media. When Women’s Rugby first started, they relied on newsletters and program covers (Heffernan, 2025) to draw attention to the game. Now we have the luxury of social media and online streaming to bring attention to the sport. The use of Instagram was instrumental in building excitement for the upcoming season. There is definitely room for improvement on how social media is handled in the future. Teams did not have access to their own social media accounts, and had to rely on the league to post for them. This led to intermittent posting and a lack of individuality that spoke to the team’s personality. Some teams had mascots that mysteriously had accounts made for them. These secondary accounts were able to hype up the team, engage in some lighthearted trash talk, and give the fans a storyline to follow. Since the season ended, it’s been close to radio silence from the league on social media.

Before the start of the 2025 season, there were many articles, interviews, and in-person team events (teams attending other women’s sports games such as PWHL games) in an effort to bring awareness to the upcoming season and start to build a fanbase. For example, the Boston Banshees attended a Boston Fleet game where we had a table full of trading cards of female athletes. Dozens of people came up to us asking about the team, the league, where and how to watch, and even take some pictures. We’ve done multiple events like that and they always are a success.

Something rugby struggles with as a whole is the multiple streaming platforms different leagues use to broadcast the games. Paramount+, Peacock, RugbyPass, and FloRugby are all examples of different services used to stream different leagues. In the past, rugby has had to use smaller streaming services because it just wasn’t popular enough to be in the mainstream media. This barrier to entry makes it difficult for the viewer to know when games are on and which platform they are being broadcast on. The WPL never live streamed their games (except for the championship) but they always uploaded them to YouTube after, making it accessible for anyone who wanted to watch. The partnership with DAZN was exciting and encouraged viewership across the league. Fans could now watch their favorite teams no matter where they were. This partnership lasted about halfway through the season, when out of the blue the WER announced that they were no longer going to be live streaming the games through DAZN (Women’s Elite Rugby, 2025). This came as a shock to the players who were notified before the public, and there was a lot of backlash from both the players and the fans. Not only did they end their partnership with DAZN, but they didn’t provide another avenue to watch the games live besides attending in-person. Players, like myself, were angry. It took a lot of back and forth between the WER board and player committee to finally come to an understanding as to why the partnership ended and what the plan was going forward. This was not a good look for the league and was not received well.

As the season came to an end, players started to question what the next year would look like. I’m not sure many people know how it’s going to work, but internally the WER board has said that they are fully expecting a second year and are already planning what that season will look like. Knowing that the league wasn’t profitable enough to pay the players, one can assume there is going to be another round of fundraising and the league will continue to look for investors and partnerships. From a player standpoint, I thought overall year one was a hit. Yes we faced challenges, but we also had a lot of wins. We set attendance records, we brought new eyeballs to the sport, we had multiple international players on different teams, and we gave young girls a tangible goal of playing professional rugby in the US. Many people who don’t support women’s sports like to point out that professional women’s leagues aren’t profitable. And while that may be true in the short term, we can look at examples like the WNBA to show that there is a market for women’s sports and with time, money, and energy invested, it is possible to build a profitable, successful, women’s sports league. The WER has the potential to get to a point where it can be sustainable, and better yet, be in a position to pay its players while also expanding the league.

References

Heffernan, K. (2025). U.S. Women’s Rugby History Museum: USWRF-WRCRA. USWRF. https://www.uswrf.org/museum  

Pengelly, M. (2024, November 13). “this is the time for women’s sports”: Investor deb henretta backs US rugby. The Guardian. https://www.theguardian.com/sport/2024/nov/13/womens-sports-investor-deb-henretta-wer-rugby 

Women’s Elite Rugby. Home. (n.d.). https://www.womenseliterugby.us/ 

Young, W. (2025, February 25). Women’s elite rugby (WER) unveils teams, league structure, and what to expect in 2025 %. Your Scrumhalf Connection - Women’s Rugby News. https://scrumhalfconnection.com/2025/02/03/womens-elite-rugby-wer-unveils-teams-league-structure-and-what-to-expect-in-2025/