Written by Thomas McGlinchey | The Overload
Will Hooley understands what he’s up against, and he’s up for the challenge. After all, with a storied career as a professional rugby player, Hooley isn’t exactly afraid of large looming objects in his way.
But this obstacle, it’s arguably the biggest of his career.
Lets paint a picture...
Imagine a big banquet table, which represents the United States sports market. It’s decorated with fine china and elegant linens, and has more food than you can imagine. The seats around this massive (and metaphorical) table are filled up by representatives from the National Football League, NCAA sports (football, basketball, etc.), Major League Baseball, National Basketball Association, National Hockey League, NASCAR, Indycar, Major League Soccer, international soccer, professional soccer played abroad, and, not to forget, golf, tennis, and Formula One. Flag football will make its Olympic debut in 2028 and has received millions of dollars from the NFL, so through this connection you can expect them to have a voice at the Big Table. You could even argue that the youth and high school sports machines have more than a few seats at the Big Table as well.
The explosion of women’s sports, and athletes, is also worth noting. Surely those leagues and brands have more seats at the table in 2026 than they did 10 years ago.
Last but not least, we can’t forget about broadcasters as well, the behemoth media giants that push these sporting events like a street preacher on Sunday. They are eager to change with the times (streaming, mobile, social) and offer as much as possible, including live sports, documentaries, and reality shows. As key stakeholders they also have significant sway on the commercial viability of all sports at the table.
And then there is rugby, a sport that has been stuck at the kid’s table along with lacrosse and cricket (the second biggest sport on the planet) Rugby has been in the corner for so long that one can almost forget its rich history in the United States. But that’s the cold, hard truth in this competitive environment, and the sport, collectively, is desperately trying to unlock just one percent of America’s sports market.
Just one percent. With a population of 342 million people, just 1% of the United States population (spread across 50 states) is massive for what is considered a niche sport in America.
Professionally, rugby is represented in the United States by Major League Rugby, Women’s Elite Rugby, as well as four national teams: a very talented women’s sevens teams that has enjoyed success on the SVNS circuit and won a bronze medal at the 2024 Olympics, a women’s 15s teams that hasn’t quite cracked the top tier of teams, a relegated men’s sevens team, historically strong, that is seeking promotion to SVNS1, and a men’s 15s team that has qualified for the 2027 Rugby World Cup (expanded from 20 to 24 teams), but is a long way from its ambitious “moonshot” goals.
For this specific snapshot, we’re looking at Major League Rugby.
It’s probably helpful to explain, if you didn’t already know, that Major League Rugby was founded in 2017 (one year after PRO Rugby folded) and began its first season in 2018 with seven teams. The league ballooned to 11 teams, but went through a financial and identity crisis this past offseason; a summer that eventually saw five teams walk away. The 2026 season only features six teams.
Scene set. Enter Will Hooley .
Hooley is a 32-year old former professional rugby player originally from Cambridge, England who played professionally in England, which included stops with the Exeter Chiefs and Saracens. He closed out his career with two years in MLR playing for the San Diego Legion in 2022 and 2023.
He first represented England at Under-18 level, and was part of the winning team in the 2013 IRB Junior World Championship where he shared the pitch with future England stars Henry Slade, Anthony Watson and Luke Cowan-Dickie. In one match he kicked 11 conversions against the United States in a 110-0 pool stage match.
With USA eligibility through his grandmother who was born in Los Angeles, Hooley joined the United States’ national team in 2018 earning 20 caps, and a selection to the Rugby World Cup 2019 squad. Hooley retired from the game he loves in 2023, but didn’t drift too far from the sport. He started working for MLR that same year. He currently serves as MLR’s Technical Director and has been using his voice in the broadcast booth as well.
With a mission to give the game he loves better access and understanding, Hooley and MLR launched Sunday Night Rugby on ESPN+. The show, modeled after Monday Night Countdown or Inside The NBA, is the first of its kind pre-and-post show on a major network that is solely focused on Major League Rugby.
The Overload caught up with Hooley, who travels from San Diego to New York every week to create the show, as well as related content, and here’s a few highlights from our conversation.
I’m sure you have been wanting to create a show like this for a while. How did it come about?
It was a big discussion, particularly after the championship final of last year…
People just think that you can put a big television truck on site and somehow you should be doing that for every game. I was one of those people who asked a lot of questions like that, and quickly learned just how expensive that is.
Ultimately, it’s kind of like, ‘okay, right, well what can we achieve here?’ Well, what probably is the biggest thing we can achieve is really focusing on one game of the week. Everything’s televised, but the schedule needs to be lined out way better and we can’t have kickoffs at the same time. Massive credit to Lucas Reid, who came midway through the last season as the chief revenue officer. And he really, alongside Graeme Bradbury, who is now the co-president on the operations side of things, really worked on making sure that kickoffs wouldn’t be at the same time; so therefore, this showdown piece just holds a little bit more extra value – it means a few extra cameras and it means that we can build the brand inside the brand, and that’s something which personally I really was wanting.
At the end of the day, we can have little content series on social media, but if we’re not as best we can in the big space, which is television, and actually promoting ourselves within television, and that obviously comes through the Sunday Night Rugby pregame show and postgame show.
We knew we had to be more than just ‘we’re going to throw our games on ESPN and then just hope people come along.’ We have to build a brand inside the brand, which then ultimately commercial value moving forward is going to be far superior and the conversations ultimately from commercial people are way more interested in being part of something like Sunday Night Rugby. They can actually see a brand, they can see a product that’s in front of them.”
How are you modeling your show or your persona? How do you be an educator of the game and then also not insult the intelligence of the actual hardcore rugby fan?
The pre-game show is 22 and a half minutes of live television. I can tell you as someone who writes shows, that is no time at all. That goes by in a blink. If you’re wanting to promote a game, talk about games that have already happened, and then give someone a 35,000 foot view of maybe the league table, your 22 and a half minutes are nearly up already.
To your point, I have a rugby background. I would hate to produce something and be involved in something that is patronizing. But the point of this show as well… if someone flicks it on, they’ve got to have an element of, one, hopefully, this is entertaining, [and they understand it]...It’s deliberately done in a way of using of someone like Claudia Bellofatto, who is a professional, has been involved in multiple sports, particularly on the betting side of things...She sits on that table not the fountain of knowledge of rugby and that is the best thing about it because then she can ask that question…of not dumbing it down, but, for example, if we’ve got a match up on the weekend: “I’ll tell you now we’ve got a match up on the weekend that is two second rows going against each other – Jason Darm against Rob Harley.” Well then at the same time, for someone watching, why is that a matchup important - why is the line out important in rugby? Also on the show is Dylan Fawcett, former USA Eagle and Major League Rugby’s highest appearance holder. Now, that is the element for him to be able to go into why the line-out is important and what it might be. That is just like for the American sports fan. How does rugby get restarted?...We’re trying to cater for everything, but it is really hard. It’s really hard.
What is your week like?
It’s pretty intense. So Monday, I’m on my flight back, but on my flight back, other than catching up on a bit of sleep, I’m already writing up full notes to go to the production team and producer for the next show. It might be in terms of making a case of who we want as a guest, but also the ideas, who the matchups are, what are they? Digging into the stats…I’m sort of building a portfolio as early as on a Monday. It’s meetings, checking in with the rest of the staff, what else is happening, are there stories that are involved with social media that I need to be aware of that need to also be part of television. I also will be part sub-editing and helping sort of write out the podcast, which is Inside MLR. We would have recorded that on Sunday night. We need to get through what assets to be used and cut down on the Monday to make sure it gets out by Tuesday.
I try to have a quieter Tuesday, but realistically, Tuesday’s kind of review of how the show was, review maybe how the games were, because I might have commented. And then probably other bits and bobs. Wednesday, I’m speaking to the international providers; we have international partners like Premier Sports in the UK, we have Sky Sports in New Zealand, we have Premier Sports actually in Canada..Making sure that they’re aligned as to what games they’re getting and what packages they’re getting. So that’s then making sure that OS Studios give the right feed to the right group, depending on what their package is for that upcoming weekend. Then a lot of Wednesday to Thursday is meetings about the show and then about the lineup for Sunday Night Rugby, the run of show, the actual writing of the run of show…
I try and make sure as well by Wednesday. I’m trying to do some of my own kind of social media. It’s something which I’ve been trying to harness; little clips that come from the podcast. There’s clips that I can do on camera about MLR, but also outside of MLR. College for me is such a great space. I love following the college game….Various other little bits that might be some partnership stuff that we need to create some form of media for some partners…So a lot of creative: video edit, building VT packages, helping build VT packages for the Sunday Night Rugby show. And then probably by Friday, I’m on a plane to New York, where then I’ll be writing the run of show for the podcast Inside MLR. And then Saturday, yeah, kind of like the last bits of the show. You know, it sounds incredibly hectic…I just put myself as a swiss army knife, but I would also say that there’s not enough people working in Major League Rugby, so therefore everyone’s got to wear ten different hats, and that’s probably rugby in the US; it’s probably rugby across the world.
What do you make of the current status of rugby in America?
It absolutely is growing and I think across a lot of different areas as well. I would say, ‘is it growing as fast as we all would want it to?’ Probably not - no - just being honest…Major League Soccer came in and around after the 90s World Cup in the US. The reality of what’s been happening now is obviously trying to build as much as possible for pre-World Cup that then hopefully catapults the sport from collegiate level to professional level to you name it after the World Cup – I think that’s maybe everyone’s kind of hope. And do I believe it will happen? I mean, I’ve very fortunately played at a World Cup and I know how big it is. And I do think it will happen to a degree. Well, we don’t know for definite. But you also know with the glaring eyes of the world being on the Rugby World Cup, you know that that is going to be a time where you think to yourself as a business person, as a company, as an investor, invest sooner rather than later because it’ll be the best time to be involved. I do think overall that is something that we are starting to see; now that’s ironic because obviously Major League Rugby has gone from 11 teams to six teams, but at the same time that’s an internal collective reset that needed to happen in terms of structure in the league.”
Did the league grow too fast?
“The reality is we can look back and be all captain hindsight and things. When the league went to a position after getting rid of Austin and LA, the Giltinis, and Gilgronis, which was a very difficult process because of the fallout and whatever happened legally with the owner…what Major League Rugby should have done is probably put a cap on things rather than trying to expand quickly, you know. Were we operating within our means at all?
But the other reality is, what I’ve completely learned is that a minority sport in this country is really fucking hard. It’s really hard. It’s really hard to grow. And I hate to say it, I feel like some people are pretty deluded with where rugby should be right now. Take a look around the world, let alone here in America. I think World Rugby and the sport knows how much it does need America because while rugby came out, what’s the name? [Alan] Gilpin came out and said, we just need to get one percent of that American sporting market and it can transfer the game globally. And I agree…I think Americans, when they see rugby, they love it, and therefore, I would say they do need it. They need it in their springtime when it’s the other contact sport that’s probably missing. But really, rugby needs America. Like, you know, it does. If you want to go above and beyond, get more venture capitalists, get more investors, get more bigger brands to 100%..”
If you were the rugby czar of America and you get to introduce three changes or three policies what would you introduce to the sport at any level?
Number one is, can there be a room where everyone in college rugby that is involved and says, can we, should we have a marriage? I mean, like, CRA, NCR, I love them both. I think they do such great things and I don’t even need to go into the politics, but I’m just like...it just makes me sad. It’s just makes me sad that the collegiate level is fractious. It just doesn’t make sense to me. This is where we need collective buy-in. So that’s definitely one.
I also think more money and investment into the high school. I’ve been really impressed with some of the high school rugby that I sort of commentated on in the early part of the year. More here in sort of Southern California and North Carolina. Again, I’d love to see investmen…there was some good streaming and social media that was being done and the kids loved it the parents loved it and therefore it sort of made rugby feel a bit more proper for a kid who might you know obviously be trying to be a football player, but then he’s actually like oh this rugby business is is the real deal and they actually fall in love with that.
I think obviously we need to expand. We talked about it in terms of Major League Rugby, and having sort of these professional rugby teams in more cities or more areas. We definitely need to expand before now in the 2031 Rugby World Cup.
Sunday Night Rugby is a weekly show on ESPN+ which discusses Major League Rugby. A select number of broadcasts will be aired on ESPN2. The show features Will Hooley alongside Claudia Bellofatto, and Ben Holden alongside weekly guests.
REMAINING SUNDAY NIGHT RUGBY SCHEDULE
New England Free Jacks at Old Glory DC – May 17, 7 p.m. ET
Old Glory DC at California Legion – May 24, 8 p.m. ET
New England Free Jacks at Seattle Seawolves – May 31, 8 p.m. ET
California Legion at Seattle Seawolves – June 7, 9 p.m. ET MLR Playoffs
Semifinal Match (Teams TBD) – June 14, time TBD
MLR Championship (Teams TBD) – June 21, time TBD - SeatGeek Stadium
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