Global popularity. © Rebel Penguin ApS 2021 (a subsidiary of Gaming Innovation Group Inc.) We support responsible gambling. And if anyone says cricket is slower, I’ll let Geoffrey Boycott loose on them (in-joke for the Brits). A match consists of two 40-minute halves. We compare them here. Teams The NFL has 32 teams with 53 players on each while the MRL now has 12 teams (11 from America, one from Canada) made up of 23 total players each. WASHINGTON, D.C. -- American football, under attack from critics in recent years, has lost some of its popularity but is still the champion of U.S. spectator sports -- picked by 37% of U.S. adults as their favorite sport to watch. After a touchdown, the team can try to cross the goal line from 2-yards out, worth two points. Now let's get down to things that really matter. We compare the NFL and MLR, side-by-side. The Dallas Cowboys are the NFL’s most valuable team and the world’s most valuable franchise. The next-most-popular sports are basketball, favored by 11%, and baseball, favored by 9%. But they remain very similar—and these days players can switch between rugby league and rugby union with little problem. Tackle an opposing player in his own endzone and it’s called a safety, worth two points. You can’t even compare the sports. Cross the goal line with the football to score a touchdown, worth six points. And I’m not talking about College Football. "}},{"@type":"Question","name":"Which is Viewed More, the Super Bowl or the Grand Final? Grid-iron players are unrecognisable as human beings with all that body armour. Football touches every aspect of our society, in a way that rugby will never be able to. Rugby is all action for 80 minutes. That stuff is more dangerous than the opposition, for heaven’s sake. In American football, the players wear helmets and pads, but in rugby, the players wear rugby-styled jerseys, shorts, socks, and boots with some occasional headgear to protect their ears. 4. 3. MLS vs Liga MX Format, Attendance, Salaries & Ratings. The average price of an NFL ticket was $112 across all thirty-two teams in the league during the 2019 season, so taking a family of four to see a game becomes quite an investment. Finally, and most important, this article is all a bit of fun and not to be taken seriously. "}},{"@type":"Question","name":"Which League Has Higher Ratings the NFL or the MLR? His nickname was "The Chiropractor," … They play in very closely. Between them, they have expertise in both attack and defence (note correct spelling of defence). However, previous to that, the students of … However, these two sports vary in many aspects of the game. The list is: Comparison of American football and rugby league - Wikipedia Rugby - Rugby - Principles of play: Individual matches are adjudicated by a referee supported by one “touch” (or sideline) judge on either side of the field. Rugby is a worldwide game, while American Football is played seriously in only a handful of countries. Soccer is clearly the most popular sport in terms of fans. Mike Lukas is a retired standup comedian turned freelance writer now living in Dallas, Texas, originally from Cleveland, Ohio. However, during that same year, the MLR was in its first-ever season and the revenue numbers have not been listed publicly yet. Next year Wembley Stadium will host two Rugby World Cup fixtures, but this month it will stage one of three NFL International Series 2014 games. There are a number of similarities, and also some big differences, that must be taken into account when looking at the two. 'The game of American football (hereafter referred to just as "football") developed out of something like a cross between association football (or soccer) and rugby. American Football is all inaction for four hours—arguably the slowest game on earth. Once again, American football wins this matchup, with NFL ticket prices going through the roof this last decade. And the list of differences goes on and on, especially when it comes to comparing the business aspects of the NFL and the MLR. Fair enough, even if you did bend every rule that existed to the point that you even allow the ball to be passed FORWARD. Rugby is one of the top three favorite sports in 5 countries, with a combined population of around 141 million. Super Bowl vs FIFA World Cup – A Comparison of Championships. The revenue from Super Bowl LII easily surpassed $500 million, and ad spending alone for in-game spots exceeded a total of $400 million, with virtually the same numbers the previous season. The games of American football and rugby are both extremely popular sports with a similar basic aim and structure of play. It’s reported that the average salary for a Major League Rugby player is $58,425 right now, though there are European rugby stars (like Israel Folau and Dan Carter) who can make over a million pounds per season. The NFL decides that year’s champion by pitting the two best teams in a championship game called the. Well, in the real world that’s the term we use for a touchdown. Rugby is just as tough as your game, if not tougher. The size of the average rugby player has shifted over the last four decades, evolving from 5’10” and 185-pounds back in 1974 to currently 6’2” and 216 pounds, which is about the same as the average American football players. Given that each MLR team owner had to ante up $500 million to join the league and must be able to support their teams for five years, it’s safe to assume they have not reached the profitable times just yet. Soccer and rugby are related as soccer derived from rugby when a “no hands” rule appeared. They’re worth $4.8 billion, and that’s up 14%, whereas the Buffalo Bills are last on the list with a value of $1.6 billion.\n\nWhen the MLR started at the end of 2017, each potential team owner had to come up with a $500 million entry fee to join the league and they had to prove that they could financially support their teams for five years, so the clubs of this young league have yet to turn a profit and therefore their worth is yet to be determined. During the 2019 season, the NFL increased its television viewership to 16.5 million per game, which equates to 180 million in total viewers for the entire season. This one, again, is an easy win for the NFL. There are officially two ‘codes’ of rugby football – one with 13 players per team called ‘rugby league’ and the other with 15 players per team called ‘rugby union,’ – with both versions sharing the same origin and most of the same rules but with a few minor differences that are designed to make rugby league a faster game with the ball in play more often. In American football, it’s legal for the players to hit and tackle each other from the neck down. A try? OK, we did make a bit of a mess of things over here early last century when the political shambles over professionalism saw the game of rugby split into two codes. "}},{"@type":"Question","name":"Which Teams Are Worth More, NFL or MLR? I know you guys across the Pond will be furious—but here in Europe we have a ball game which leaves your so-called ''football'' for dead. In rugby union a team fields 15 players; in rugby league teams field 13 players. Have playoffs that culminate in a championship matchup. "}},{"@type":"Question","name":"Who Had More Fans Attending Games Last Season, the NFL or MLR? ","acceptedAnswer":{"@type":"Answer","text":"Again, this one isn’t even close.\n\nThe revenue from Super Bowl LII easily surpassed $500 million, and ad spending alone for in-game spots exceeded a total of $400 million, with virtually the same numbers the previous season.\n\nAt this point, there is no estimated revenue posted for the 2019 MLR Championship, but given that it was attended by just 6,000 fans and watched by only about half a million people, it most likely didn’t come close to making the league the kind of money the Super Bowl tends to bring in. American football is exciting and very brutal. Advertising disclosure: WSN contains links to online retailers on its website. The list is: New Zealand. The official website of the national governing body for the sport of rugby union in the United States of America. Indeed, if Our Beloved Ducks keep … We compare more major sports leagues to see how different they are when it comes to salary, budget, attendance, popularity, viewership, and more. The reality is that the best game is the one that appeals to YOU. To the untrained eye, watching rugby football being played on an open field looks a lot like an out of control fight between two gangs of muscular ruffians hell-bent on snagging a swollen white football, but there really is a total method to the scrambling madness of this contact sport that originated in Northern England back in 1895. Rugby is played by two teams of 15 players (13 in rugby league). Once that happens, expect the powers that be to start investing some real money in this underground rugby sensation. Which sport do more U.S. fans prefer in 2020? NFL players need both speed and size, and they average in size anywhere from 5-foot-11 and 193-pounds (cornerbacks) to 6-foot-5 and 315-pounds (offensive line), but the average player being about 6’2” and 217-pounds. Rugby players lay into each other like real men, with just the flimsiest of body padding. In the NFL, players can score in one of five different ways: In the MLR, teams score in three different ways: The NFL lists its scores like this: Cleveland 26, Pittsburgh 19, which means the Browns beat the Steelers by a touchdown. Rugby is played in ALL conditions—on grass, not synthetic turf, as seemingly used by most NFL teams. The NFL has 32 teams with 53 players on each while the MRL now has 12 teams (11 from America, one from Canada) made up of 23 total players each. In this article, we’re going to answer those questions and a whole lot more as we examine and compare the NFL and the MLR – their revenue, salaries, viewership and attendance – and try to figure out which sports league is better positioning itself to be number one in America. Various forms of football have been played in Britain for centuries with different villages and schools having their own traditional rules. NBA vs WNBA: Revenue, Salaries, Viewership, Attendance and Ratings, How does the WNBA stack against the NBA in terms of revenue, salaries, attendance and ratings? Try – scored by ‘grounding’ the ball (meaning to force it downwards onto the field) in the in-goal area of their opponent, worth 5 points. (For a complete list of the top ten highest players in the NFL, check out our coverage: Top 10 Highest Paid NFL Players in 2018). American football, obviously is very popular in North America. Football first. If you feel like you're losing control over your gambling experience, call 1-800-GAMBLER (NJ, PA, WV), 1-800-9-WITH-IT (IN), 1-800-BETS-OFF (IA), 1-800-522-4700 (NV), 1-800-522-4700 (CO, TN), 1-855-2CALLGA (IL), 1-800-270-7117 (MI). The offense can bring their placekicker onto the field at any point to attempt to kick the ball through the uprights, worth three points. Well, not even that - just the US and Canada, really. Rugby is similar to American Football on quite a few levels, but the two sports are different in so many other ways that it’s a good idea to first break down these differences. 7. Jut try turning the TV on at random in the middle of a game. The 2019 MLR Championship between the San Diego Legion and the Seattle Seawolves received a 0.32 TV Sports rating which equates to about 510,000 two-plus households. He also kicks goals from 60-degree angles, rather more subtle than your field-goal experts who merely have to boot them over from in front of the posts. They’re worth $4.8 billion, and that’s up 14%, whereas the Buffalo Bills are last on the list with a value of $1.6 billion. It’s all subjective so whatever your preferences, may the best game win! The MLR programming ran in prime weekend time slots on Saturday afternoons and Sunday evenings, with 13 matches televised by the CBS Network, with the rest of the matches becoming the property of ESPN. Run, pass and kick a ball down the field in order to score points. GasTRY Mieres ⚡⚡⚡#ArrowsUp | @tonemieres pic.twitter.com/T0byBDo7uf, — Toronto Arrows RFC (@TorontoArrows) March 10, 2020. Football is wide open. Seeing as how each team in the MLR has a salary cap of just $450,000, the average salary of a professional rugby player doesn’t come close to what a pro football player makes. It’s so sad because had you stuck to the REAL game invented by William Webb Ellis at Rugby School in 1823, you guys could have been a real force at rugby. Rugby has been labelled as the fastest growing sport in the USA for a number of years and the likelihood of the game growing further is looking promising. "}}]}, 21+ | NJ, WV, PA, IN, IL, CO, IA, TN, MI, VA only | T&C apply. His love for the game of football and all things Cleveland Browns turned Mike into a pro blogger years ago. Finally, and most important, this article is all a bit of fun and not to be taken seriously. There’s an ongoing debate on which is the more popular and lucrative sports championship – the NFL’s Super Bowl or FIFA’s World Cup? American football players are twice as fast, twice as strong and twice the size of rugby players. In rugby union the players can only tackle the player with the ball below the shoulders and once tackled, the tackler must release the ball carrier, who in turn must release the ball. Which of these two leagues makes more revenue? What’s all that about, for heaven’s sake? On the other hand, a ticket to see a rugby match cost about $30 in 2019, so a family of four could get in for just over the cost of one NFL ticket, with MLR season tickets running just under $300 dollars. Rugby however has a far bigger geographical spread. Because the MLR is so new and most of its numbers have yet to be publicly released, this obviously isn’t a fair comparison at all, especially given that the NFL brings in more money and overall fans than almost all of the other major American sports leagues combined. (Wales is the bit that sticks out to the left of England on the map, by the way). Soccer is known as “football” in most European countries and in South America too. And as the cable television broadcasts more and more of these exciting MLR matches (especially the semi-finals and championship series), the sport of rugby could begin to find a growing level of popularity in a country that seems to love watching grown men tackle each other at full speed. Both the NFL and MLR play 16 games in a regular season. I mean, how can you call a game football when the only time anyone kicks the ball is to convert a try or land what you call a ''field goal''? Although American football is played in many different countries across the world, by far the most players are in the USA. Which league is better preparing themselves for worldwide domination? I’m a woman … Soccer, on the other hand, is the most popular sport around the world. When it comes to team worth, the NFL has a huge advantage over the MLR, with the football teams worth in the billions of dollars and the rugby clubs worth more in the millions. If there are not ads showing and something is actually happening, it’s a miracle. The guy doing the tackling in that clip is Brian Lima. Rugby is the most popular sport in 1 country, with a combined population of around 4.5 million. American football has more dangerous tackles, hence the padding, but I personally find rugby better to watch as I find the breaks between plays in American football infuriating. After a touchdown, the kicker can kick the ball through the uprights from 33 yards out, worth 1 point. The season before that had 103.4 million people worldwide watch the Philadelphia Eagles beat the New England Patriots, 41-33, in Super Bowl LII. Conversion – after a try, the scoring team gets to kick a conversion with the ball placed perpendicular from where the ball was grounded as near or as far from the goal-line as the kicker wants, worth 2 points. I like the fact that football lasts longer so games open up more. Football may have a bigger concussion crisis, and a higher injury rate overall, but rugby has a distinct and serious problem: spinal injuries. And while rugby (as well as American football) evolved from soccer, the two are different. 2. Why anyone should care so much about the kids’ version of grid-iron is another mystery to us Brits. …, NFL vs MLR (Major League Rugby): Revenue, Salaries, Viewership and Attendance, 98.2 million people watched Super Bowl LIII, The 2019 MLR Championship: San Diego Legion and the Seattle Seawolves received a 0.32 TV Sports rating or 510,000 two-plus households, The MLR programming ran in prime weekend time slots on Saturday afternoons and Sunday evenings, with 13 matches televised by the CBS Network, with the rest of the matches becoming the property of ESPN, 180 million total viewers for the entire season, The NFL has by far more viewers than the MLR, The average price of an NFL ticket is $112 across all thirty-two teams in the league, A ticket to see a rugby match costs about $30. In fact, I’m told the intelligent guys among you still play rugby quite a lot at university. I wish rugby had an extra 10 minutes too. Penalty kick or a drop goal (where the kicker drop-kicks the ball through the uprights), worth 3 points. Rugby vs. Football: A Comparison and Contrast We have all seen a football game on TV, but not everyone has seen a rugby match. Anyway, you chose to create your own version of the game. 1. As we can see, at the end of this debate, both games are exciting to watch and play. I’m a woman who was reared on rugby union (I’m actually from Wales, where rugby is everything). There's no denying that rugby is a global sport. There are eleven NFL players on the field at any given time during a game, whereas there are 15 on an MLR field, their positions having interesting names like hooker, prop, lock, fly-half, wing, and full back. They don’t block or pass. Rugby is much more similar to soccer than American football, because it … At this point, there is no estimated revenue posted for the 2019 MLR Championship, but given that it was attended by just 6,000 fans and watched by only about half a million people, it most likely didn’t come close to making the league the kind of money the Super Bowl tends to bring in. New Zealand is ranked No.1 at rugby union and, since you have a population 100 times as big as theirs, the sky should be the limit. Rugby itself grew out of the soccer tradition in England, so soccer is truly at the very core of this sport. You talk about your quarterbacks. WSN launches into a comparison of the NBA and the WNBA! If you Yanks hadn’t disappeared from the real world into the Bushes (by George, what a clever play on words), you would realise that FOOTBALL is actually the game the rest of the world plays—the one you refer to over there as ''soccer''. soccer) is starting to come close due to its growing worldwide popularity. According to Forbes Magazine, the average NFL team is worth $2.5 billion, and all but five of the NFL teams are worth at least $2 billion. An American football game is divided into four quarters of fifteen minutes each, but there is an overtime period if the game is tied at the end of regulation. In American Football, players can either run with the ball or throw the ball, but they can’t kick the ball to teammates, only to give the ball to the other team or for scoring. The FIFA World Cup held every four years has a huge TV audience - over 30 billion people watched the 2006 World Cup in Germany (I know that's more than the world's population, this figure is an 'accumulated' audience, meaning if people watched more than one game, which most people did, they were counted each time). Soccer is quite different from the football’s European cousin, rugby. But with rugby’s growing popularity in the United States and thanks to the many channels of cable television, Americans (and their passion for athletic brutality) might start to fall in love with this untamed contact sport. 5. The average salary of a typical NFL player is $1.9 million per year while the average salary for an NFL quarterback is about $4 million per year. We also celebrate the scoring of tries with applause and back-slapping, not lots of ridiculous dancing and high fives. Rugby has the potential to appeal to those Americans who have remained immune to soccer’s charms because it’s similar in some ways to the most-watched sport in the country – American football. {"@context":"https://schema.org","@type":"FAQPage","mainEntity":[{"@type":"Question","name":"Which League Makes More Money, NFL or MLR? "}},{"@type":"Question","name":"Which Championship Makes More Money, the Super Bowl or the MLR Championship? Rugby is popular And the Aussies are best at rugby league, so you’ve got a chance to bring the cocky so-and-so’s down to earth. Have odd-shaped balls – the American football is technically a ‘prolate spheroids’ because that’s also the shape of an inflated pig’s bladder, which is what the first footballs were made from, as is the rugby ball, which is basically a swollen white football made of synthetic material nowadays. They would crush rugby players. Soccer is one of the most popular sports in the world, and is commonly known as football. Story Highlights. No sport that exists in the world right now brings in more total revenue or viewership than American football, though European football (i.e. USA Rugby is charged with developing the game on all levels and has over 125,000 active members. How ridiculous can you get? How do Liga MX and MLS compare? In rugby, players can move the ball three ways: Pass the ball – sideways or backward only (in American football known as ‘laterals’) with a forward pass resulting in a penalty and loss of the ball. A rugby union match has two forty-minute halves and ties, or draws, stand, each team receiving a point in the league rather than the two points they would have received for the win. It’s estimated that 98.2 million people worldwide watched the New England Patriots beat the Los Angeles Rams by a score of 13-3 in Super Bowl LIII. Walter Camp, a player and coach of Yale University, is recognized as "The Father Of American Football" as the early rules of the game was instituted by him. Rugby - worldwide popularity map. ","acceptedAnswer":{"@type":"Answer","text":"It’s estimated that 98.2 million people worldwide watched the New England Patriots beat the Los Angeles Rams by a score of 13-3 in Super Bowl LIII.\n\nThe season before that had 103.4 million people worldwide watch the Philadelphia Eagles beat the New England Patriots, 41-33, in Super Bowl LII.\n\nThe 2019 MLR Championship between the San Diego Legion and the Seattle Seawolves received a 0.32 TV Sports rating which equates to about 510,000 two-plus households.\n\nIn other words, it’s not even close. And this. NFL first-year players make an average of $365,000 per year, and they make their big money through bonuses, including a roster bonus, a signing bonus, contact incentives, and a few other formats. When the MLR started at the end of 2017, each potential team owner had to come up with a $500 million entry fee to join the league and they had to prove that they could financially support their teams for five years, so the clubs of this young league have yet to turn a profit and therefore their worth is yet to be determined. Dan Carter: As good a rugby outside-half as there has ever been. For example, during the 2018 season, the NFL made about $16 billion in total national revenue, of which, based on the Collective Bargaining Agreement (CBA), they gave 52 percent to the owners and 48 percent to the players. Rugby is boring. These two sports are similar in form, but the rules, equipment, and history behind each are very different. For more on how those two sports compare, check out our prior coverage on NFL vs MLS. "}},{"@type":"Question","name":"Who Has a Higher Average Ticket Price, the NFL or MLR? The game I’m talking about, by the way, is called rugby. To sum up, these are the reasons why American Football is to my mind subservient to rugby (either code). I’ve never seen a grid-iron game played in mud and pouring rain, though I am told it does happen on occasion. As American football tends to be organised in very violent in small bursts, rugby is more a game of attrition - 40 minutes of almost non-stop play. The MLR lists its scores like this: Houston 6-13 Seattle, which means that the SaberCats lost to the Seawolves by a score of 6 to 13. The International Rugby Board rankings list 94 nations (the USA is actually 16th, so there’s still hope for America if you come over to the real world). Rugby is played a lot in countries like England, France, New Zealand, Australia, etc. Kicking – Rugby players can kick the ball forward at any point, including attempting a kick through the uprights for three points. For the sake of this article, though, we are going to focus on just the more traditional rugby union and its emerging governing body in the United States, Major League Rugby (MLR), and compare it to the National Football League (NFL) in terms of revenue, salaries, viewership, and attendance. You may have heard of it—in fact you made a rather pathetic attempt to copy it when you nicked our oval-ball idea in order to invent your own grid-iron game way back when. Rugby vs Soccer. Let’s start by understanding how rugby union compares to American Football when it comes to the basics. "}},{"@type":"Question","name":"What Is the Average NFL Salary Compared to the Average MLR Salary? Based mostly in Europe, rugby is not a popular sport in the U.S. When people click on our affiliate links and make purchases, WSN earns a commission from our partners, including ESPN and various sportsbooks. 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