Indianapolis rugby group aims to score big as World Cup nears

While rugby faces an uphill climb for relevancy within America’s cultural zeitgeist, some Indianapolis leaders are optimistic the city could become a hub for the sport by the time the U.S. hosts the men’s World Cup in 2031.

Among those making that push is 30-year-old Indianapolis native Bryce Campbell, general manager of Riverside Sports Properties. The company last year signed a 20-year lease with Indy Parks and Recreation for Kuntz Stadium on West 16th Street, with plans to spend millions of dollars to make it a rugby-first facility for youth, collegiate and professional contests.

Campbell recently retired from professional play with the U.S. national team and in Major League Rugby. Now he’s working closely with Indiana Sports Corp. to court those same entities to bring events, personnel and potentially a professional men’s rugby team and international events to Indianapolis.

Those efforts have already been strong enough to draw serious attention—and interest—from groups like Major League Rugby and USA Rugby, the sport’s national governing body, both of which are actively evaluating whether to invest in Indianapolis.

In fact, sports industry sources told IBJ that despite the organization saying publicly that it has no immediate plans to move out of Colorado, USA Rugby is strongly considering Indianapolis for its national offices. Doing so would make it the fourth sport with its national governing body in the state, alongside football, track and field, and gymnastics.

But the sport must tackle several challenges—not the least of which being that Americans generally don’t know a lot about the full-contact sport, which resembles American football but without the helmets, pads or frequent stoppages.

In rugby, two teams of 15 try to move an oval ball downfield and touch it in the opponent’s in-goal area for a five-point “try.” The ball can only be passed sideways or backward, so players advance by running or kicking—and play flows almost nonstop.

Main priorities

Campbell said Riverside Sports is squarely focused on both bringing USA Rugby’s national offices and training program to Indianapolis and helping the city secure a spot as a host for the men’s World Cup in 2031 and the women’s rendition in 2033.

So far, the group has made progress in putting Indianapolis on the rugby world’s map by hosting smaller events at the 5,000-seat Kuntz Stadium. The facility this spring hosted the USA Club Rugby and College Rugby Association of America national championships and in June a training camp for USA Rugby’s women’s junior national team.

It’s also hosting a series of collegiate club matches this autumn, including a match Friday between Indiana University and Marian University.

Campbell also wants Kuntz to enter the rotation for the state’s youth and high school championships managed by Rugby Indiana. Both he and Wayne Eells, the executive director of Rugby Indiana, told IBJ there have been initial conversations about doing so but no commitments.

“It’s fair to say that there are early, preliminary discussions of potential opportunities,” Eells said.

Bill Goren, CEO of USA Rugby, said he’s so far been impressed by Riverside Sports’ effort to turn Kuntz Stadium into a multi-faceted rugby facility.

And while he said there are “no plans” for USA Rugby to leave its longtime home in Glendale, Colorado, a Denver suburb, to move to Indianapolis, two industry sources told IBJ the organization is in fact heavily weighing that possibility. The sources spoke on the condition of anonymity because they’re not authorized to discuss the matter publicly.

USA Rugby has training operations at various facilities across the country, including in southern California and Charlotte, North Carolina.

But the nonprofit’s staffing strategy over the next several years is likely to be dictated by World Rugby, the international organization that oversees the World Cup events, said Goren. Together, the groups will decide what cities will host the World Cup.

“There are a number of things that we need to wait to see with how things play out, but we’re impressed with Indianapolis,” Goren said. “We have to kind of wait to see where the World Cups are going to be hosted, because we’re going to combine with World Rugby in [an office] sense.”

Indianapolis since April 2024 has been pursuing a soccer stadium that would seat from 20,000 to 25,000 as part of a push for Major League Soccer, but those plans have yet to secure a finalized funding mechanism.

Without such a venue as well as additional training spaces, Indianapolis would likely miss the cut for consideration as a host city—as well as the headquarters for USA Rugby, the sources said.

That’s in part because USA Rugby wants to be able to host follow-up events featuring the U.S. national teams in the World Cup host cities, which would require more seats than Indianapolis can currently offer. The city would also need the facilities to house teams and enable training over the course of the tournament.

Patrick Talty, president of the Indiana Sports Corp., said pursuing rugby is particularly helpful as the city looks to broaden its sports strategy’s reach.

“Rugby is one of those sports that is up and coming, and I think has a future,” he said. “We see it as an opportunity to continue to diversify the Indianapolis sports ecosystem and to keep thinking about different audiences—an international audience—and folks that are interested in other sports that we may not be tapping and may not be talking to. That’s important in growing the sports strategy overall.”

Major league hurdles

Riverside Sports also has “serious interest” in making a run at landing a professional rugby team in Indianapolis that would be part of Major League Rugby, Campbell said.

“I think we’re maybe a couple of years off,” he said. “The league is aware of us, and we’ve got to round up the troops a little bit and see what we can come up with. But I think we’re close—we’re very close” to making a bid to join.

Nic Benson, commissioner of Major League Rugby, said the league is “excited about Indy” as a potential expansion city, adding that there have been early talks with Campbell and city leaders.

“I think it’s geographically a good spot for us,” he said. “There’s a natural rivalry with Chicago. It’s a great sports town. So there’s a lot of intangibles that we think make it promising.”

But that mutual interest comes as the league itself—the top professional league for the sport in North America—navigates difficulties in retaining its existing teams.

The league, which began play in 2018, is set to have eight teams for its 2026 season, with two of its 2025 teams suspending play and another two in Southern California merging into a single club.

In fact, Major League Rugby has seen 10 clubs come and go over the past seven years. Its high watermark was in 2022, when the league fielded 13 teams, including one based in Canada.

Rugby saw a significant boost in viewership during the 2024 Paris Olympics, particularly on the women’s side. But Major League Rugby’s 2025 championship game on June 28 drew only 78,000 viewers between its broadcasts on ESPN 2 and ESPN Deportes, one of the least watched sporting events that month.

“We’re still bullish on the sport,” said Campbell. But the league had been suffering from “a lot of issues around the way it’s structured, and the owners were not seeing eye to eye. A reset button needed to be hit in order to see the growth that some of the owners want.”

Like Major League Soccer and some other sports, team owners are investors in the league who are given an exclusive license to operate a league-owned club.

While some leagues require the involvement of billionaire investors for potential expansion clubs, Major League Rugby does not. Instead, the focus is on bringing in groups consisting of people interested in growing the sport who have the business acumen to run a team and enough funding to sustain a club long term.

Benson declined to discuss specifics of the financial requirements for would-be investor groups, including the league’s expansion fee, which was last reported to be $10 million in 2022. That fee is generally shared by the league and existing investors.

Getting in early

Riverside Sports, a subsidiary of Indy Rugby LLC, is owned by Campbell, his stepfather and commercial real estate broker Bill Ehret, and businessmen Brian Williams and Mark Williams, who are brothers. All are rugby fans, Campbell said.

Campbell declined to detail the group’s financial situation and said other local business leaders could join the group in its bid for a Major League Rugby club.

Riverside began a $45 million, four-phase renovation of Kuntz Stadium last year with the installation of new lights, updated locker rooms, improved concession areas and fresh paving on the existing parking lot. Work on other areas like hospitality and press box spaces is now underway.

By the time the work is done—Campbell said the target is early 2027—the stadium’s capacity is expected to be 8,000 seats, have an outdoor entrance similar to downtown’s Victory Field and a public plaza. A training center and a parking garage with ground-floor retail could also be either underway or set to begin at that time, as well.

“I want us to make Indianapolis the center of the rugby world,” he said. “I am biased, but I think Indianapolis is the perfect-size market, the perfect community … to be able to do that. We have the Racing Capital of the World down the road, and hopefully [Kuntz] is the Rugby Capital of the World.”

Marc Ganis, owner of Chicago-based sports agency Sportscorp Ltd., said he wouldn’t suggest Indianapolis spend a lot of resources trying to join the league. But Ganis said a bid to join the league could benefit the city if the sport becomes a major player in the U.S. sports landscape.

“It is a lot more efficient to get in early and then see which leagues make it than for a market the size of Indy to have a league make the decision later,” he said.

While Indianapolis now has Major League Rugby’s interest, it wasn’t long ago that the city wasn’t even on the league’s radar. In fact, a 2023 request for proposals for upcoming league championships didn’t list the city as a possible expansion market, as it did for Cleveland, Denver, Las Vegas, Nashville and a handful of other cities.

But Benson said Indianapolis sports officials have wooed the league with the development plans for Kuntz stadium and rugby’s continued growth at the youth, high school and college levels.

He said few other markets in the running for a future franchise have a comprehensive strategy that focuses on strongly incorporating rugby into the city’s respective sports ecosystem—or have even pinned down a stadium plan.

“I have a lot of belief in Indy as a city,” said Benson, pointing to the men’s World Cup in 2031. “So I would anticipate that Indy will have a Major League Rugby team … before then.”•