America’s first professional women’s rugby league will launch next year, key stakeholders said, promising to show that “the commercial value of women’s sport is not a moment, but a movement” before a women’s World Cup takes place on US soil.

“The growth of women’s sports as a whole has been fantastic to see,” Katherine aversano, vice president of Women’s Elite Rugby (WER), told reporters, referring to impressive crowds for women’s rugby in Europe, but also to the meteoric rise of American women’s basketball, especially through the college event March Madness.

“I personally love to see the enthusiasm shine through,” Aversano said. “It really shows that the commercial value of women’s sport is not a moment, but a movement. And I think you will hear this across the board.

“On the rugby side, we are building a strong presence in the USA with WER ahead of the Women’s Rugby World Cup. It’s such fantastic news that the international spotlight will be on rugby in America, starting in with the Olympics [sevens], and then the USA will host the men’s rugby Union World Cup [to 15] before the women’s World Cup. These are massive events that attract attention, but also provide financial support from international companies and world rugby.”

WHO wants to build on the foundations of the Women’s Premier League, a national amateur competition founded, which starts its season this month. Currently, seven teams are playing against each other, Boston, New York, California (two), Denver, Minneapolis and Chicago.

Dr. Jessica Hammond-Graf, president of WER, former American National rugby sevens player and assistant professor of sports management at Vermont State University, said: “For 15 years, female Premier League rugby players have been playing in a paid amateur cross-country league and the consensus is that this model is no longer feasible.

“We are so proud of everything the WPL has done to become such a strong role model for us, and we are ready to take our brave, exciting and challenging sport to the next level.”

A statement from WER said he is “in an active conversation with all the current WPL teams for the inaugural season. The WHO intends to start with six to eight teams with a target model of 30 players per team and then develop a strategic expansion plan for the next 10 years. The locations are still being determined.”

The financing, WER said, will come “from private investors and is currently 50% through [a] pre-seed financing round. The league plans to open the seed round this summer. In addition to paying the athletes, REH will have paid full-time reception staff who will take over the administrative duties of the team.”

Establishing a professional rugby man in the USA proved to be difficult. In the seventh season of Major League Rugby, two champion teams (Los Angeles and New York) collapsed, unable to generate sufficient revenue.

But World Rugby has now invested in an MLR team, Anthem Carolina, which is trying to strengthen American rugby ahead of the 2031 World Cup. Wer officials cited similar initiatives.