Category: 2026

Scoring and Parity in MLR: What are the Trends?

Coming into the 2026 Major League Rugby season after a catastrophic off-season in which the league contracted from 11 teams to just 6, newly appointed Co-President Alex Magleby frequently mentioned the level of parity and competitive nature of the competition. MLR clearly prided itself on the relatively high proportion of ‘1-score’ games. Prior to the start of the 2026 Campaign, Magleby mentioned multiple times that ‘almost 60% of games…with 10 minutes left, there’s only a 7pt differential or less‘, suggesting that 60% of MLR games remain within 1 score, and therefore competitive, with only 10 minutes to play. This figure is indeed accurate and was a testament to the competitiveness in Major League Rugby between 2018-2025, but that qualifier of ‘with 10 minutes left’ is doing a lot of work. This was said before this year’s season kicked off, but this was not the case in 2026.

In this latest season of competition, a losing bonus point (earned by losing within 7pts) was a rare commodity. Only 18.2% of games (6 in 33) saw a team earn a losing bonus point. So what happened? Is this the next step in a year-on-year trend that has seen margins of victory growing? Is it a case of scoring increasing in general and a sign that teams are becoming more offence-oriented and less focused on defence? Is this specific to MLR or is it in line with what is happening in other leagues around the world? That’s what this article intends to explore.

This is a rare NARDB Deep Dive that can only be given the time it deserves during the MLR Offseason. in 2024 we explored disciplinary trends and the numbers of yellow/red cards handed out in Major League Rugby, while last year we explored the possibility of a Cup Competition with Super Rugby Americas. With all the talk of the relative parity around the league heading into 2026, exploring the scoring trends seemed like an obvious choice. Does 2026 fall in line with these trends? Is it a blip? Or is it somewhere in the middle? Let’s find out.

Scoring Trends in MLR – Points Scored Per Game

The obvious starting point when tackling this subject is to answer the question: ‘Is Scoring in MLR Going Up?’. The short answer to that question is yes. Based on the average total number of points scored per game (PPG), the 2026 Major League Rugby season was the highest scoring season to date. Additionally, the PPG average has increased year over year for the last 3 seasons, with the last drop in PPG average coming in 2023. However, with such a jump between 2025 and 2026 it’s hard to argue that this is a ‘trend’ more than an anomaly for the 2026 season.

The graphic below (recently posted to the MLRStats Instagram page) displays the average PPG for each MLR season to date from 2018-2026. Rather than a steady increase over time, this is more of a shallow ‘U’ or ‘C’ shape. The first thing to notice is just how much higher 2026 is than previous years. Most seasons of MLR (6 of 9) have hovered around 51/52ppg, while 2026 is almost 10ppg higher on average, becoming the first season in history to eclipse 60ppg. Secondly, if scoring was regularly increasing in MLR one would expect the second highest PPG average to be recent, but that’s not the case. After 2026, the season with the highest PPG average was MLR’s inaugural season back in 2018, with 57.2ppg. This average then dropped to 51.8ppg in 2019 and remained around that mark up until this year, with a slight uptick in 2025.

The above table shows that scoring has increased in Major League Rugby for 3 consecutive seasons. Rather than the gradual, steady increase in scoring that one would expect from a general trend however, the vast majority of this 3-year jump from 51.9ppg to 61ppg was seen in 2026. 2024 was in line with previous seasons, 2025 saw a slight increase to 54ppg but was still far below the high of 2018, and 2026 jumps massively. Why?

Looking at the two highest scoring seasons in MLR history, even though they took place 8 years apart there’s an interesting coincidence. As well as being the highest scoring seasons, 2018 & 2026 are also the shortest seasons in MLR history. It’s the only two times where the regular season has been intentionally fewer than 16 games per team, and involved the fewest teams (7 in 2018, 6 in 2026). Both 2018 & 2026 consisted of just over 30 games in total, with the next lowest full season consisting of 75 games in 2019, more than double the number of games. Taking the average PPG of the first ~30 games of the season between 2019-2025 as a way of adjusting for season length proved inconclusive. the averages for 2021, 2024, and 2025 increased to 54.9ppg, 53.6ppg, and 57ppg respectively, but the averages for 2019, 2022, and 2023 fell to 49ppg, 48,4ppg, and 44,7ppg respectively.

Based on the above, it seems reasonable to conclude that fewer teams and a shorter season results in higher scoring. There is a hefty elephant in the room that hasn’t been brought up yet though: 2020. For newer fans to Major League Rugby that aren’t aware, the 2020 season was planned as a 12-team competition broken into two conferences of 6, with each team playing 16 regular season games followed by a 3-round postseason. Unfortunately, the COVID-19 pandemic had other plans. Just 5 rounds into the planned 17 round regular season, MLR rightly cancelled the season. Coincidentally, this put the total number of games played in 2020 at 30. Almost exactly in line with the total number of games in 2018 & 2026. Looking at the above graphic though, if a shorter season with fewer teams does indeed result in higher scoring, why was the average PPG of the 2020 season only 50.8? Lower than the season before and exactly in line with the season after.
Of course, the teams and players didn’t know that the season would be cut short in 2020. They were preparing for a 20 week slog of a season where they might play up to 19 games. If the season was always meant to be a lightning quick, 5-round sprint, it’s possible that the average PPG would’ve been much higher, but we’ll never know. The idea that fewer teams and a shorter season results in higher scoring still seems plausible. The 10-game 2026 regular season was even billed as a ‘sprint season’ which lent itself to higher scoring and less defence. With a similar season length likely on the cards for 2027, it’ll be very interesting to see where the PPG falls at the end of next season.

The Impact of the Referee Review System

There’s another factor that comes to mind when trying to figure out why the average scores per game were so much higher in 2026. Prior to the start of this year’s campaign in early 2026, Major League Rugby announced the Referee Review System (RRS) in place of the traditional Television Match Official (TMO) that’s commonplace elsewhere in professional rugby. NARDB posted a full breakdown of RRS shortly after it was announced that can be found here but in essence, RRS was intended to speed up the game by removing the ability for the TMO to intervene in decision making unprompted. This proved largely successful, however it was introduced alongside a team challenge mechanic and it was this that slowed games down in 2026 more than RRS itself.

RRS does seem to have had the desired effect, though. By Major League Rugby’s own figures and putting the team challenges to one side, there were a total of 44 referee initiated reviews in 2026 which were correct 86% of the time, averaging out to 1.33 reviews every game. This clocks in lower than the average number of TMO interventions per game in overseas domestic competitions (1.5-3) and test match tournaments (2-4). The exact number of TMO interventions in MLR during the 2025 season isn’t widely known, but for the purpose of this deep dive it’s fair to assume that it’s around 1.5-4 interventions per game. In this regard, RRS has reduced the number of interventions and sped up the game by removing most of the unprompted TMO checks, but is higher scoring a side affect of that?

It’s becoming a bit of a running joke in professional rugby that you can’t celebrate a try when it’s scored just in case the TMO spots something to overturn it. With RRS replacing that and referee-initiated reviews being far rarer, it’s possible, even likely, that fewer tries were disallowed in 2026 than they would’ve been if the TMO was still operating in MLR. It’s also possible that a number of penalties may not have been given or may have been reversed as well. Both of these factors would’ve brought the average number of points scored per game down, and with the 2026 average sitting an even 7pts higher than 2025, all it would take is an average of 1 fewer converted try per game to bring the 2026 average right in line with previous seasons.

It seems even more likely that replacing the TMO with the RRS led to higher scoring when you take into account that Major League Rugby didn’t fully implement the TMO for every game until the 2022 season. Prior to that it was used sporadically and for MLR’s resource-strapped inaugural season in 2018, the second highest scoring season in league history, it was used for a total of 1 game. The Championship Final. Does a shorter season with fewer teams and fewer/no TMO interventions lead to higher scoring? On paper, it appears so.

The Question of Parity

Of course, just because the scoring is higher does not necessarily mean that the games and competition as a whole is any less competitive. The easiest way to determine league competitiveness and parity is to look at the average winning margins for each Major League Rugby season from 2018-2026, displayed on the graphic below (also posted to the MLRStats Instagram page recently).

While higher scoring doesn’t guarantee less competitiveness and therefore parity, unfortunately that is what the numbers seem to suggest for the 2026 season. Including the latest campaign this year, the average margin of victory across MLR history is 11.5pts per game. From the graphic below, 6 of Major League Rugby’s 9 seasons fall reasonably close to this with a possible exception being the shortened 2020 season which saw a record low average winning margin of 10.3pts to go with a joint-lowest average points per game of 50.8 as shown above. The remaining 3 seasons saw average winning margins rise far higher than the league average, with 15.6pts in 2022, 14.7pts in 2023, and now an all-time high of 17.2pts per game in the 2026 season.

The above graphic also highlights the obvious relationship between winning margins and 1-score games, which are inversely correlated. Generally speaking, a larger average margin of victory results in a lower percentage of 1-score games, meaning that the games were decided by less than 1 score (between 0-7pts). This ‘within 1-score’ designation is a fairly reliable way to determine whether or not a game was competitive with a higher proportion of 1-score games suggesting that a season was more competitive, and a lower proportion of 1-score games suggesting lower parity that year.

To provide a baseline, across all 750+ Major League Rugby matches since 2018, just under half (47% – 355/755) have been decided by 7pts or fewer. This was a completely different story in 2026. Last season, only 18.2% of games in 2026 ended within 1-score (7pts or fewer). This is a significant drop from the 44.2% just last season, and even a drop from the 30% in 2023, the season with the previous lowest proportion of 1-score games. 18.2% during a 33 game season works out at nearly 1-in-6 games which, considering that there were only 6 teams therefore a max of 3 games per week, equates to roughly 1 game every 2 rounds that finished within 1-score. Losing bonus points were incredibly hard to come by last season, almost twice as rare as the all-time league average.

So the 2026 Major League Rugby season had the highest average points per game of any season to date, as well as the largest average margin of victory of any season to date. On the surface, it makes sense that higher scoring games lead to larger winning margins and 2026 definitely supports that, but that isn’t always the case. As already established, the 2018 season saw the largest average points per game prior to 2026 at 57.2ppg. If points scored per game was directly related to average winning margin, one would expect the average winning margin to be on the higher end as well, but it isn’t. In fact, the average winning margin of 11.8pts is only slightly above the all-time league average and that’s despite less than 40% of games ending within 1-score.
It also seems like a higher average margin of victory does not inherently mean that there are more points scored per game, either. Take the other two years that saw significantly higher than average margins of victory. In 2023 the average winning margin was 14.7pts and the year before in 2022, it was 15.6pts. Despite these margins being 3-4pts higher than league average, the PPG average for these seasons are right in line with all years between 2019-2024, at 51.9ppg in 2022 and 52.2ppg in 2023. Unlike in 2026, these two seasons saw winning margins increase while points per game stayed roughly flat, suggesting that competitiveness dropped in these years which is supported by the fact that both years hovered around 30% of matches being decided by 1 score or less.

Mapping Each MLR Season by Average Margin of Victory and Average Points Scored Per Game

Looping back to the top of this section, the numbers suggest that the obvious link between higher margins of victory and lower proportion of 1-score games appears to be the only consistent link. The table above maps out each season of MLR as well as the all-time league average. Lower scoring doesn’t necessarily mean that winning margins will be lower and games will be closer (look at 2022 and 2023), just as more points scored on average per game doesn’t necessarily lead to larger margins of victory (look at 2018). But the table above highlights just how much of an anomaly the 2026 was. Far higher than average scoring did lead to far higher than average margins of victory last season, and it’s a real anomaly as highlighted by the table above.

The cause of this seems difficult to explain, as it always is with any anomalous result. It could be that a shorter season with fewer teams threw up a smaller sample size of games, with 2026 having roughly a third of the number of games as some of the larger seasons in league history. It could be the implementation of the RRS over traditional TMO contributed to higher scoring. It could be a combination of the two as well as additional factors. Certainly, a significant additional factor is something that happened in 2026 that has never happened before in Major League Rugby: A perfect season.

Dominance: The Chicago Hounds Effect

When discussing the 2026 Major league Rugby season, more often than not conversations would have to be prefaced with something along the lines of ‘with the exception of the Chicago Hounds’. Dominance may not be a strong enough word to describe the season that the Hounds had this year. Chicago enjoyed utter supremacy all season long (with a possible exception to one game against Old Glory DC…), recording a perfect 10-0 season with try bonus points in every game, finishing with the maximum possible 50pts and continued that dominance into the postseason, recording the highest scoring playoff game ever followed by the highest scoring MLR Championship Game ever, to deservingly lift the 2026 Shield in front of a soaking wet home crowd in June.

The effect that the dominance of the Chicago Hounds had on the numbers for the 2026 season cannot be underplayed. Isolating the 12 Hounds games from their Shield-winning season alone shows that average winning margin for Chicago in 2026 was 22pts per game, almost 5ppg higher than the league average last season which itself was far higher than any previous season. To put this in perspective, the 2023 New England Free Jacks recorded a margin of victory of 20.4pts in 15% of games (massively skewed by a 80-5 win over Toronto…). The San Diego Legion went 15-1 that same year (but fail to claim the Shield), their average margin of victory was 18.5pts in 16% of games that year. For all the talk of LA Giltinis dominance in 2021, their average winning margin was 19.8pts in 13% of games that year.

Taking into account that the entire 2026 season was only 33 games total, it means that the Hounds’ average winning margin of 22ppg affected over a third of matches this year (36.4%). A higher average winning margin in a significantly higher proportion of games. Obviously that is going to skew the results somewhat and sure enough excluding the Chicago Hounds results, the remaining 21 games of the 2026 season showed an average winning margin of 14.5ppg, almost 3pts lower per game. This roughly 3pt swing moves the 2026 season from having the largest average margin of victory of any MLR season by far, to being the 3rd highest and in line with the 2022 & 2023 seasons. Still high, but not unprecedented.

Naturally, the Chicago Hounds effect isn’t limited to the average margin of victory. As explained earlier in this article, the 2026 season was, on average, the highest scoring MLR season in history with 61pts scored per game. In their 12 games this year, the Hounds scored 50pts or more 5 times and averaged 46.3ppg, meaning that their opponents only needed to add around 15pts to reach the 61ppg average. Sure enough, 9 of Chicago’s 12 games saw over 61pts scored. In fact, Hounds games averaged 70.5pts scored per game, with Chicago themselves scoring 65.6% of all points scored in games they played. Their average comes in at almost 10pts higher than the season average so just as with the margin of victory, the Hounds once again skew this data.
Again excluding the Chicago Hounds results, the average points scored in the remaining 21 games this year drops from 61 to 55.5ppg. As with the winning margins this is still higher than most previous years, but lower than the 57.2ppg of MLR’s inaugural season, and in line with the steady increase in scoring that the league has experienced since 2023.

Mapping Each MLR Season by Average Margin of Victory and Average Points Scored Per Game, including Chicago Hounds games in isolation, and the 2026 season excluding the Chicago Hounds.

To highlight just how much the Chicago Hounds’ perfect season had on scoring in 2026, the above table is almost identical to the one prior except with two extra data points: Chicago Hounds games, and the 2026 season excluding Hounds games. This illustrates just how dominant the Hounds were as well as just how much Chicago’s games skew the numbers for the 2026 season as a whole, dragging the season averages from unusual but not unprecedented, to a true outlier.

Excluding the Hounds games, the 2026 season would still be unusual in that it saw higher scoring and larger winning margins rather than one or the other, but there have been higher scoring seasons, and seasons with larger winning margins. It would be the combination of those two that would be unprecedented however, rather than the levels. Considering though, that a shorter season and implementation of the RRS over TMO likely also had an added effect on top of Chicago’s dominant season, and the mystery of 2026’s anomalous numbers seems solved.

However, not everything can be explained by Chicago’s perfect season. As previously mentioned only 18% of games during the 2026 season ended within 1-score, 6 of the 33 total matches. Only 1 of these 6 was a Chicago Hounds game which leaves 5 of the 21 remaining games ending within 1-score. This still only works out to roughly a quarter (23.8%) of games ending within 1-score. That’s higher, but still by far the lowest proportion of 1-score games in MLR history when broken down per season.

Is Major League Rugby the Outlier?

We’ve established that the 2026 Major League Rugby season was both the highest scoring year in league history, and had the largest average margin of victory of any season to date, but is MLR alone in this or is this reflective of larger trends in pro rugby competitions globally?

While there isn’t enough time to dig into all-time data for more established international competitions, the table below compares the 2026 MLR season to the most recent full seasons of other pro leagues around the world.

This table covers a wide range of rugby competitions globally, from the pinnacle of club rugby such as the Top14, Super Rugby, the URC, and the PREM, to 2nd tiers like the Pro D2 and CHAMP Rugby, to feeder systems and leagues comparable to MLR such as the NPC, Currie Cup, and SRA. A massive caveat to this is that the Major league Rugby season is among the shortest seasons of all these leagues. The 33 game 2026 MLR season is only really comparable to the Currie Cup (31 games) in terms of number of games (therefore sample size). It was roughly half as long as the next shortest competitions (Super Rugby Americas at 59 and the 2026 NPC regular season at 70), over 100 games fewer than the likes of the CHAMP, Top14, JRLO, and almost 200 games fewer than the gargantuan Pro D2 at 229 total games.

Putting this rather large asterisk to the side though, the 2026 MLR season fits remarkably neatly with the latest seasons of other rugby competitions around the world, despite being a real outlier among previous MLR campaigns. The North American professional game is still at the higher end of scoring as one of only 3 leagues from the table above that recorded over 60ppg along with the JRLO (61.1) and NPC (61.6), but is still right around the level of 8 other overseas competitions surveyed. In fact, the 2025/26 Pro D2 and URC seasons are the outliers, with the mammoth French 2nd tier at 51.3ppg (roughly the level of most previous MLR seasons) and the URC coming in at only 47.7ppg, significantly lower than any other competition in this study. A quick dip into test rugby for comparison shows that the 2026 Six Nations had 54.8pts scored per game and the Rugby Championship had 56.8pts scored per game.

As one would expect, with fewer points being scored per game the average margin of victory in the URC was also the lowest among the 11 competitions surveyed for the table above. The 2025/26 URC season recorded an average winning margin of 14.6pts, almost a point and a half less than the next lowest competition, the Currie Cup at 16pts. Although the lowest among the competitions measured, it’s worth remembering that the URC’s 14.6pt average winning margin would still be higher than the 14.5pt average margin of victory from the 2026 MLR season excluding the Chicago Hounds, which itself was on the higher end of historic MLR campaigns. Instead, Major League Rugby’s highest ever average winning margin of 17.2pts puts it right in the middle of the 10 other professional rugby leagues around the world, as shown by the table below. Major League Rugby sits between the likes of the Pro D2, SRA and NPC (all 16.4pts) below it, and Super Rugby (17.6), JRLO (18.2) and CHAMP Rugby (18.3) above.

Even though the 2026 MLR season sits higher than the three comparable competitions on length and arguably quality, the Currie Cup, SRA, and NPC, it sits way below the the French and English top flights. The Top 14 and PREM led the way with an average winning margin of 18.7ppg and 19pts respectively. What’s more, the young 2026/27 seasons for the Top 14, PREM and even the CHAMP are already delivering some eye-watering results only a few rounds in, which suggests that this years numbers will be even higher. Just look at the Round 1 match between UBB and Racing 92, the Round 2 match between Pau and Bayonne, and the Round 5 clash between Racing and Perpignan in the Top 14. These may have been helped by the Top 14s variant on the bonus point system however, where rather than just scoring 4 tries to earn a scoring bonus point, a team must instead score at least 3 more tries than their opponent in a match. This system isn’t in use in England though, so can’t have contributed to CHAMP score lines such as the Round 2 games between Worcester and Rotherham or between Coventry and the Cornish Pirates, with Ealing also racking up the points against Hartpury in Round 4. A tier above in the PREM is a similar story, with the 48pt drubbing that Gloucester gave Quins in Round 2, or the truly insane scoreline between Northampton and Bath in Round 3, and that’s not even getting into some of the madness in the PREM Rugby Cup.

Comparing Major League Rugby’s average points per game and average margin of victory with international rugby competitions.

When combining the average margin of victory with the average number of points scored per game, the 2026 Major League Rugby falls quite neatly into the ‘strike zone’ of the most recent completed seasons of many professional leagues around the world. This can clearly be seen in the table above, with only the URC and Pro D2 falling significantly outside this zone. Unfortunately there isn’t room in this article to go into whether the latest seasons mapped on the above table were also dramatic increases on historical seasons in each of these competitions, and therefore evidence of a wider trend within rugby globally, but New Zealand’s NPC did post an infographic at the conclusion of the 2026 regular season that mentioned that the average PPG of 61.6 was the highest scoring regular season ever, just as it was in Major League Rugby. With the NPC celebrating it’s 50th year in 2026, 21 of those as a professional competition, this may be a hint that increased scoring and larger winning margins are not exclusive to MLR.

Conclusion: Is this a Problem?

It’s a fact that the 2026 Major League Rugby season was the highest scoring season in league history by average points per game, and that it recorded the highest average margin of victory with the fewest proportion of ‘1-score’ games in league history. A high proportion of 1-score games was something that MLR prided themselves on entering 2026 as a sign of a competitive league, as proven by how often MLR Co-President Alex Magleby mentioned it prior to the season. Increases in scoring and average winning margins led to a generally less competitive season and more lopsided games that became less entertaining to watch on the basis that they were effectively over long before the final whistle. Rugby is an entertainment product, and if that product becomes less entertaining it will be harder to attract new eyeballs to it. This, obviously, is a problem.

However, the 2026 MLR season was a unique campaign. The league contracted dramatically which resulted in a glut of pro-level players squeezed onto fewer rosters for a season that was significantly shorter than previous years. The introduction of the Referee Review System to replace traditional TMO almost definitely contributed to higher scoring with fewer tries called back in a smaller sample size of games than previous years, although putting a number on this effect is difficult. 2026 also saw the Chicago Hounds record MLR’s first ever perfect season, with their sheer dominance in nearly a third of all games this year skewing the numbers massively in what was probably the most significant contributing factor to this year’s campaign setting these all-time highs.

Major League Rugby will no doubt be aware of these numbers. The sweet spot for maximum entertainment is high scoring but relatively low margins of victory, which is difficult to achieve. The league mentioned throughout 2026 that the RRS was a work in progress, and will likely continue to be tweaked and refined at least into 2027 which could have an affect on the number of points scored. Though not impossible, it’s unlikely that the Chicago Hounds will continue to dominate the league to quite the same extent for two seasons in a row, which may have a significant effect on bringing the numbers more in line with previous seasons of MLR. Until the 2027 season is played however, it’s impossible to know.

In isolation and relative to previous Major League Rugby seasons, 2026 was a true outlier with higher scoring and fewer close games. When looking at the bigger picture and comparing this to other competitions around the world however, this season was almost the opposite of an outlier. While a record high for MLR, the average margin of victory in 2026 was right in the middle of the competitions surveyed and although the average points scored was on the higher end, it wasn’t anything ridiculous by the standards of overseas competitions. MLR will likely want to at least bring the average margin of victory down, but it appears that this isn’t a problem that’s unique to MLR. Both the winning margins and scoring in general are growing all over the world and there doesn’t seem to be a solution for it at present. It’s likely that all domestic competitions are keeping an eye on each other to see what each is trying out (for example the Top14-style scoring bonus point, MLR’s introduction of RRS, etc.) in the hopes of limiting these lopsided games and increasing the competitiveness of these domestic competitions.

To wrap up, MLR came out of a dismal 2025/26 offseason with a very different structure and outlook. They tried new things in 2026 with the introduction of RRS as well as the Team Challenge system, and that innovation is key. MLR need to keep innovating, tweaking, and testing things in the coming years in order to stay competitive both internally and externally. Competitiveness in general seems to be dropping around the world and no-one seems to have figured out how to resolve that just yet. Does the TMO need to be replaced or does the power of the lineout maul need to be checked? It will be fascinating to see where the 2027 MLR season lands, and how that compares with ongoing and upcoming seasons around the world.

Thank you very much for making it through this NARDB Deep Dive into Scoring Trends in Major League Rugby! Please feel free to get in touch if you have any thoughts on anything mentioned here or what subject you would like to see in the next Deep Dive. James and NARDB can be found on social media here:  @MLRStats on Instagram, JamDelay & @NARugbyDB on Twitter/X, and @JamDelay & @NARDB on Bluesky! Alternatively, you can reach out to NARDB via the ‘Contact’ tab on this site.

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