Category: Deep Dive

Scoring and Parity in MLR: What are the Trends?

James Deeley

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.

LeagueSeasonAverage Pts Per GameAverage Margin of Victory
202661pts17.2pts
2025/2659pts19pts
2025/2656.8pts18.3pts
2025/2647.7pts14.6pts
2025/2658.7pts18.7pts
2025/2651.3pts16.4pts
202658.6pts17.6pts
2025/2661.1pts18.2pts
2026
(Reg Season Only)		61.6pts16.4pts
202655.9pts16.4pts
202658.2pts16.0pts

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.

Finally, if you’re looking to pick up some new rugby gear be sure to visit rugbynow.com and use code ‘MLRSTATS’ at checkout for 15% off of your order!

Can a Cup Competition between Major League Rugby and Super Rugby Americas work?

NARDatabase

James Deeley

Ever since Súper Liga Americana de Rugby (SLAR) was founded in 2019, rugby fans in the Americas have been wondering if there is a way for Major League Rugby, the top flight in North America, to collaborate with their South American counterparts to create a ‘Cup of the Americas’, a Champions/Challenge Cup equivalent for the New World. How realistic is that dream, and what lies in the way of making it a reality?

Now rebranded as Super Rugby Americas (SRA), the South American competition is the natural comparison for MLR, with the two competitions being roughly the same age and (arguably) a similar level of competition. This article hopes to explore the possibility of a collaborative competition between MLR and SRA, what that competition may look like, and will dig into some potential obstacles standing in the way.

History of SLAR/SRA

For those of you less familiar with South America’s Top competition, here’s a history lesson. For those of you who want to skip school, there’s a table at the end of this section that summarises each season of SRA to date.

SRA follows a franchise format that differs slightly from MLR in that teams are owned and operated by their country’s respective Unions, and their explicit purpose is to create a pathway to the National Teams, rather than exist as private entities as they do in Major League Rugby. The easiest comparison for MLR fans is that each team exists similar to Anthem RC, fueling the national team rather than aiming to win or turn a profit.

Súper Liga Americana de Rugby (SLAR) was first announced in April 2019 and aimed to field between 6-8 teams from around South America for their first season in 2020, with two teams each from Uruguay and (perhaps surprisingly) Brazil, as well as one each from Argentina and Chile with plans to add two additional teams in 2021. The competition was officially sanctioned by Sudamérica Rugby and was launched in November 2019. Officially, the competition launched with 5 teams: Ceibos from Argentina, Corinthians from Brazil, Olimpia Lions from Paraguay, Peñarol from Uruguay and Selknam from Chile. There was also plans for a 6th team, Colombia’s Cafeteros Pro, to join at the end of the regular season and play a 2-game series against the 5th placed finisher. SLAR’s inaugural season began on 4th March 2020 and only completed 2 rounds before it was cancelled on 17th March due to the COVID-19 Pandemic, a day before the Corinthians were set to play their first game.

The Competition stayed intact and was able to return for it’s first full season in 2021 with some changes. Argentina’s Ceibos (who topped the league during the short-lived 2020 season) withdrew from SLAR after the Argentine Rugby Union (UAR) decided to enter the Jaguares XV into the competition instead following the Jaguares withdrawal from Super Rugby after they weren’t named in either Super Rugby Aoteroa or Super Rugby AU. Additionally, Brazil’s Corinthians franchise was rebranded as Cobras, and Colombia’s Cafeteros Pro officially entered the competition, creating a 6-team league. Following a 10 game regular season, the Top 4 teams qualified for the semi-finals, with the winners advancing to the final. The Jaguares XV, who went undefeated during the regular season, became the inaugural SLAR Champions with a 36-28 victory over Peñarol. The league structure would remain the same for the 2022 season, and Peñarol were able to get their revenge, finishing as the top team in the regular season with an 8-2 record and 40pts and advancing to the final where they defeated Chilean franchise Selknam (who also recorded an 8-2 record) 24-13 to claim their first SLAR title.

Ahead of the 2023 season SLAR rebranded as Super Rugby Americas (SRA), and even then there were rumours of expansion and cooperation with USA Rugby (who did not formally sanction MLR at the time) and even Rugby Canada, but it is unclear if this was to be part of the league itself, or a separate cup-style competition. The 2023 SRA season saw an expansion to 7 teams, as well as a shake-up of the teams taking part. The Paraguayan franchise rebranded from the Olimpia Lions to Yacare XV (named after the Yacare Caimen), the Argentinian Jaguares XV, SLAR’s inaugural champions, dissolved in December 2022 after UAR split their franchise into two new teams due to the momentum of the competition, Pampas XV in Buenos Aires, and the Ceibos team was resurrected in Cordoba as the Dogos XV. The biggest shock to rugby fans across the Americas, however, was the announcement that the American Raptors would join the competition for the 2023 season. The Raptors, a continuation of the MLR franchise that finished as runners-up in 2019, were based in Colorado and had been in the rugby wilderness since their withdrawal from MLR in April 2020. They became the first North American franchise to play in SRA, and finished 6th of 7 with a 2-10 record. The regular season was again dominated by the Uruguayan outfit Peñarol, who finished with a 10-2 record and dispatched Yacare to earn their 3rd SRA Final appearance in a row where they narrowly defeated the Dogos to claim their 2nd title in a row.

The 2024 SRA season began with the exact same 7 teams that had finished the 2023 Campaign, with no changes to the format or season structure. Each team would play each other team home and away for a 12 game regular season. Unlike 2023 however, Peñarol took a step back finishing 4th with a 5-1-6 record, and it was the Argentinian team Pampas that dominated with a 11-1 record in the regular season, recording the most wins ever in a SRA season. Pampas easily saw off the 2x Champion Peñarol, and advanced to their first final to face the Dogos in an all-Argentinian final and despite a dominant season, the Dogos came out on top with a 23-37 victory to claim their first (and Argentina’s 2nd) SRA Title.

The Dogos, along with all South American teams from SRA’s 2024 season would return for the most recent 2025 campaign. The US-based American Raptors however, would not. In October 2024, Maggy Wolanske wrote an article for Denver7 stating that the team would no play professional rugby in 2025, instead shifting to focus on youth rugby programs. In an article for this site it mentions that the Raptors’ nearest opponents in SRA were over 5,000 miles away, which is unsustainable given the state of pro rugby in North America. As of writing, the Raptors have not re-emerged as a professional team. Taking the Raptors’ place in SRA for the 2025 season was a 3rd Argentinian franchise, the Tarucas. Named after a species of Andean deer, the Tarucas ensured that SRA would remain a 7-team competition for 2025. The 2025 SRA season was arguably the most competitive to date. Just like the season before, Pampas finished as the top regular season team, but with a 8-1-3 record just 2pts ahead of the 8-4 Peñarol. The Uruguayans would see off Chilean team Selknam to advance to their 4th Final where they would face the Reigning Champion Dogos, who saw off Pampas in the Semifinals. In the end, Peñarol just about held off a late comeback attempt by the Argentinian side, and emerged with a 35-34 victory to claim their 3rd SRA Championship.

Year# of TeamsChampionsRunners-Up
20205CancelledCancelled
20216
Jaguares XV
Peñarol
20226
Peñarol
Selknam
20237
Peñarol
Dogos XV
20247
Dogos XV
Pampas XV
20257
Peñarol
Dogos XV

Differences between SRA & MLR

As you can see from the above just like Major League Rugby, SRA has also gone through it’s fair share of team turnover with teams leaving, re-joining, re-branding, etc. but the bottom line is that it is growing and has expanded from 5 teams in 2020 to 8 in 2026 with a fourth Argentinian team, the Capibaras XV, announced just a few weeks ago on September 29th, 2025. Yes, SRA is expanding far slower than MLR (who peaked at 13 teams in 2022), but the bottom line is that they will enter 2026 with more teams than the 7 confirmed for MLR in 2026, and these teams are arguably more stable. For the RWC2027 qualification campaign, 78% of Uruguay’s national team played with Peñarol and 82% of Chile’s national team played with Selknam. This is in part because teams in SRA are owned by the respective Unions rather than private enterprises, so the priority is on player development rather than turning a profit. SRA sides are happy to lose money at club level if it improves the national game (although profits are a happy side affect if they can get them). This is in stark difference to MLR, where owners losing money has been front page news in recent months, and has been a significant contributing factor as the league has contracted from 11 teams to 7.

Anthem RC, a partnership between MLR, World Rugby, and USA Rugby which has the worst record in MLR history, is modelled in the same way as SRA teams and is probably the least likely team in MLR to withdraw because of this. Vague rumours of a new Canadian franchise on the back of Canada’s RWC2027 qualification would also follow this model. North America however, only has 2/3 unions to draw from unless you start bringing in Caribbean nations, and rugby in the Carribbean is almost exclusively limited to the Sevens game. SRA has teams from 5 different nations competing, so this model works better down there and as a T1 rugby powerhouse, Argentina has the resources to maintain 4 teams in the competition, whereas the US or Canada cannot.

Having just completed it’s 5th season and 4th full Campaign (after the 2020 Campaign was sidelined due to the COVID-19 Pandemic, much like MLR’s season that year), It’s hard to argue that SRA has not improved the quality of rugby in South America. Just look at the rise of Chile, who were ranked outside of the Top 30 in 2018 but now rank 17th (at time of writing) and have qualified for two Rugby World Cups. It is foolish to doubt the quality of competition in SRA so having explored the history and one of the key differences, can a Cup Competition with Major League Rugby work?

Potential Format & Obstacles

For simplicity’s sake given player contracts and having rosters all in one place, any Cup Competition would have to take place shortly after the end of the MLR & SRA seasons as having it take place during the season doesn’t make sense given the huge travel distances between markets and required rest-periods between games. One fun format would include all 4 finalists from both MLR and SRA, creating a 4 team, 3-game competition over the course of two weeks where the MLR Champions play the SRA Runners-up, the SRA Champions play the MLR Runners-up, and both winners face off in a final the following week. Taking 2025 as an example, this would pit the New England Free Jacks against Dogos XV, and the Houston SaberCats (RIP) against Peñarol in a bracket that could look a little something like this:

A concept of a 4-team ‘Americas Cup’

However, the most straightforward format for a Cup competition would be a one-off match between the MLR Champions and the SRA Champions. For the 2025 season, this would mean that the New England Free Jacks would take on Peñarol. A mouth-watering prospect for rugby fans, but making that happen isn’t that simple.

For starters, the SRA season has been shorter than MLR seasons in the past, with only 12 regular season games and 2 weeks of playoffs. Although the 2025 SRA and MLR seasons both kicked off on the same weekend in mid-February, Peñarol were crowned SRA Champions on June 13th (a Friday, strangely), while the New England Free Jacks lifted their 3rd consecutive MLR Shield just over 2 weeks later on June 28th. Assuming that the ‘North v South’ Cup game is played 1 week later, this means the SRA Champions would be sat waiting for about 3 weeks before jumping into a game against the best team in North America. Likewise for the MLR Champs, they will have just finished a gruelling MLR campaign only to jump into a fight against the completely rested SRA Champions.

However, this is where MLR’s contraction could work in favour of a Cup Competition. Now that MLR is down to a 7-team competition and SRA is planning an 8-team competition for 2026, if MLR moves to a 12-game regular season and keeps a 6 team playoff format (which would be silly in a 7-team league but bear with me), while SRA increases to a 14 game regular season and 2 weeks of playoffs, it is likely that the leagues will finish around the same time in mid-June. This leaves a couple of weeks before the July Test window to fit in a two-week Cup Competition, or a one-off Champion v Champion match at the end of both seasons with a bye beforehand.

Unfortunately, this is where the issue of cost rears it’s ugly head. Any team featuring in a cross-continental Cup competition is guaranteed to lose money just from travel costs, accommodation, and the cost of holding the event which, being a Final of sorts, will likely be a bigger event than the average MLR or SRA game. Knowing how big of a boogeyman costs are for MLR teams, why would they be interested in this? And even though profit is not the main driver for SRA teams, the prospect of losing money can’t sit well with the South American Unions. What would any team (MLR or SRA) have to gain from it that they haven’t already earned from a successful domestic campaign?

Next up is the issue of the venue. Who will host this one-off match and how will that be determined? MLR and SRA markets are thousands of miles apart so a truly neutral venue wouldn’t work due to the sheer distances and relative rugby void in Central America and the Caribbean. The crowd turnout at a neutral venue would likely only be triple figures or low 1000s at best. Even with a full stadium in or close to the host team’s market, the number of travelling fans will be negligible and a sell out at even a smaller venue would be unlikely.

Perhaps the solution is for some combination of SRA and MLR themselves, Rugby Americas North and Sudamérica Rugby, or USA Rugby and the respective union of the SRA Champion, along with World Rugby to pool their resources and host the event together as an ‘MLR All-Stars’ v. ‘SRA All-Stars’ matchup. More of a showcase than a Cup competition. Additionally, that path seems quite messy and would rely on a lot of different parties working together. Is the risk and the cost really worth the reward? My bet is a firm ‘no’ from MLR and it’s teams who are trying desperately to control costs, and in a world where there isn’t a huge crossover in fanbases between MLR and SRA like there is in Europe with the URC, PREM, and Top14, the demand isn’t there yet.

A Possible Solution?

As mentioned repeatedly in this article, SRA teams are owned by their respective unions with the team roster making up the majority of the national team roster with the exception of Argentina. MLR teams all exist within the USA although there is not really one team that boasts an abundance of USA Eagles.

Given that both the MLR and SRA season finishes a few weeks before the July Test window, could it be an option for one of the USA’s July tests to be against the national team of the SRA Champion’s country? For example, Peñarol were the 2025 SRA Champions out of Uruguay, so perhaps the USA (currently ranked 15th) face Uruguay (currently ranked 19th) as one of their July tests. If Selknam are crowned SRA champions, the USA could face Chile in a test match, etc. The one exception to this may be Argentina who may perfer to face Tier 1 opponents than the Tier 2 USA, but perhaps a match against an Argentina XV is a suitable replacement.

It may not be possible to plan a test match that quickly and this is far from a perfect solution as, just like a MLR All-Stars’ v. ‘SRA All-Stars’ matchup, is not a ‘club level’ Cup Competition but it is better than nothing. USAR working closer with South American Unions is a positive for rugby in the Americas, and may in time lead to an opportunity for cooperation between MLR and SRA.

In Conclusion

For those rugby fans hoping for a ‘Cup of the Americas’ competition, it’s not going to happen any time soon. Even a one-off Champion v Champion grudge match doesn’t seem likely given that any team involved would certainly lose money and MLR is currently at the very beginning of a ‘reset and rebuild’ phase after a dreadful off-season so far.

That being said, if a Cup Competition was realistic and feasible I believe it would happen. In the meantime, daring to dream about these things is, if nothing else, a fun thought experiment. Keeping the conversation alive around a MLR/SRA collaborative competition ensures that the idea is still in the back of people’s minds, should an opportunity arise in the future. I would love to see collaboration between North and South America and to anyone who shares that view I would say: Don’t hold your breath, but don’t give up hope.

Thank you very much for reading! If there are any other reasons for, or obstacles to, a SRA/MLR collaborative cup competition, you can let NARDB/James know on social media: @MLRStats on Instagram/Threads, JamDelay & @NARugbyDB on Twitter/X, and @JamDelay & @NARDB on Bluesky! Alternatively, you can reach out to NARDB via the ‘Contact’ tab on this site. Finally, if you’re looking to jump into the End of Season sales or pick up some discounted merch, visit shopmlr.com and use code ‘MLRSTATS’ at checkout for 15% off of your order!

Breaking Down the Number of Overall Cards in MLR: 2018-2024

NAR Database

James Deeley

Although still a young league by global standards, Major League Rugby is entering it’s 8th season in 2025 and has come along leaps and bounds since that inaugural season back in 2018. While enjoying the 2024 season unfold as a real neutral for the first time, one recurring thought kept coming to me: ‘Wow, another yellow card?’. It felt like almost every game had at least 1 card, and the majority had a few. So, now that the off-season has freed up some of my time, I decided to crunch the numbers on this, and see how 2024 compared with previous MLR seasons in terms of the amount of cards shown.

Obviously, there are a few caveats to list. Firstly, the 2018 season only had 7 teams that played 8 regular season games total. Including playoffs, this is only 31 games in total so the total yellow & red cards awarded in 2018 will be far lower than other seasons. Similarly, the truncated 2020 season saw each team only play 5 games each for a total of 30 games. To help overcome these caveats, I also calculated the average yellow & red cards per game for each season.

Historical Carding

Lets begin by taking a look at the number of red & yellow cards per season, from MLR’s inaugural season in 2018 to the 2023 season. It should be no surprise that 2018 saw the fewest yellow (30) & red (3) cards in MLR history. Also unsurprisingly, once we see the league expand to a 16 game regular season with more than the 7 teams in MLR, we see more cards. As you can see from the bar chart below, we have seen a general increase in both red & yellow cards from season to season.

A bar chart visualising the increase in the number of yellow & red cards in MLR over the years. The tables on the right show the YCpG & RCpG, and the YoY increase.

Worth noting is the 2020 season. As mentioned in the introduction, the season was cut short by COVID-19 after each team played only 5 games, totaling 30 games that year. While this makes it tricky to compare with 2019, or 2021-2024, it’s only 1 game fewer than the 2018 season and while there was only 1 red card that season (fewer than the 3 in 2018), there were 45 yellow cards. This is FIFTEEN more yellows than in the 2018 season. While it’s impossible to know how the 2020 season would’ve played out, it’s almost a guarantee that there would have been more than the 68 yellow cards and 3 reds in 2019.

The average number of yellow cards per game (YCpG) hovered just below 1 between 2018-2019, but rose to 1.5 during the 2020 season and although this is the smallest sample size we have, the average has not fallen back below 1 YCpG since 2019. Moving forward in time slightly, the 2021 MLR season saw almost twice as many total cards (129) as the previous full season in 2019 (71). The 2021 season had 99 games in total, a significant jump from the 75 in 2019 and this can be explained by the increase in teams from 9 to 12. Roughly a 33% increase in games matches up with a 33% increase in the number of teams. The YCpG and Red Cards per Game (RCpG) both increased from 2019, but the YCpG fell from 1.5 in 2020 to 1.23 in 2021.

The change between the 2021 season and the 2022 season in interesting. While the overall number of cards increased ever so slightly (129 to 131), 2022 is the only Major League Rugby season that saw fewer yellow cards handed out than the season before (not counting 2020), a slight decrease from 122 to 120. Interestingly, the 2022 season was the first MLR season to feature a Television Match Official (TMO) for every game, and had the most teams in league history, with 13 teams competing for the Shield that was ultimately won by Rugby New York following a dramatic end to the regular season. Consequently, there were 10 more games in 2022 than in 2021 for a total of 109 games in the season, the most games in a MLR season to date. Although red cards rose above 10 for the first time ever, the total number of yellows went down and as a result, so did the YCpG. Falling from 1.23 in 2021 to 1.10 in 2022, the second season in a row that the YCpG fell.

This wouldn’t last into 2023 however, as the YCpG rose to 1.29 and the RCpG reached a high of 0.12, with 130 yellows and 12 reds in 101 games for a total of 142 cards. All three of these were all-time highs. Even though there was an increase in cards in 2023, it wasn’t a significant jump despite reaching all-time highs across the board. Generally speaking, cards were around the same level for the three MLR seasons between 2021-2023, averaging 124 yellows and 10 reds per season. Both yellow and red cards increased by under 10% from 2022 to 2023, by far the lowest Year-over-year (YoY) increases in MLR history.

Pie Charts of Yellow & Red Cards per MLR season from 2018-2024.
Last Season – 2024

Remember that thought that kept coming to me during the 2024 season: ‘Wow, another yellow card?!‘. After crunching the numbers, it seems like there was something to that thought.

The 2024 season had 103 games in total, around normal for full seasons in the ‘Conference Era’ (2021-2024). In those 103 games, a massive 180 yellow cards were shown, and 17 red cards. This is around a 40% increase to both yellows and reds from 2023,. In numerical terms: FIVE more red cards and FIFTY more yellows. The YCpG and RCpG for the 2024 MLR season skyrocketed to all time highs of 1.75 and 0.17 respectively. More games had at least two yellow cards than just one, and almost 1 in 5 games had a red card shown. The only area that stayed roughly level was the number of red cards as a percentage of total cards, which has stayed roughly level for three seasons now, around 8-9%. So the numbers and charts clearly show a huge jump in cards handed out in the 2024 season, but why? What is the reason or the explanation for this increase? While I don’t have the answer, here’s my theory:

In February 2024 MLR and USA Rugby announced a collaboration on referee development. ‘This collaboration is aimed at solidifying a pathway for domestic referees into MLR in the lead up to Rugby World Cup 2031’. As part of this collaboration, former IRFU National Referee Manager David Wilkinson was appointed as Director of Match Officials, a role which will ‘manage all aspects of officiating in MLR’. With a new man in charge of officiating, MLR’s first Director of Match Officials, it’s possible that Wilkinson has tightened up officiating on a lot of things that may have been missed in previous seasons. Additionally, as MLR grows the quality of the game improves and, by necessity, the general quality of officiating improves with it.

The Officials for the 2024 MLR season.
Source: Major League Rugby

It seems possible to me that the addition of MLR’s Match Official Management Team has resulted in a jump in the quality of officiating generally in order to match the improvement of the quality of play in MLR over the next 5 years. Teams and players were caught short by this jump in 2024, hence the large increase in the number of cards. It wouldn’t surprise me to see the number of cards for 2025 stay around the same level, or even drop as they adapt to playing with Wilkinson’s Match Official team.

This article identifies general trends in the overall number of cards per season in Major League Rugby between 2018-2024. For a breakdown of which teams receive the most cards overall and per season, and the highest number of cards in a single game, you’ll have to wait for next week’s article.

Follow @NARugbyDB and/or @JamDelay on Twitter/X or @MLRStats on Instagram to stay up to date on all the news and numbers around Major League Rugby!