In some circles, it’s seen as a seismic development: A worldwide icon announces his involvement with a Southern California sports franchise.
But if you are a casual sports fan here, you can be excused for not being aware of what L.A.’s Major League Rugby franchise pulled off last week.
Antoine Dupont is the captain of France’s national team and the star of the Toulouse club, a 28-year-old who has helped his teams to championships in club and international competitions – including an Olympic gold medal last year in Paris – and has been named international player of the year in both Rugby 15s and Rugby Sevens competitions.
He is, to put it in terms most of us would understand, as influential a figure in his sport as Shohei Ohtani or LeBron James are in theirs, or as David Beckham or Wayne Gretzky used to be in theirs.
And now Dupont is an L.A. guy, sort of, with news breaking last week that he has purchased an unspecified percentage of ownership in Rugby Football Club Los Angeles. He is not joining as a player, yet – “someday, I hope,” club CEO Pete Sickle said, chuckling – and his exact responsibilities don’t seem to have been defined yet. But club personnel have compared his presence to Beckham leaving England to join the Galaxy in 2007, a signing that changed the trajectory of Major League Soccer.
The other obvious comparison is the 1988 trade that sent Gretzky from Edmonton to the Kings. That move helped spawn two other Sun Belt NHL franchises, including one in Anaheim, and also spurred a huge uptick in hockey participation among kids not only in Southern California but other areas not previously known as hockey hotbeds.
The difference: Beckham and Gretzky were already known quantities here. In this case, the first task is to acquaint the local populace with the new part-owner and his significance before the franchise can capitalize on his worldwide stature in the sport.
For a club that is fighting to be noticed in a region with 19 major league or major college teams, most in sports that are far more familiar to the general public, it’s not impossible, but it is a heavy lift.
RFCLA, which is in the hunt for a playoff spot with three matches left – including this Sunday’s final home match against Miami, which will be held at Irvine’s Great Park stadium – is in its second season in Major League Rugby, which itself is in its eighth season. L.A.’s predecessor franchise, the Giltinis, was around for two seasons and won a championship its first year, 2021, but was barred for “conduct detrimental to the league,” which apparently involved salary cap violations.
The already existing rugby community here seems to have embraced RFCLA, which played its previous home games this season at UCLA’s Wallis Annenberg Soccer Stadium. Part of Dupont’s role, as Sickle put it during a teleconference last week, will be to “step back and take kind of the 30,000-foot view of, where is the game currently? Where should it be heading?”
That includes participation numbers, and it includes expanding the fan base and, as Sickle put it, creating a better understanding of the game: “Not every single law, not every single nuance, but (understanding) some basics of the game. Then it’s actually … maybe easy sell is the wrong phrase, but the game does the work for it once people know what they’re looking at and looking for.”
Dupont has not sat for any interviews or news conferences of which we’re aware, but he did say in a statement released by the team that he’s “excited by the opportunity to grow rugby’s popularity in the States and establish an energetic hub of rugby culture that attracts players, fans, teams, and partners from around the world.”
This low profile was in contrast to the league’s Seattle Seawolves, who added their own notable investor in former Seahawks star Marshawn Lynch. Olivia Malifa, who handles PR duties for both clubs, noted that Lynch’s addition to the Seattle ownership group provided a small bump in social media impressions, but after Dupont’s addition to L.A.’s organization “the social media following grew in the thousands,” likely enhanced by overseas posts and follows.
Then again, maybe Seattle folks calmed down when they realized Lynch isn’t going to carry the ball for the Seawolves.
Those who have sampled the sport here are enticed in part by a singular feature of rugby culture: When the match ends, fans are encouraged to come onto the field and mingle with the players.
“I’ve seen firsthand the impact that getting out in the community and growing the game can have,” said Billy Meakes, a center from Australia who had previously played for the Giltinis and returned to L.A. this season on a two-year contract. “Even our crowds at UCLA have just been incredible … (and) it’s awesome to hear that the ticket sales are pumping for the O.C. game because that’s a completely different audience that we haven’t really tapped into directly.”
RFCLA has tried to take advantage of this region’s existing sports infrastructure. When Dupont came to L.A. to seal his deal with the rugby club, he also made a visit to the Chargers’ facilities in El Segundo. And in advance of this weekend’s game in Irvine, the club has worked with the Ducks – including a promotional appearance by Wild Wing, the mascot – and with Orange County Soccer Club, the USL Championship side that is the regular occupant of the Great Park stadium.
But to expand awareness and create interest, the club must capture potential fans’ attention in large numbers. And while Dupont is said to be famously private, his role in growing the game and RFCLA in particular only works if he becomes more of a public figure.
What’s at stake beyond the welfare of the L.A. franchise? The United States will host the 2031 and ’33 World Cup rugby competitions, and anything that would enhance the sport’s profile in this country between now and then will make a difference. That’s probably part of that 30,000-foot view to which Sickle was referring.
As for the L.A. franchise? Jason Damm, a member of the U.S. national rugby union side, suggested that having a player as part of ownership not only can raise the stature of this country’s top league but might also lead to upgrades of things that players consider important, such as facilities and working conditions.
“I think it also puts maybe pressure on other ownership to make sure that they’re holding themselves to the right standard,” Damm said. “So it only grows the whole league because you don’t want to have this big draw of this star in L.A. who’s lifting the standards and lifting what the expectations are, and then your club is sort of getting left in the dust.”
Then there’s this: As far as we can tell, no one has issued a definitive no to the subject of whether Dupont will pull on a uniform.
“If he wants to put the boots on and come run around with us, we’re happy for that,” Damm said. “But if it’s just an ownership position, we’ll milk him for all the info he’s got.”
jalexander@scng.com