A lot of the clubs were started by Australians. David Niu started the whole thing off and the first club. He is a Saint George local and played firstgrade for them.
Matt Astill started the New York Knights. He is a former Manly lower grader.
Spinner Howland is from Qld and played in the Qld cup.
The chairman of the USARL, Peter Illfield is a coach from the Newcastle region in NSW.
etc etc etc

But after 15 years of the game being played in America, the vast majority of players are American born. My guess would be between 80 and 90% American locals.

The oddest origin of a team is Boston 13s was started by some students who learnt the game in Lebanese Universities and went on to further their studies in the US.

Because they play in Arena's which generally don't have a larger capacity than around 20,000. The nature of those sports limit the game day attendance. What a crazy attempt at a comparison of popularity. TV ratings, media coverage and annual revenues would show the big 4 are the NFL, MLB, NBA and NHL.

I'd place College Basketball and College Football ahead of soccer too....
That said, soccer has grown massively in the USA, mainly on the back of some huge investment. For sports to grow "organically" as we would need League to, schools and universities are where you need to start. Of the 450,000 registered players claimed by USA Union, 70,000 or so are in High Schools......and they have 900 College Teams.

Best chance for League is to get this new structure bedded in for a couple of years and then try to get the clubs involved in promoting the games to High Schools in their areas.

Pretty much agree with all of that

It is very important to build a strong regional base for the game, before starting to spread the wings throughout the country. Spinner Howland is a real dynamo for the game's development in the southeast. Hopefully the Northeast conference and the mid-Atlantic can emulate him. Intensification of current bases of activity should be the immediate priority.

However I hope that the heads of the USARL are looking forward to expansion. Chicago, Texas (Houston and Dallas), Denver, Phoenix, Salt Lake City (where there are numerous Polynesians), San Francisco, Los Angeles and perhaps Seattle should be the priorities if the game is to make the greatest possible leap up to a commercial TV contract. David Niu promised a national league with a national TV contract, but it turned out to be a false promise. That should not keep such a plan from being a medium to long term goal.

That's the dumbest comparison, what do you expect when comparing an outdoor code of football to an indoor sport?

What happened to the proposed Canadian Champs franchise btw?