I'm not sure it is.

If you're following football as the model, with each country having it's own professional league then you're right, but even football recognises that there needs to be a higher level of competition across countries (The Champions & Europa league).

In Rugby Union, the Super15 comprises of teams from SA, NZ and Australia, with sides from Argentina and Japan (I'm not sure if they've joined or set to join). Then there's the Celtic league with sides from Ireland, Scotland & Wales.

Canadian sides compete together with American sides in a number of sports.

NZ don't have their own RL League, yet are more than competitive.


I agree, in an ideal world, each country has their own strong domestic competition, but I don't think it's necessarily vital to international competition/growth.

I was been sarcastic

For the games being played in Toronto, they are flying players out on a Thursday, with the game being played on a Saturday and the return flight home on a Sunday.

I wish this news had been made available when the announcement was made, it would have reduced my stress no end.

I think this is a great move and shows how innovative and dynamic Rugby League can be. I am sure that other sporting organisations such as the NFL will be very interested in how this all pans out ahead of their own plans for teams playing out of Europe/England.

In the future it's not that crazy to think there could be global leagues for certain sports, especially as methods of travel becomes faster and more efficient. Also I am sure that the people behind the Toronto franchise have got sufficient funding in place along with the mayor putting his support into the project. With enough money to throw into it, they can acheive anything they want.

Sports tourism generates a lot of money.
If only a few dozen fans per match travel over, they will spend 10s of thousands on travel and accommodation.
If they can get either 100s or 1000s of fans travelling for one off games, the numbers are staggering.
The problem is how to get money from the tourism industry into funding the sport. Once you find a way to do that, the numbers add up.

The Catalans team generates huge amounts of tourism dollars for their region, as do Auckland Warriors and Melbourne Storm to mention a few.

In a practical sense, it shouldn't be hard to get a tourism authority or even an airline or hotel chain - or a combination of all three - to fund teams to travel and stay at these remote locations, because it's easy to show how they can make money in return.

The ultimate example in the southern hemisphere rugby union comp - which now has teams from all over Australia, NZ, South Africa and is expanding into Japan and Argentina. As travel gets cheaper and people get richer, we will see more and more of this. I'll be very surprized if we don't see teams from Italy, Serbia and maybe even Russia and USA playing in the English League comps soon.