Upstart rugby league comes to Pittsburgh this summer

A new professional sports team is coming to Pittsburgh this summer. It will be called the Steeltoes and play a sport you might not expect: rugby. 

The league is Premier Rugby Sevens, which aims to bring rugby to the mainstream in the United States. Entering its third season, PR7s doubled its number of teams from four to eight. The Steeltoes are part of that expansion.

“Pittsburgh has a tremendous rugby tradition and history,” PR7s founder and CEO Owen Scannell said. “There are a lot of illustrative clubs and players that have come out of Western Pa. … Some of the best fans in the world are in the Pittsburgh area.”

While the sport of rugby sevens, a variant of regular rugby that features only seven players on each team instead of 15, is more than a century old, this upstart league is unusual in many respects. Its clubs have both men’s and women’s branches. The league travels from city to city in a tournament fashion, playing multiple games in one day. That means Pittsburgh is only one stop on a wider tour.

Highmark Stadium on the South Side, where the Riverhounds play, will host the Eastern Conference finals on July 23. Game days are quite the production. Rugby sevens games last just 14 minutes, so during rest periods, there will be festival-style entertainment. That means live music, costume competitions, face painting — anything to get people out to the field.

“We’re hoping that people come out, enjoy and connect with it,” Scannell said.

Part of the goal is capturing a younger highlight-focused audience, Gen Z consumers. Scannell is aiming for this demographic by promoting a snappier sport.

“Gen Zers are consuming highlights, clips and viral moments via social media platforms like TikTok, Instagram, YouTube and Discord,” Scannell wrote in February in an op-ed for the Sports Business Journal. “Rather than changing to cater to this demo, rugby sevens as a sport is built for younger generations.”

The nature of rugby sevens leads to action-packed games. Scannell compares it to hockey’s three-on-three overtime, designed for back-and-forth action, space everywhere and more goals. That’s why games are so short; it is physically demanding for seven players to cover so much ground.

In Scannell’s vision, combining these short and sweet games with the festival atmosphere is the way to bring rugby to an American audience. He said the sport is growing in this country, but its primary fan bases are located in Europe (especially the United Kingdom) and Oceania. Rugby sevens, rather than the more traditional rugby union, made its Olympic debut in 2016.

PR7s has managed to recruit some of the world’s best rugby sevens players. On the Steeltoes women’s team, there’s Sammy Sullivan, who competed on the U.S. women’s national team at the 2022 rugby sevens World Cup. On the men’s side, there’s Ben Pinkelman, an American rugby legend, said Scannell. Pinkelman played for the U.S. in the 2016 Olympics and was considered one of the best rugby players in the world in his prime.

Playing alongside those high-level players is a selection of local players that qualified through tryouts. That talent will hope to prove themselves this summer and get selected for their country’s national team.

“We really are a pathway into international-level stars,” Scannell said. “It’s a way for people to showcase their skills on the highest level possible.”

He compares rugby’s current status in America to soccer in the early 1990s, before America hosted the 1994 World Cup. Participation is growing, with collegiate club rugby a widespread pastime, but pro rugby as a spectator sport has yet to make a significant imprint. PR7s entered the fray at a convenient time — a few years before the United States hosts the world’s biggest rugby tournaments.

In 2028, the Summer Olympics will be in Los Angeles. The United States won the bidding last year to host the 2031 men’s rugby union World Cup. The U.S. also won the bid for the 2033 women’s rugby union World Cup.

“It’s an exciting time for the sport in the U.S.,” Scannell said.

PR7s teams will compete on the first two game days to qualify for the championship, which will take place Aug. 6 in Washington, D.C. There is a trophy for the men’s and women’s sections, as well as a third trophy that determines the best overall team  — combining the results of the men’s and women’s matches. 

The equality of the men’s and women’s sides is the first of its kind in a sports league. The teams play in the same broadcast window, right after each other, and boast the same team branding. Scannell said there is equal pay and equal accommodations, including coaching and nutrition. 

“We can create one of the first truly equitable sports competitions on the planet,” he said. “It’s something unique and differentiating.”

The hope is that the game days are a hit and that the sport takes off online and on TV, where it will be broadcast nationally by Fox Sports and CBS Sports Network. Pittsburgh will be an important testing round.

“We view this hopefully as a place we come back year after year,” Scannell said.