Rugby Premier League will transform the sport both on-field and off-field, says Rugby India President Rahul Bose

The Hindu

18 hours ago

Rahul Bose had a dream. Being a former rugby player himself, he wanted the current lot of Indian players to rub shoulders with international stars, showcase their talents and help the game grow.
For seven years, he made several efforts to launch a league for rugby, first as a former player, later as the President of Rugby India. It wasn't a smooth ride for the Indian actor as convincing people to invest in the sport wasn't easy. It took hours of meetings, endless discussions and crossing all hurdles to finally launch the world's first franchise-based Rugby 7s league. And when the Rugby Premier League eventually gets underway at the Andheri Sports Complex from Sunday, it will, indeed, be a dream come true for Bose, the rugby fraternity and all the players who waited for years for this moment.
With GMR coming on board as the title sponsor and GMR Sports becoming the joint organiser of the league along with Rugby India, RPL went on to attract some of the biggest names in the world of rugby. And with six franchises coming in, it has managed to put up some star-studded teams, with a perfect mix of overseas and Indian players.
Bose terms this as 'transformational'.
'There will be two kinds of transformation that will happen - one is on the field, and the other off the field. On the field, it will be about how these guys recover, how they get ready for the next game, how they take failure in their stride, and how the top players in the world handle exhaustion, or maybe a bad refereeing decision. Secondly, it will be off the field and it will be the culture,' Bose told Sportstar.
'How do you conduct yourself when you are not playing? What kind of impression do you carry of yourself when you are presenting yourself to the outer world? Though both these don't happen directly, but through osmosis, it has already happened for the last two weeks. I can see a change already…'
In the ever-changing sporting landscape, sustaining a franchise-based league isn't easy, and for a sport which is still considered 'niche', the challenge is always more.
'How to make the RPL sustainable? Of course, you have to have sponsors and media interest. But you'll only get sponsors and media interest once you have a great broadcaster like Jio Hotstar, and once you have a great product. Nobody knows what kind of numbers this league is going to garner. Nobody knows. It's completely virgin territory. So, we will have to see,' Bose, also a noted actor, said.
'All we can do is make sure that at no point in time do we say, 'Oh, we should have done this, and it would have been better'. At this point of time, we are maximising everything. There will be a full house tomorrow…'
Rahul Bose and Satyam Trivedi with the franchise owners of the Rugby Premier League 2025. | Photo Credit: SPECIAL ARRANGEMENT
'Best players in the world, broadcast in Jio Hotstar, World Rugby commentators, World Rugby match referees, match commissioners, medical commissioners. We have everything that we could get. Beyond this, we will just have to wait and watch. We have full faith in the product. I think Rugby 7s, without a shadow of doubt, is one of the most exciting television sports in the world,' he added.
While the focus will be on the 30 marquee international players, it will be an opportunity for the Indian players to emerge as household names.
'I do think that a league will accelerate the platforming of this sport on mass media, on OTT and television, because otherwise nobody else was prepared to show it. We were just relegated to the sidelines of one or two webcasts. But this will put out the attractiveness of the sport. And hopefully that will result in more and more people sponsoring Indian Rugby, wanting to back us on television, on OTT,' Bose said.
'So the spillover effect of the RPL obviously has to happen into the larger ecosystem of Indian Rugby. That's something that we have to do. As a federation, we are ready for that…'
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Being a former India player and an actor of repute, Bose brings a lot of experience and credibility to the table. But did being a 'known name' actually make things slightly easier? But Bose has a different take.
'I think a known face can help or harm a product,' Bose said, adding: 'If you believe that the person is just doing it for money and there's no connection, then it harms the product. If you believe, 'no, this guy is from this ecosystem and there's a lot of authenticity to what he or she is saying', then it helps…'
'I never talk unless I have something to say. So, I am very, very certain that celebrity endorsement can work both ways. But in this case, I'm not a celebrity. This (the sport) is my childhood, this is my youth. My 30s and my 40s, have all been on a rugby field. So for me, it's like breathing,' he said.
In his long playing career, he had a ringside view of the sport, and now, as an administrator, this is perhaps Bose's biggest moment - fulfilling a dream and also sustaining the new league on the block. It's kickoff time!