A San Clemente tech consultant has acquired a new Major League Rugby expansion team and is fielding potential sites in Orange County for its home venue and training facility.
LA Coast Rugby will debut next season, likely joining franchises in New York and Toronto in the country’s newest and perhaps least-known professional sports league.
Call it a reinvention of sorts for team owner Stuart Proctor, who sold back on undisclosed terms controlling shares of Retronix Semiconductor to the San Clemente consultancy in 2016.
“For the last couple of years, I had been looking at a number of opportunities to jump into,” said Proctor in a thick brogue chiseled during his upbringing in Loch Lomond, which straddles the highlands and lowlands in Southern Scotland.
He bought a San Clemente florist on Avenue del Mar that his wife runs, and took a hard look at backing the San Diego Legion, one of seven teams in the MLR’s inaugural season, which culminated this month with the Seattle Seawolves beating the Glendale Raptors for America’s Championship Shield.
Rekindled Love
“Rugby is my passion,” said the head coach and a founding member of the San Clemente High School Triton Rugby program.
A budding friendship forged last year with Legion General Manager and President Matt Hawkins helped Proctor get an inside look at that club, but he had some serious questions about the rest of the league, including finances, sophistication, and ultimately, survival.
He was impressed, though, with MLR Commissioner Dean Hose, founding chief executive of Major League Soccer’s Real Salt Lake who oversaw construction of its $115 million, 20,000-seat Rio Tinto Stadium while building a fan base from scratch.
“That experience is invaluable to Major League Rugby,” Proctor said.
But not more so than signing three nationwide broadcast deals late last year with CBS Sports, ESPN Plus and the AT&T Sport Net streaming service operated by the telecom giant.
After those conversions, Proctor wanted to get into the scrum.
The 49-year-old, longtime OC resident, declined to disclose the franchise fee for the Los Angeles market, an enormous area that includes Los Angeles, Orange, Ventura, Riverside and San Bernardino counties, but it’s likely in the low single-digit millions.
The club has retained investment banks Global Capital Markets Inc. in Irvine and KPMG’s Parisian outfit.
France is home to the richest rugby clubs in the world, including Toulon, Clermont Auvergne, Racing 92, Stade Francais, Toulouse and Lyon. The sport flourished after the country hosted The Rugby World Cup in 2007, an event held every four years and akin to the World Cup that France won for the second time in a decade.
As part of hosting the Rugby World Cup, the French government propped up its youth leagues and invested in infrastructure, players, coaches and administrators.
Lesson to Leverage
Proctor noticed a similar spike in interest and resources after the U.S. hosted the World Cup in 1994. “That is what we exactly intend to do here in Los Angeles,” he said.
The region’s talent is prolific, drawing from a mix of collegiate programs and dozens of senior rugby teams. The game is fast-paced, high-scoring and physical, but its rules are largely unknown to casual American observers: two 15-player teams that can carry or kick the ball into the end zone to score points; no forward passes or timeouts; and two 40-minute halves. Once forward progress is impeded by tackle, the player must immediately pass or release the ball and move away from it.
“We believe we have the right sport, the right city, and we believe we have the perfect climate,” Proctor said.
Those first two tenets will be tested in a market in full summer swoon over the successful courtship of LeBron James by the Lakers and in early prep for the college and professional football seasons.
The first U.S. rugby league, the five-team PRO Rugby circuit, shuttered early last year after just one season.
LA Coast Rugby has some time to perfect its pitch, since the 18-week season launches the dead third week of January before the Super Bowl.
Building the Club
MLR’s structure is similar to that of Major League Soccer, whose players are paid through the league rather than the team. A salary cap, reported to be about $350,000, will field 30 to 35 players per roster from a variety of outlets: local clubs, development ranks, a draft, international crossovers, and collegiate programs.
“The majority of key players will be in place by end of August,” Proctor said.
The club just hired a commercial director to oversee sponsorships in one of the first of many front-office additions, which will include coaching staff and general manager.
LA Coast Rugby is also looking at several venues to host games and training camp, including California State University-Fullerton and other schools.
“We are considering a number of different cities and keeping those discussions under wraps,” Proctor said.
Tech Days
Proctor came to OC in 1999 as engineering director at Conexant, the largest local chipmaker at the time with nearly 6,300 employees and $1.2 billion in annual sales. When the tech bubble burst, its shares plummeted, and revenue fell nearly 75%, prompting it to divest assets and spin off four businesses, including Newport Beach wafer fabrication operation Jazz Semiconductor.
Proctor worked at Jazz until 2005, when he left to start Aliso Viejo-based Retronix Semiconductor, which serviced chip manufacturing equipment for global device manufacturers and original equipment manufacturers.
“I’m a tech geek,” he said. “That’s my background.”
Fertile Ground
LA Coast Rugby is the latest professional sports franchise with OC roots.
The Newport Beach-based Orange County Breakers won the Mylan World TeamTennis championship in August under first-year owner Eric Davidson.
The OC Soccer Club, which moved into a new 5,000-person stadium last year at Orange County Great Park in Irvine, came in 10th last season in United Soccer League’s Western Division, missing out on the playoffs by two spots.
United Soccer sits behind Major League Soccer in the pecking order of the country’s top soccer leagues.
Arena football team Los Angeles KISS, established in 2014 by Kiss rock band frontman Gene Simmons, singer/songwriter Paul Stanley, longtime manager Doc McGee, and veteran arena football executive Brett Bouchy, folded two years later.
