It’s easy to bemoan when a sport becomes a business, but business in sports can be a good thing. Certainly any athlete who is paid a lot of money to play a game has to think that when a sport becomes big business, that athlete benefits.

In rugby in America, there isn’t that big business connection yet. There are little increments of improvement, but you haven’t seen the millions injected into the game, and that’s because the numbers have to be there. And that, of course, is where Chicago comes in. Soldier Field sold out with 61,500 fans paying to see the All Blacks play the USA (and, as noted by much of the local media, they stayed through the whole game).

Many, perhaps the majority, of those 61,500 fans came from out of town. They stayed in hotels, they ate at restaurants, and they stopped (so we heard) at taverns. They spent money.

“We loved it,” said Mark Stern, who owns the Weather Mark Tavern on Chicago’s South Side near Soldier Field. The Weather Mark hosted a get-together for rugby fans from the Pacific Northwest, complete with rugby highlights showing on all the big screens, and it was packed.

“Being close to Soldier Field we usually get a big sports crowd, and this was a great crowd for us,” said Stern. “We had an old customer from New Zealand who told us about the game, and then Shane Carew called us about the Northwest event. It fit for us. We knew we had to lay in plenty of beer, and while we didn’t know much about the rugby crowd, it’s been great.”

The Weather Mark’s story isn’t unlike that of other bars. It opened almost nine years ago as part of the revitalization of the South Loop and area just south of downtown Chicago. That used to be a place where you didn’t go unless you wanted to get into trouble (or cause it). Now it’s a safe area with shops, restaurants, and neighborhood gathering places.

Revitalizing an image is something rugby has been doing for a while, too. Many people who don’t know the game think it’s either a rowdy crowd, or that there’s not enough interest to make it worth supporting as a business. What Chicago found was something rugby fans know - most rugby fans are well-educated, have some disposable income, and are well-behaved. And they make businesses happy that the USA game came to their town.

“Talking to other business owners, I know they agree, that this has been great for the city,” said Stern. “It’s a big event for us and we saw lots of people come here from out of town. We’ve been exposed to rugby and I am sure everyone in Chicago would be excited to have a rugby event here again. We loved it.”