The effort to bring the Buffalo Thunderbolts Rugby Club to life is under the direction of Joe DiPasquale, a local filmmaker and rugby fan, and Mark Winokur, the former COO of a professional rugby franchise in Toronto.
The struggling Major League Rugby league has signed a letter of intent with a Buffalo ownership group, making the city a candidate to bid for an expansion club for the 2028 season.
They’re in conversation with potential investors and progressed to third and fourth meetings with some of them as part of a process that would need to be wrapped up by the start of 2027, DiPasquale said. They likely would need to line up multiple investors, cobbling together millions of dollars, to get the team off the ground.
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