World Rugby announced Saturday that its target of getting one million new participants in the sport in Asia has been achieved well ahead of the start of next year's Rugby World Cup, which kicks off on Sept. 20, 2019, when hosts Japan take on Russia.

Speaking at a special event to mark the 50th anniversary of Asia Rugby in Bangkok, World Rugby Chairman Bill Beaumont revealed that the governing body's Impact Beyond legacy program has surpassed all expectations.

"The incredible achievement of surpassing the ambitious target of attracting one million participants in Asia to the Impact Beyond 2019 legacy program is a wonderful example of the extraordinary efforts being put into action to convert this once-in-a-lifetime opportunity to grow rugby in Asia," he said.

"The World Rugby Council awarded the Rugby World Cup to Japan because we believed that it could be a powerful game-changer for sporting and social change in Asia, the world's most populous and youthful continent and today's announcement marks a very important step on the journey."

The CEO of the sport's governing body admitted, however, that "they were not so naive as to say they have converted one million new Asian players totally" and the key now was turning those participants -- many of whose experience was one-off -- into regular players.

"We now have one million new Asian participants who can now hopefully be converted on a more regular basis. The idea now is that those that have sampled the sport stay in the sport via schools and clubs," Brett Gosper said earlier in the week.

That is particularly the case in Japan, which topped the list of new participants with 460,000, followed by Pakistan (237,000), China (180,000) and India (106,000).

While some parts of Asia have a blank page to work with and can pretty well start from scratch, Japan's existing structure in terms of youth rugby has created what Gosper described as "potential obstacles."

Aside from the fact children in Japan basically do just one sport year-round, the huge decline in academic institutions with rugby teams and the complete lack of age-grade clubs (aside from community-based "rugby schools" that only take children up to 12 or 15 years old) means the majority of kids have no chance of graduating to real rugby once they leave elementary school, where tag rugby has been the tool used to introduce the sport.

[World Rugby]

"We realize there are some barriers in Japan and we are trying to work our way through those with the Japan Rugby Football Union," said Gosper.

"At this point the program is to create demand to continue playing the sport. That's a big part of putting pressure on the various elements of the system to create possibilities. If you don't have the pressure and demand coming from people who have tried rugby and want to continue on then you won't get the change that you seek."

"The Impact Beyond program is all about making sure the short-term gains become long-term ones."
Gosper said that past World Cups had seen a huge interest and desire to play rugby and the key across Asia was to make sure the correct infrastructure was in place.

World Rugby said recently published Nielsen data found there to be more rugby fans in Asia -- 112 million -- than any other continent, with China (33 million), India (25 million) and Japan (14 million) all ranking within the top 10 nations globally.

And World Rugby said those numbers will increase even more thanks to a sustainable broadcast strategy, that will enable more people to access the game, free-to-air, across Asia than ever before.

It is anticipated the Japan versus Russia game in Tokyo will smash the domestic broadcast audience for a rugby match, which currently stands at 25 million when Japan faced Samoa at the 2015 World Cup in England.

[World Rugby/Getty/Kyodo]

"Asia Rugby has made tremendous progress over the past 50 years and I believe we can look forward to a very exciting and prosperous future for the game in this region," said Beaumont.

"With just nine months to go until kick off, there has never been a more thrilling time for rugby in Asia as the eyes of the world turn to Japan 2019 and we are looking forward to a very successful and impactful tournament."