When New Zealand and South Africa kick off at M&T Bank Stadium in Baltimore on Saturday, there will be more at stake than victory in “Rugby’s Greatest Rivalry”, the four-Test series the Springboks lead 2-1. For World Rugby CEO Alan Gilpin, the game is a key staging post on the road to the 2031 World Cup, which the US will host – a journey that could include Six Nations games on American soil.

“We’ve been in a long process with venues and cities, over the last two years,” Gilpin said, of the build to World Cup kick-off. “We’ve still got 25-plus cities involved in that process, which is fantastic in terms of engagement and enthusiasm.

“We’ve now done all the basic feasibility, on, ‘Can we play World Cup-standard rugby in these venues, natural turf,’ all the things we’ve got to take into consideration. Now we’re starting to get submissions from the venue, the city, the state sports commission, on what are some of the commercials, economics, provision of services, city by city, venue by venue. And then you overlay tournament window considerations, availability, NFL, MLS and other considerations, and then weather, team movement.”

Related: World Rugby float plans for Six Nations match in US but England unlikely to participate

In Baltimore, the weather will be hot and sticky, thunderstorms a chance. For the All Blacks and Springboks, team movement meant a shared flight soon after last Saturday’s game in Soweto, won 29-24 by the Boks. The joint journey was unusual but the world is these days. It’s the first weekend of the NFL season. That may seem like commercial suicide for Gilpin but he noted an irony: as World Rugby makes its big play in Baltimore (with the Ravens in Indianapolis to face the Colts), the NFL is in rugby territory, Australia, for San Francisco 49ers v Los Angeles Rams at the Melbourne Cricket Ground. Such is globalization.

“Our ambition is to get to Rugby World Cup in Australia [next year] and be able to say these are the smaller number of venues that will host matches in 2031,” Gilpin said. “There’s a lot of different moving parts. … We had matches this year in a number of small venues, for USA Rugby. There’s some learnings you take from that, but there’s nothing like using the sort of venues that we could use for a World Cup.”

Baltimore seems well set. The field is grass so there’s no need to drop in a pitch, a process at some stadiums used by the soccer World Cup that prompts thoughts of scrums sliding about on pallets but which Gilpin said research showed would work for rugby. Charm City is close to New York, Philadelphia and Washington DC, American rugby towns also full of general sports fans and easily reached from Europe.

On that score, depressingly, World Rugby has had to consider possible problems for fans flying in. Put simply, the present US administration doesn’t like foreigners much. Then again, one group Donald Trump does like is white South Africans, “refugees” admitted in thousands. A thought: show Stephen Miller, Trump’s immigration Nosferatu, how the Springbok pack destroyed the All Blacks in Soweto, and you’ll have rugby content pinged out to Maga faster than ICE can swarm a blue city. Then again, best not tell Trump and his “communist”-hating pals South Africa’s pack is led by a terrifying hooker named Marx.

So much for lefty facetiousness. World Rugby focuses on sport. A sell-out of 71,000 will be a record for rugby in the US. How many fans are from the US game, proudly wearing colors of high school, college or club, will be key to see. The stadium announcer will be Matt McCarthy of RugbyWrapUp, a legend of the game in New York. TV-wise, the game will be “on Paramount Plus with CBS Sports Network doing some highlights,” Gilpin said. “We’ve got to work with them over the next two years on getting all that content in place.”

Next year is a World Cup year. That usually truncates international schedules but Gilpin said big games would be back in America: “There’s going to be a full Rugby Championship played in a Rugby World Cup year for the first time, which is really interesting because we’re a bit later with our start date in Australia, 1 October … so that’s presenting some opportunities for potential conversation. We definitely will have some marquee matches. That’s hopefully some news we’ll be able to share in the not too distant future.” He subsequently shared news with the British press, saying the Six Nations could come into the mix.

“This isn’t a live discussion of an Italy v Ireland game, but why don’t we use that as an example?” Gilpin told the Daily Telegraph. “You’ve got two fantastic fanbases in the US of Irish and Italian fans. If you could take a Six Nations game to the right place, to Boston or to New York … you can definitely drive the economics. Now, you’re going to have Irish fans and Italian fans in those respective home countries saying, ‘Hang on a minute, you know, we want to see our country play?’ The counter-argument to that [is] it’s still Irish and Italian fans getting the chance to watch their team, so they’re just not the ones who live in Ireland and Italy on this occasion. But that’s a balancing piece we’ve got to work through.”

Speaking to the Guardian, Gilpin promised “learnings” from the last big US game featuring Ireland, the All Blacks’ win at Soldier Field in Chicago last November which featured technical snafus around a dubious red card.

“We’re more directly involved with the two unions and with the match promoter in the way sports presentation looks,” Gilpin said. “How do you make sure the audience is engaged in the right way with big screens and match-day activity? So we’re dialing that up. It’s a learning curve the whole time.”

In terms of what there is to be learned about the state of the American game, Gilpin like many is concerned about Major League Rugby, the US men’s league now down to just five teams. Latest to leave was Anthem Rugby Carolina, which World Rugby and USA Rugby funded for three years to grow domestic talent. The governing body trumpets a $200m investment for 2031 and the women’s World Cup two years later. Money spent on bringing in the All Blacks and Springboks is part of that total but so is grassroots work.

“In all the work we’re doing with USA Rugby, there’s obviously the community and college and club and youth and high school pieces,” Gilpin said. “But on the high-performance national programs … look at the last six months.” Both Eagles sevens teams are doing well and the men’s 15s have won four games on the trot, three in the Nations Cup, a World Rugby event. On Saturday in Osaka, in the Pacific Nations Cup, the Eagles face Japan.

About the demise of Anthem, Gilpin stayed off record. Sources say a potential sixth team is in the MLR mix but there isn’t much likelihood of the Anthem experiment being repeated, even in light of successful sub-national World Rugby projects such as the Fijian Drua. Of MLR, Gilpin said there were “continuous conversations. There’s no doubt that the improving performance of the Eagles must be helpful to those conversations.”

Back to Baltimore. The first three All Blacks-Springboks Tests were brutal thrillers. Now the All Blacks, without injured men like great No 8 Ardie Savea, must find salvation. In the city of Stringer Bell, Jimmy McNulty and other hard-boiled heroes, World Rugby will hope for a finale that goes down to the wire.