I'm on the fence with both codes, as a kid played RL, but I joined the forces in the late1980's and RU was the only game played then, so naturally I've played more RU than RL. Nowadays the forces all play RL too and have done for a while now but the Army v Navy game sells out Twickenham every year, and it's a great day out.
Union will never get the same coverage as RL in these parts, same as RL doesn't get the coverage anywhere else other than the M62 belt.
There was an article in one of the papers today about RU in the states. There are 450,000 registered union players there. Getting more popular again in colleges. No chance of it being a major professional sport but that doesn't matter as more people attend college games than pro ones. Rugby union for quite a long time was more popular than gridiron. But in the way of America they abandoned it after a thrashing by Australia to,concentrate on a sport where the "world champions" would always be an American team.
The USA are the reigning Olympics Champions at rugby union though.