World Rugby announces updates to Sevens Series

The World Rugby Sevens Series has announced updates for the period from 2019 to 2023. The women’s series has been expanded to eight rounds starting next season and six of the rounds will be combined with their corresponding men’s events in Dubai, Cape Town, Hamilton, Sydney, Hong Kong, and Paris. 

This is triple the current number of combined men’s and women’s event on the circuit as just Dubai and Sydney held both men’s and women’s stops concurrently. The women’s events in Glendale, CO, and Langford, BC, will remain stand-alone events on the women’s circuit. 

The men’s circuit will remain at ten stops with nine of the ten venues confirmed through 2023. Dubai, Cape Town, Hamilton (New Zealand), Syndey, Vancouver, Hong Kong, Singapore, London, and Paris have all retained their places on the series for the next four years. The venue for the USA stop will be determined at a later date. Las Vegas has hosted the USA Sevens since 2010 and was previously held in Los Angeles (2004-2006) and San Diego (2007-2009). The event has been held the weekend before Vancouver since the latter’s arrival in 2016. 

It was announced that 2019 would be the last edition of the USA Sevens in Las Vegas due to the stadium reconstruction of Sam Boyd Stadium for UNLV Football and the reported poor living environment of the hotels for teams and the artificial and narrow pitch of Sam Boyd Stadium. San Diego, San Francisco (which hosted last year’s Sevens World Cup), and Miami have been named as potential hosts.

World Rugby also revealed that they saw unprecedented global interest in the Sevens thanks in large part to the sport’s Olympic inclusion in 2016, receiving more than 20 expressions of interest from member unions, as part of the highly competitive tender process.

World Rugby also announced boosts in fan engagement and attendances. In 2018, fan engagement figures increased 60 per cent across video views when compared with 2017 and attracted more than 749,800 attendees to events globally.

Broadcast viewing figures with Nielsen research recording a 39 per cent increase in live broadcast audiences across both men’s and women’s series, from nine million in 2017 to 12.6 million viewers in 2018.

The dates for the 2019-2020 series for both men’s and women’s events will be announced at a later date this year. The Olympic schedule for rugby sevens takes place between July 27th and August 1st, 2020 in Tokyo.

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