Canada Sevens stays a success, renewed for 2024 by World Rugby

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The Canada Sevens lives on.

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The favored Vancouver worldwide rugby pageant was confirmed Tuesday as one among eight stops on a revamped World Rugby Sevens Collection. It wasn’t all the time clear Vancouver can be renewed, nevertheless it’s been a well-regarded cease since its first version in 2016 and really a lot matches with the supposed “develop the sport” ethos of World Rugby’s efforts with rugby sevens

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The brand new sequence contains a good bit of change, too: males’s and ladies’s divisions at each cease, with 12 groups in every division, all unfold over three days. Earlier than this yr, most tournaments had been both males’s or girls’s with a couple of cases the place males’s and ladies’s competitions had been run concurrently.

Now all occasions shall be three-day affairs with males’s and ladies’s sections.

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For Canada, it is a change from tournaments previous: The Canada Ladies’s Sevens had been a highly-successful occasion primarily based in Langford till final yr, separate from the boys’s occasion held at B.C. Place.

In a preview of the place the sequence is headed, World Rugby had the 2 Canada tournaments merged into one for the latest occasion. The outcome was three very lengthy days, with the boys’s event nonetheless involving 16 groups, and the ladies’s occasion primarily tacked across the males’s schedule.

However 12 groups is the variety of groups which are in an Olympic event and World Rugby, in quest of a strategy to hyperlink their sequence to the grand stage that’s the Olympics, has chosen to go together with a dozen groups in each genders at every of their occasions.

The sequence itself is being rebranded as nicely to HSBC SVNS. Every weekend is now being referred to as a pageant, versus a event, with the clear objective to create distinctive fan experiences each inside and out of doors the stadium, in addition to alternatives for sponsors as nicely.

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World Rugby is trying to enchantment to “a youthful, leisure-hungry viewers,” World Rugby CEO Alan Gilpin mentioned in a information launch.

“We’ll carry collectively a really immersive pageant of rugby, music, meals and expertise to create the last word weekend-long get collectively for younger individuals, the most popular ticket and open a brand new period for the game.”

World Rugby says every weekend shall be about “summertime vibes,” with occasions highlighting native meals and tradition, together with “aggressive and social sports activities for all … from non-contact rugby to practical health.”

The shift right down to eight tournaments sees some drastic modifications to make-up of the sequence, which is now 24 years previous.

New Zealand, the largest nation within the sport, received’t host a event as a part of the sequence in 2023-24.

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Virtually as massive a change is the long-standing occasion in London, which historically was the end result of the season, is out.

Additionally out is any event in France, which ran too typically with solely middling in success in a sequence of various venues, from Paris to Toulouse to Bordeaux.

However numerous requirements stay. Because the debut of the sequence in 1999, almost each season has begun in Dubai in early December. That can proceed.

And the second occasion of the season will once more be in South Africa, every week after Dubai. That’s additionally been the case nearly yearly, for the reason that sequence debuted in 1999.

As soon as the brand new yr begins, although, that’s when the modifications begin.

The January Australian cease on the sequence is shifting means west, from Sydney to Perth on the island nation’s west coast. With New Zealand not renewed, the Australia Sevens is now a stand-alone event.

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Spherical 4 shall be in Vancouver in late February, adopted every week later by cease 5 in Los Angeles. That’s been the pairing for a number of years now.

Hong Kong, the biggest-profile sevens event on the earth, is restored to its customary April spot.

And the seventh occasion stays in Singapore — although now in early Might — though its been sparsely-attended over its eight years in existence, in some ways the exact opposite of the success seen in Vancouver. Each are hardly big-time rugby markets, however in Vancouver the followers have lengthy been the story, creating an endlessly-raucous environment in comparison with a what’s all the time been a really small and sedate crowd in Singapore.

The place the Vancouver cease has confirmed widespread with followers, gamers and groups alike, the choice to stay in Singapore, one suspects, is a pure case of cash talks.

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The ultimate occasion on the sequence shall be a “Grand Last” event in Madrid, Might 31 to June 2, a brand-new event. Spain hosted two stops on the 2021-22 sequence, however neither was within the capital.

This Madrid grand last will characteristic the highest eight groups within the standings after the primary seven tournaments in a brand new playoff format, with the weekend’s winner topped as season champions.

Groups that sit ninth by twelfth shall be joined by the highest 4 groups from the second tier Challenger Collection, enjoying off for the ultimate 4 spots within the sequence for the 2024-25 season.

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