World Rugby shouldn’t have messed with a winning sevens formula, writes SIMON BORCHARDT.
The Cape Town Sevens has lost its lustre. Once an unmissable event in the Mother City in mid-December, with tickets selling out within hours, the majority of the 2022 edition was played in front of sparse crowds.
You don’t need to be a rocket scientist to work out what’s gone wrong. The two-day men’s tournament, held from 2015 to 2018, was a huge hit with fans, with pool matches taking place on the Saturday and the knockout stage on the Sunday. That saw the Blitzboks play all three of their pool games on the Saturday – late morning, afternoon and the last game of the evening – and three playoff games on the Sunday, at similarly staggered times. Fans had a reason to be at Cape Town Stadium for most of the day, even if many did head off to the beer tents or the Waterfront when the hosts weren’t playing.
The addition of a women’s tournament to the Cape Town Sevens in 2019 was a game-changer, and not in a good way. It resulted in an expanded three-day event from Friday to Sunday, a spreading out of fixtures and more meaningless matches.
In the 2022 tournament, the Blitzboks played one pool match on the Friday (the last of the day) against Canada at 8pm, in an almost empty Cape Town Stadium. On the Saturday, they played their other two pool matches – against Fiji at 11:20am and France at 5pm – and their quarter-final against Great Britain at 9pm in front of a disappointing crowd.
While Sunday wasn’t a sellout, there was a very good crowd, but they had to wait until 3:45pm for the Blitzboks’ semi-final against Samoa. That after the first women’s match had kicked off at 8am and the first men’s match at 9:35am. South Africa’s 10-7 extra-time loss meant they played again at 7pm, in the third-place playoff, but by then it was pouring with rain and most fans had left.
The official attendance figure for the 2022 three-day Cape Town Sevens was 71 457, which means just 43% of the 165 000 tickets were sold. Yes, Cape Town hosted the Sevens World Cup in September, and this year’s Cape Town Sevens clashed with Champions Cup rugby and World Cup football on the Saturday, but those are still worrying numbers for SA Rugby.
Unfortunately, a return to the two-day men’s event is off the cards after World Rugby announced a new framework for the Sevens Series that will come into effect from the 2023-24 season.
A fully-combined men’s and women’s series will see the number of men’s teams reduced from 16 to 12, in line with the number of teams at the Olympic Games, and the number of tournaments from 11 to seven. According to reports, Hamilton, Los Angeles, Singapore, Sydney and Toulouse are in the firing line.
An annual ‘Grand Finale’ event will take place in the seventh round, involving the eight-top ranked teams from the first six rounds, and give four men’s and four women’s teams the chance to earn promotion from the Challenger Series.
Men’s and women’s teams will also receive equal participation fees, with World Rugby increasing its investment in them by 70%.
While this is a big win for women’s sevens rugby, it is a big loss for men’s sevens rugby, which, lest we forget, is what puts bums on seats and generates the revenue in this form of the game. Four men’s teams will be relegated to the Challenger Series after the 2022-23 season and those that remain will play in four fewer Sevens Series tournaments.
SA Rugby high-performance sevens manager Marius Schoeman is already struggling to keep his top players, with Muller du Plessis and JC Pretorius the latest to leave for the 15-man game, and a Sevens Series calendar reduced by 36% will not help his cause. And while the Cape Town Sevens looks set to keep its slot, South African fans are likely to keep voting on the format with their feet.
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Photo: Ziyaad Douglas/Gallo Images
