Boost for sevens as World Cup dates confirmed

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SA Rugby on Tuesday confirmed that the World Cup Sevens 2022 in Cape Town will take place next year from 9-11 September, with the Blitzboks and Imbokodo included on the roster.

The eighth edition – which will be contested by 24 men’s and 16 women’s teams – is the first to be hosted in Africa with organisers anticipating a very special and record-breaking event at the iconic 57,654-capacity Cape Town Stadium.

The top-eight men’s teams and top-four women’s teams from the hugely successful RWC Sevens 2018 in San Francisco, USA, have already secured automatic qualification for the tournament in 2022.

The qualified teams for the men’s event are defending champions New Zealand, England, the Blitzboks, Fiji, Argentina, USA, France, and Scotland.

Among the women’s teams, the Springbok Women’s Sevens side will join defending champions New Zealand, France, Australia and USA in Cape Town.

Teams that have not qualified automatically will do so via their respective regional tournaments held in Europe, Oceania, Asia, North America, South America and Africa, with 16 places available in the men’s and 11 in the women’s tournaments.

The World Rugby Sevens Series will no longer form part of the qualification pathway for Rugby World Cup Sevens. Regional qualification is expected to start in August of this year with further details to be announced at a later stage.

‘South African rugby is eager to turn the vibrancy of this new brand into the vibrancy of a packed live event where we can showcase both our country and our passion for the sport,’ SA Rugby president Mark Alexander said.

‘This will be the first senior World Cup we have hosted since 1995 and we are determined to make it as special in its own way.

‘The Cape Town Sevens has established itself as a major must-see event on our national sporting calendar, but we will be taking Rugby World Cup Sevens 2022 to the next level.’

The tournament is expected to build on the massively successful 2018 edition hosted at AT&T Park in San Francisco, which attracted record attendance for a rugby event in the USA with a total attendance of more than 100,000 fans.

In addition, RWC Sevens 2018 attracted cumulative domestic and global broadcast audiences of more than 24-million and 31m viewers, respectively, which included a record-breaking live broadcast audience of 1.7m on its final day. The tournament also leveraged 22.5m social-media video views on World Rugby channels over the course of the event.

Details of the ticket sales launch will be announced later this year.

Photo: Speed Media/Icon Sportswire via Getty Images

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SA Rugby magazine