samedi 13 août 2016

Make the ATP-like World Sevens Tour

Now it's done, rugby 7s became a primary Olympic sport in Rio. No surprise there, we all knew the sport's potential. We knew people will fell in love in front of such a show. Sevens is probably the most entertaining things ever happened in the history of sports. 
Now it's time to move forward. Quickly. Not in the usual rugby timing. Sevens definitely proved it can attract people on several days' sequences. The tournament model must expand. More than expand, it must be opened. It's time for sevens to enter in open era.
World Rugby need to create a World Ranking which record all the tournaments played week after week. The tournaments must be ordered in different levels. Keep the current legs of the World Rugby Sevens as mandatory events for the top 20 teams to make them Masters 1000-like. Create open qualifying for every tournaments. Create a level of non-mandatory 16-team tournaments under that. Make an annual 32-team Rugby World Cup Sevens. Make a season final event as the Masters Cup.
Open Sevens !
A limited number of non-mandatory tournaments should be recorded in the World Ranking. This will guarantee big teams involvement in all of them. A lot of cities are already interested hosting regular sevens tournament. Remember that a record number of unions bid to host the next Rugby World Cup Sevens. We could see Sevens World Tour legs in Spain, Germany, the Netherlands, Portugal, Fiji, Brazil, Argentina, Sri Lanka, Kenya, Wales. Many already host nations would like to host more tournaments : New Zealand in Auckland, England in the north, USA in the east, France in Marseille. Sevens future is bright. There is no time to wait.