Las Vegas Teetering on World Series Edge
Las Vegas Teetering on World Series Edge
The French Press Agency has reported that the Singapore Rugby Union has inked a four-year deal with the International Rugby World for the city to be a stop on the HSBC Sevens World Series, and that Las Vegas is one of three cities to be cut from the circuit, however the report may not be completely correct.
Singapore has a stunning new national stadium which was completed in June and hosted the World Club 10s earlier this year. It can hold up to 55,000 for a rugby event. The Straits Times has said that the Singapore Rugby Union has signed on as a host union for the Sevens World Series.
Periodically all host cities on the World Series circuit are up for renewal. Tournaments have to show they are successful, or at least making progress, and getting better on the logisitcal and organizational front. So every renewal period the tournament organizers are working hard to make their case to stay. In the USA it's a slightly different environment than elsewhere in that United World Sports has the rights to host the tournament, and pays USA Rugby a fee to do so. Elsehwere the IRB deals directly with national governing bodies. But USA Rugby is not completely out of the loop, because if the IRB wants changes, they call Boulder as well as New York.
This previous January the USA 7s in Las Vegas had to show its best face, despite struggling to grow the crowd because of a date shift prompted by the Winter Olympics. The pressure was on and the USA 7s delivered essentially the same crowd as 2013, which was a small victory for them. But officials from UWS and the IRB were seen in deep conversation that Sunday evening, January 26. The body language of the discussion could be described as intense. It seemed the last chance for a face-to-face pitch to keep Vegas on the circuit.
But why take Las Vegas off the World Series? Perhaps the biggest reason is the venue. Sam Boyd Stadium is an old facility, built 43 years ago. It has no roof, no comfy seats, few luxury box options, and an uninspiring fan concourse suitable to a lower-level college football team, which is what UNLV is. Contrast that to - if you attended - the venue for the USA v All Blacks game, Soldier Field, where the concessions concourse for all levels of seats seemed like the mezzanine level of a luxury hotel.
Whether the IRB would prefer to work with a national union rather than a private company isn't clear, and how easy or difficult UWS is to work with might have been one of many factors in the IRB's decision-making. But what is clear is that crowds at Las Vegas are decent, and NBC is involved, while crowds at Tokyo and Glasgow have been uninspiring. According to the AFP, Singapore, Vancouver, and Paris will join the World Series in 2015-16, and Las Vegas, Tokyo, and Glasgow will be dropped. However, Goff Rugby Report learned last week that Las Vegas had somehow earned a reprieve.
This would increase the World Series to 10 tournaments. That makes sense in that World Series stops are usually paired with another - Dubai and South Africa a week apart, Wellington and Las Vegas, Tokyo and Hong Kong, and Glasgow with London. Only Gold Coast in Australia stands alone. It is possible the IRB decided it made more sense to add another stop to make five pairs.
If that is true and three tournaments are added and two are dropped, then the World Series could pair the tournaments more comfortably, such as: Gold Coast and Wellington, Dubai and South Africa, Las Vegas and Vancouver, Hong Kong and Singapore, and finally Paris and London.
It's not fully clear, however, how close the USA 7s has come to being dropped from that list.
