If rugby sevens fails in its attempt to gain a place on the Olympic Games schedule, the decision will be particularly badly taken in Hong Kong.
This weekend the IRB Rugby Sevens World Cup reaches the former British Colony where locals believe they more or less gave birth to the modern enthusiasm for the cut-down version of the 15-a-side game.
Historians will tell you that rugby sevens was first played in the Scottish Borders where annual tournaments like the Melrose Sevens remain major draws.
But it was the development of the Hong Sevens – which in a little over 30 years has gone from a regional tournament with a handful of guest teams to an essential date on the IRB calendar – which has driven the current enthusiasm for sevens and inspired other events in unlikely destinations, including Dubai.
Indeed, officials in Hong Kong are reported to have had their noses put out of joint when the IRB suddenly took an interest in the sport and staged its first World Cup Sevens at Murrayfield, Edinburgh back in ’93.
The Hong Kong Sevens will attract some 120,000 paying spectators to the city state’s stadium this weekend and has attracted sponsorship from Cathay Pacific, Credit Suisse First Boston and a whole host of associate sponsors including Heineken. The presence of a beer brand is important because, perhaps above all else, rugby sevens distinguishes itself from other sports through its appeal as a social event.
By the time this article is published at sportbusiness.com, Hong Kong’s bar and club owners will be starting to count the takings after the first day of a competition that draws a huge number of visitors from overseas, who see the rugby as the centrepiece of a weekend of clubbing. It’s a formula that Dubai – albeit on a smaller scale so far – has managed to replicate. Sevens is a party sport, fans eat, drink and shout themselves hoarse and, amazingly, manage to behave charmingly to boot.
This year the IRB will entertain guests from the International Olympic Committee at the Hong Kong event in the hope that it will influence opinion on the inclusion of sevens in forthcoming Games. On the face of it they have a good case. At its best it is a thrilling format that demands total fitness and a staggering range of running and ball-handling skills. Better still, its inherent simplicity makes it far, far easier to understand and enjoy that the massively technical 15-a-side version.
When rugby sevens was featured at the Commonwealth Games it proved hugely popular and, with the number if competing countries increasingly by the year, it can clearly lay claim to being a world sport. And with comparatively tiny nations like Samoa and Fiji just as likely to win a tournament as New Zealand, England or Australia, and new national forces emerging with each tournament, the outcome is seldom predictable. When teams are well matched, games turn equally on one flash of brilliance or one unfortunate error.
So will sevens make it to the Olympic Games? Those who claim to really know about these things say probably not.
First of all it is not the only contender. Squash, which stages a major tournament in London this weekend, has been laying claim to a place at the Games’ top table for 20 years or so and is also able to claim global participation. Given its core nature – two people hitting a tiny ball against the wall on an entirely enclosed court with their backs to any audience - squash has done remarkably well to apply technology to make the sport accessible to spectators and to get it to work on television. Don’t they also deserve their chance?
But the critical factors appear to be not the qualities of the emerging sports but the politics of the Olympic movement. Jacques Rogge is determined that the Games should not be allowed to grow beyond their current size, because he fears they would become more difficult to stage and that the number of potential host cities would be further reduced.
All of which means that if the door opens to one sport, it must close on another. And the international sports community being what it is, no one is about to jump and precious few would be prepared to be seen to push.
There have, of course, been targets for exclusion over the years, not least among them Modern Pentathlon. But even this fascinating and historic merger of disciplines has its champions.
If we are looking for sports that might leave the Olympic fold, perhaps we should be looking towards some of the bigger boys. The starting point might be the extent to which the Olympic Games represents the absolute pinnacle of a particular sport. Not whether the Games is more important than the sport’s own World Championship, but whether the spectacle presented at the Games is the absolute best there can be.
By these criteria, soccer would be the first for the chop. The FIFA World Cup is the only property that rivals the Games in global appeal, and the teams which appear at the Olympic Games operate under restrictions which mean that they are not the first choice national teams which play in the World Cup. Olympic soccer may, therefore, be entertaining and super skilful but it is not the pinnacle of the sport.
Tennis is a fairly recent addition to the schedule but the same applies here. Is the Olympic Games a true world championships of tennis…No. Maybe it too should go to make way for sports which have more need for the platform which the Games provides.
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Received wisdom has it that the South East Asian public is nuts about the FA Premier League. Certainly the amount of coverage on Asian TV channels suggests that is the case, and most leading clubs are looking to that part of the world to develop their brands and extend their fan bases.
But why do punters in Singapore, Hong Kong, Malaysia and elsewhere love the English game so much? Is it the skill factor, the endeavour, the historic clubs?
According to one observer of the Asian sports scene, as much as 60 per cent of the TV audience for Premier League games isn’t really interested in the detail or even who’s playing. Their only concern is the ability to bet on matches which they can be sure are clean - as in not fixed.
While that is unlikely to make any difference to the rights fees the Premier League generates from the region - a viewer is a viewer in this case - it does affect the calculation upon which club marketing strategies may be developed, if only 40 per cent of the audience simply doesn’t care about the game or the clubs beyond the outcome of each and every game.
This is a part of the world where gambling is a more significant part of everyday life than almost anywhere else. Consequently, there’s a belief that the growing popularity of NASCAR, that most American of motor sports, is similarly based on its appeal to gamblers. As you can bet not only on the result of the overall race but the leaders of each lap, lap times and changes in position right down the field, there’s something for everybody in every minute of each event.
Pity it’s not as easy to do the same with squash or rugby sevens really!
