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Shanghai is set to play host to an all-star rugby sevens tournament in October of this year. The top eight teams from last season’s ‘World Rugby Sevens Series’, along with China, will battle it out for what has been described by World Rugby’s Brett Gosper as ‘the highest ever prize money we have seen in sevens’.
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What this amounts to remains to be seen, but with the Hong Kong Sevens previously awarding a $150k prize fund, this seems like the score to beat.
The competition will be a chance for the Chinese public to see some of the World’s best Sevens teams up close, including Fiji, New Zealand and England. It’s also part of a larger project to generate 1 million new players over the next five years. China has roughly 2,000 players at the moment.
The prize fund will come from the $100m cash injection which Alisports announced earlier this year. Alisports vice president Wei Quanming is hoping the competition will raise awareness for the sport in China, whilst also helping to develop some home-grown stars.
“People are still unfamiliar with the sport,” he said. “For example, they have a hard time telling the difference between American Football and rugby.
“The two terms shares the same translation in Chinese. They are both gan lan qiu.”
