The primary US rugby union competitors to supply skilled contracts to ladies will maintain tournaments in July in San Jose, Washington DC and Austin.
Premier Rugby Sevens staged a pilot event in Memphis, Tennessee final October. This 12 months, as in that occasion, ladies’s and males’s squads will compete for equal pay in one-day showcases of the Olympic type of the sport.
In a brand new characteristic, just one champion can be named, based mostly on mixed factors totals earned by 4 ladies’s and 4 males’s squads.
Owen Scannell, chief government of Premier Rugby Sevens, mentioned: “We're extraordinarily excited to scale PR7s throughout America, bringing rugby sevens to main venues that can act as regional hubs for the rugby neighborhood.
“We consider the Bay Space, central Texas and the DMV [DC and parts of Maryland, Virginia and West Virginia] will give our league a footprint for followers to simply witness the spectacle that could be a PR7s dwell occasion.
“Every metropolis brings leisure choices that can complement the pageant and occasion setting that's synonymous with the game of sevens around the globe.”
Three Main League Soccer venues will host: PayPal Park (residence of the San Jose Earthquakes, holding 18,000, on 9 July), Audi Area (DC United, 20,000, 16 July) and Q2 Stadium (Austin FC, 21,000, 30 July).
Women and men will compete in 14-minute video games underneath squad names distinctive to PR7s: Consultants, Headliners, Loonies and Loggerheads.
In Memphis final 12 months, Perry Baker, an Olympian and two-time males’s world sevens participant of the 12 months, led the Consultants to victory. Alev Kelter, an Olympian now enjoying in England with Saracens, led the Loonies to the ladies’s title.
PR7s mentioned a “cumulative viewers” of 472,000 watched on Fox Sports activities and TSN.
Ross Younger, chief government of sanctioning physique USA Rugby, supplied “a honest congratulation to everybody at PR7s as they exponentially construct on a powerful debut in 2021.
“The road of occasions in 2022 actually amplifies the sevens season this summer season and in three of one of the best rugby cities the US has to supply.
“With three-times the chance for present and aspiring Olympians to compete at knowledgeable stage, PR7s continues to current a useful platform for USA Rugby high-performance growth and scouting.”
Three gamers who performed in Memphis subsequently made US Eagles debuts: Logan Tago, Aaron Cummings and Sarah Levy.
The US sevens calendar is crowded, and PR7s will this 12 months happen at a busy time within the novice membership calendar. In skilled play, although, PR7s has set its stall out first. Its new occasions will observe the fifth season of Main League Rugby, the 15-a-side males’s professional competitors. Sources inside MLR mentioned the league had no plan to launch its personal sevens competitors this 12 months however might achieve this in future.
Final December, one other USA Rugby-sanctioned sevens enterprise mentioned it might maintain an occasion in Las Vegas in October 2022. An announcement mentioned US Rugby Sevens Main League would see “the world’s finest worldwide males’s rugby sevens gamers compete in opposition to one of the best US gamers for record-breaking prize cash of $1m”.
The group behind the challenge, Rugby Soccer League (separate from the governing physique of British rugby league, of the identical title) additionally mentioned that in 2023 it might stage 17 tournaments, that includes “as much as 16 US workforce franchises enjoying with high worldwide groups”. Little else has emerged.
The US market stays a tantalising prize, coveted throughout the rugby world. In sevens, the US hosted the final World Cup, in San Francisco in 2018. In 15s, it's on monitor to be introduced in Could because the host of the 2031 males’s Rugby World Cup and the ladies’s occasion two years later.
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