2024: The year Sevens peaked?

New Zealand win gold in Paris

2024 was another remarkable year for women’s sevens. 787 international games featuring 96 nations, including Saudi Arabia and Kiribati who played for the first time. A remarkable 153 teams how now played international sevens since the format made its debut in Hong Kong in 1992.

A quarter of a million tickets were sold for the Paris Olympics, with 69,000 packing out the Stade de France for the final sessions of the tournament on an unprecedented day at the end of July with women’s rugby seeing the birth of its first true superstar, USA’s Ilona Maher, whose performances in Paris plus the use of social media allowed her to transcend rugby and become known far beyond the game’s enthusiasts.

In addition there were 118 age group internationals, with Europe and Asia declaring their U18 champions (France and Hong Kong, respectively), with the former running a championship over two divisions.

Every confederation organised regional championships. France emerged as champions of Europe, China took the title in Asia, Argentina won in South America, South Africa were African champions, Mexico lifted the North America title, and Fiji’s development team were Oceania winners. Other tournaments saw Tunisia win the Arab Sevens, Uganda win gold at the African Games, and Thailand take the South East Asia title.

These regional championship are now feeder tournaments new Challenger Series for the World Series (now officially the “SVNS”), which was won in impressive style by China, who managed to win all three legs.

The SVNS itself had a major revamp, with the first seven rounds acting as a qualifier for the Championship, played in Madrid and won by Australia, although New Zealand were also declared champions of the actual series (a confusing outcome that cannot make selling SVNS particularly easy).

Madrid also saw the first promotion and relegation round, with the top four Challengers playing off against the bottom four from the SVNS. Only China managed to win a place at the top table, replacing South Africa and leaving Africa with no teams in the SVNS.

And, of course, New Zealand won the big one – the Olympics – beating Canada in the final, while USA took bronze leaving Australia to return home from an Olympics with nothing for the first time.

Two teams ended with year with 100% records – Moldova and Sweden – having won the European Trophy and Conference without losing a game, but at the world level teams New Zealand were again pre-eminent, if not quite invincible, with 45 wins from their 50 games (90%). China recorded 49 wins from 61 outings (80%), Australia won 40 of their 51 games (78%), and France won 45 out of 61 matches (74%). The busiest team was Great Britain, who played 65 internationals in 2024.

Top scorers were Tonga, who averaged 42 points per game, with France just behind on 41. Of the major teams New Zealand had the best defence conceding only 10 points per game, although India, Moldova, Sweden, Tonga and Trinidad & Tobago all deserve a mention as they conceded less than one try per game.

With all this positive news, why are we suggesting that maybe Sevens has reached its peak?

There was actually less international sevens in 2024 than in the previous year (just under 5% fewer games) partly due to the SVNS cutting out some of the classification matches, and there will be even fewer next year after the new format in Cape Town this month resulted in few pool games and the loss of quarter-finals.

At the same time the Challenger Series has been reduced from three stops to two, with the first two rounds being played at the same venue (Cape Town) on consecutive weekends, and with SVNS setting the standard the new format may be replicated in other competitions

Both of these developments are symptoms of cost cutting – that top level sevens is not paying its way. The 96,000 at Paris is regrettably not typical of many rounds of the SVNS, despite the same teams and players being featured.

But more than that the top level of world sevens is all but a closed elite. The play-offs between the best teams from the Challenger Series and the bottom of the SVNS were – China aside – not even particularly close. The aspect of the game that the IOC saw as so attractive back in 2009 when it invited rugby back into the Olympics – its accessibility – no longer applies. And even in the SVNS series itself only perhaps half of the teams.

It is very hard to see what solution to this there could be, but – as we said in our review of XVs in 2024 – the rise of that format may be partly due to top level tournaments such as the World Cup or WXV perhaps now appearing more accessible than SVNS.

Which is not to say that we think Sevens is going to go into a decline, but its expansion is probably reached its maximum and we are unlikely to see nearly 800 games in a year again.