Commonwealth Stadium to host Rugby Sevens
With world tour, action-packed sport the latest to set up shop in Edmonton
It's official. It's announced. It's a go.
The pandemic-cancelled London, England stop on the prestigious and exceptionally popular HSBC Rugby Sevens world tour will now be held at Edmonton's Commonwealth Stadium on Sept. 25-26.
As first revealed with an exclusive story here two weeks ago, World Rugby and Rugby Canada made the official announcement Friday.
Rugby Canada said tournament logistics, including team invitations and stadium capacity, are still being finalized. But there is every expectation that, as would have been the case with the staple tour stop in London, all the top sides in the world — New Zealand, South Africa, Fiji, England, France, Australia, the United States and eighth-ranked Canada — will play in the two-day, four-draw Edmonton event.
The New Zealand All Blacks won gold, Australia silver and Canada bronze in the most recent tour event prior to the pandemic.
South Africa, Fiji, Samoa, Scotland, Japan, Ireland, Spain, France, England, Wales, Argentina, Japan, Ireland, Kenya and the U.S. were the other nations involved in the 14-minute, action packed, sevena-side version of the game.
Edmonton sports fans will have a great opportunity to preview the event with rugby sevens having been made part of the Tokyo Olympics and Canada being one of the 12 nations that qualified to compete in the tournament.
In the news release, Rugby Canada indicated that under Alberta's reopening plan, it's expected some 31,000 fans will be allowed each day at Commonwealth Stadium, but that capacity will be restricted during the world tour series opener at B.C. Place.
The Edmonton Elks, however, are opening their Canadian Football League season Aug. 7 against Ottawa at full capacity and, indeed, are conducting an extremely aggressive initiative to fill all 56,302 seats for their first home game in 677 days.
Events Edmonton director Janelle Janis says Rugby Canada will be notified that they'll be able to have the complete 56,302 capacity of the stadium to work with.
“When we had provincial restrictions in place, we were anticipating 30,000 seats and we had to submit that to the health authorities. Now it doesn't matter,” she said. “Rugby is growing in popularity in Canada and Edmonton Events is honoured to participate with HSBC Canada Sevens to play host to the world's most popular rugby tournament for the very first time in Edmonton.
“This is going to be outstanding. We look forward to showing off our beautiful city to the thousands of international athletes, officials and spectators and are prepared to deliver on our reputation as a premier sports event-hosting destination.
“After more than 16 months of event cancellations and postponements, it's encouraging to see sporting events return to our city in a major way.”
The International Triathlon Union world triathlon championship men's and women's elite events, postponed last year, will be held Aug. 21 in Edmonton with the entire Olympic field expected.
“Not only does this help position our city as a premier sporting destination, it gives our hotels, restaurants, tourism providers and citizens a massive economic boost at a time when recovery is essential,” added Janis.
The last Rugby Sevens event prior to the shutdown of all major international sport was the Vancouver tour stop that drew a combined 74,560 for the two-day schedule of afternoon and evening draws.
With the relaunch, Vancouver will open a six-stop 2021 tour Sept. 1819 with Edmonton to follow a week later. Singapore, Hong Kong, Dubai and Cape Town, South Africa, will be the other stops on the tour.
One of the key selling points to obtaining the event here, in addition to Commonwealth Stadium and Edmonton's recent high international rankings as a sports tourism destination, was to be able to create back-to-back events on consecutive weekends.
Rugby Canada officials will visit Edmonton in the next 10 days to begin the process of preliminary planning, with details of ticket pricing, draw schedules and other activation involved in the presentation to be revealed in early August.
There's no indication what roles provincial and local rugby officials will have, but rugby has traditionally been a party event and there is a huge opportunity here to create a Spirit of Edmonton type of celebration.