GROWING AUDIENCES WITH SPEED RUGBY

Rugby landed in the Polish city of Krakow for a weekend in April, with the arrival of World Rugby Sevens Challenger Series. Richard W. Orange reports how the quick-paced, no-nonsense Sevens format is being used to introduce the sport to new audiences

Organisers of major international sporting events are not averse to the notion of running tournaments in countries with low levels of public and media focus on events that draw the crowds elsewhere. The FIFA World Cup is due to be staged in the USA in 2026 – four years after it was held in Qatar – while cricket test matches have been held in the Persian Gulf in recent times. Fixtures bringing together teams from around the globe present venues with enormous sponsorship and visitor opportunities, so it makes financial sense to select stadiums and cities that can attract the public, advertisers and the mainstream media. With some innovative derivatives of well-known sports, there is more of an opportunity to experiment and to introduce hitherto unfamiliar games to wider audiences.

Alongside cricket’s T20 format, another great example of these variations is Rugby Sevens - a 7-a-side, 7-minute per half version of the union format launched in 1999. It became an Olympic discipline at Rio 2016 and is dominated by nations with a strong rugby following. But if it is to remain a fixture on the world’s biggest sporting stage, it needs to gain ground further afield - to rugby-lite locations including continental Europe.

The popular tourist destination of Krakow, in southern Poland, is one such venue for the HSBC Rugby Sevens Challenger competitions, securing pride of place alongside purpose-built facilities in Cape Town and London’s Twickenham.

Heading to Krakow

Can the outermost of rugby outposts deliver on their promises to boost interest in sevens rugby? Hosts believe their formula for breathing life into an unfamiliar, new version of an old game has a fighting chance - but it will take time. In the case of Krakow, the game plan was to encourage children from local schools to treat the tournament as an opportunity to learn about cultures of participating nations, with free tickets for thousands of pupils who had ‘adopted’ a team to cheer on in the stadium.

Shortly before Easter 2025, the Polish Rugby Union rolled out the red carpet to 16 men’s and women’s teams in the second-tier level of the world Rugby Sevens Challenger series, at the city’s Henryk Reyman stadium. It was the fourth time that the home of Wisła Kraków of the Polish Ekstraklasa had played host to an international rugby competition; a continental championship in 2022, Sevens as part of the European Games in 2023 and HSBC world challengers in 2024 and then this April. These are not inconsequential encounters for teams. Contests are taken seriously, with automatic Olympic qualification slots on offer for tournament winners.

Keeping it close

Organisers told SportsNation why the Henryk Reyman stadium has distinct advantages as a venue. Much of it has to do with new training infrastructure and investment in hospitality. There are four grass-covered training pitches alongside the stadium where teams can warm up between matches and a recently opened The Hyatt Place Hotel with a fitness centre next to the sports complex, where teams were accommodated.

Referees and match officials were put up in an adjacent hotel. Rugby stadiums are uncommon in central and eastern Europe, although Germany, Czechia and Poland do field international teams, so soccer stadiums with pitches large enough to transition to rugby are the obvious venues.

Polish Rugby Union, which opted for Krakow in preference to a dedicated rugby 15s pitch in Gdynia on the Baltic coast, has a positive business relationship with Wisła Kraków. It was able to negotiate a favourable (but undisclosed) fee and secure changes to the club’s league fixtures for the Krakow even – which was the third and final Challenger 2025 event, following two earlier second tier fixtures in Cape Town.

Player welfare is the top priority – it starts with world class facilities and ends with a great fan experience

Communications officer for the event, Kajetan Cyganik, told SportsNation: “This is a good location in terms of the facilities, hotels and the training areas. The teams have access to a gym and a pool.

“I understand in Cape Town the training area was a 10-minute walk away. Here it is 50 metres. I don’t think it is a normal thing elsewhere. It should be like this, because teams come to a stadium and they want a place to warm up which is near the ground.

“If we get the tournament next year, we will look to get another training pitch close to the stadium. To be honest, I don’t know what more we can do. This is the second year for the Challengers. They like us, and we like them.”

Education and sport

Jaroslaw Prasal, president of Polish Rugby Union, told SportsNation about the rationale for running the event on a Friday and Saturday, as opposed to a weekend, in order to involve school children.

“This was a key performance indicator for us this year,” Prasal said. “They were finding out about which teams were taking part and we are building a link between the players and the schools. It is important for the kids to learn, for example, about the teams from Kenya or Japan. They have special lessons about the cultures of the countries, and they come to support them.”

At least 2,000 tickets were handed out to Krakow schools to enable children to attend games on the first day of the competition on the Friday, although unseasonably wintry weather close to Easter prompted staff to take them back to classes earlier than the pre-planned 3pm exit. The children were able to enjoy half a dozen group games, including hosts Poland taking on visitors South Africa, Argentina and neighbouring Czechia. The schools legacy programme excepted, it has proved somewhat difficult for organisers to attract local spectators to the stadium. Polish state broadcaster TVP carried many of the games live on its main sports channel. Yet, international fans accompanying teams mixed together amid a celebratory atmosphere across the two-day tournament. It was a relaxed, family-friendly affair.

Spreading the word

So what did the organisers consider to be the biggest challenge for any cities looking to host future Challenger competitions? There are three key issues: access to facilities, player welfare and engaging fans.

Douglas Langley, head of Sevens World Rugby, told SportsNation: “The highest priority we have is player welfare and that’s very much linked to the expected standards for the teams as they arrive, the preparation and throughout the competition. We tell the hosts that they must provide the very best facilities for the players and referees, for the type of accommodation, the training facilities, and the actual rugby surface deliverables on the day. There’s a lot of box ticking, to make sure we have a very safe and entertaining venue - not just for the players but for all the fans.

“We are working very hard on the future of the game and having innovative competition structures. We are working with broadcasters and the cities, looking at how we can increase the experiential side of things for fan engagement. There is the schools legacy programme, where schools engage with the teams and we’re looking at how we get local intelligence and resources to enhance that.”

Infrastructure-wise, Rugby Sevens’ prospects of expanding into central and eastern Europe are reliant on stadiums offering the kind of training and accommodation facilities available in Krakow. Engaging schools is a long-term, localised strategy. The real test is whether organisers can find a way of attracting spectators in the shorter term. In Langley’s view, organisers must utilise new technology to promote sevens, alongside traditional publicity outlets. It is about “tapping into future technology; be that social media, be that broadcast media, and artificial intelligence”.

On paper, the Rugby Sevens format of the traditional game has the potential to attract wider interest. All day tickets are reasonably priced, and the average 20-25 minutes of play for each game means that spectators are treated to more than a dozen fast-paced, eventful matches to the continental, international and Olympic standard. With an innovative and effective social media campaign, Sevens’ prospects could be magnificent.