IRB World Sevens Women

IRB World Sevens Women

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Wikipedia - Women's SVNS

The World Rugby SVNS, known as the HSBC SVNS for sponsorship reasons, is a series of international rugby sevens tournaments for women's national teams run by World Rugby. The inaugural series was held in 2012–13 as the successor to the IRB Women's Sevens Challenge Cup held the previous season. The competition has been sponsored by banking group HSBC since 2015.

The series, the women's counterpart to the World Rugby Sevens Series, provides elite-level women's competition between rugby nations. As with the men's Sevens World Series, teams compete for the title by accumulating points based on their finishing position in each tournament.

History

The first 2012–13 series consisted of four tournaments on three continents. The first two events were hosted by the United Arab Emirates (specifically Dubai) and the United States, both of which host events in the men's version. The other two events were hosted by China and the Netherlands.

For the second series in 2013–14, five tournaments took place; a sixth had initially been announced, but never materialized. All nations that hosted events in 2012–13 hosted in the second season, with the added event hosted by Brazil.

The series expanded to six events for 2014–15. The Dubai, Brazil, USA, and Netherlands events remained on the schedule. China was not on the 2014–15 schedule. New rounds of the series were launched in Canada (specifically in Greater Victoria) and London.

Logo 2015–16

Initially, the 2015–16 series was announced with only four events, with London and the Netherlands dropping from the schedule, but a fifth event was eventually added, hosted by France. Events in Australia and Japan were added in 2016–17. With the USA hosting the 2018 Rugby World Cup Sevens, the USA was not on the 2017–18 schedule.

The USA Women's Sevens returned to the schedule for the 2018–19 series, but the event was moved within the season to become the opening event. The same season saw three events move to new locations. First, the USA event moved from Las Vegas to the Denver suburb of Glendale, Colorado. The Australian Women's Sevens, as well as the country's corresponding event in the men's Sevens Series, moved within Sydney from Sydney Football Stadium to Sydney Showground Stadium. This was necessary because the Football Stadium was demolished, with an entirely new stadium to be built on the same site. Finally, the France Women's Sevens, originally set for Paris, was moved to Biarritz, with the date also being moved forward two weeks from its original schedule. This change was promoted by both World Rugby and the French Rugby Federation (FFR) as "enabl[ing] the FFR to maximise the visibility, attendance and impact of hosting the final round of the record-breaking series."