Rugby Sevens In Hong Kong: Overview, History, And Impact

Purpose

Discuss about the Rugby Sevens in Hong Kong.

Rugby Sevens in Hong Kong is a world premier event and an annual sporting which allures several of the world greatest rugby players and a large number of fans from every corner of the globe to the wonderful Hong Kong Stadium every year.

This event is a fast and furious rugby action which is along with the carnival atmosphere as well as the world rugby largest prize pursue (Bridges, 2016). It is held in order to bring together various rugby clubs across the world and the winner takes a large prize purse from the competition.

The limitation which was imposed on the event was that of style. The children had to pay the price of the adults’ ticket to come to the event. According to the Hong Kong Rugby spokesman he said, “Kids are still welcome, but they will have to come on an adult ticket”. This is a limitation because the children should get a lower price range to attend the event. This shows that they are discouraging many to come (Bridges, 2016). Another limitation was the choice of the stadium, the stadium in the Causeway Bay was overcrowded. The organizing committee could have sought a bigger stadium that has capability of hosting more people.

• who is staging event

Rugby Sevens is an event is organized by the Hong Kong Rugby Union, and it makes the 42^nd year of the sevens in Hong Kong with an approximate of one hundred and twenty thousand visitors which are expected to attend to the event (CHEUNG, Roger, Jennifer & Jing, 2017).

• who is staged

The event is organized for the world best clubs in rugby countries such as New Zealand, Malaysia, and Japan are hosted (Hui, 2016).

• Main stakeholders

The main stakeholders of the events are the fans who have paid for watch the game, players, government and HSBC which is the sponsor of the event along with the Hong Kong Rugby union who are the organizers (Hui, 2016).

• sort of event

The event is a rugby game that is attended by many visitors across the globe.

• what happens

In Rugby Sevens that is a tournament event that retains its status as the largest on the HSBC Sevens World Series, confirming to the tournament billings (Hui, 2016). The event has 28 teams who play across three days.

• What makes it Hallmark events

This event is considered a Hallmark event since it is attended by all teams across the world, there are many individuals who come to watch the game and in 2017, according to the organizers they highlighted that it was the highest paid ever in the tournament (Hui, 2016).

• Where is event held

The scope

The event is held in the Hong Kong football stadium and it is attended by many communities who live across Hong Kong.

• When the event is held

Rugby Sevens usually is an annual event that is held on a weekend in the late march or early April of each year in Hong Kong. The tournament takes place within three days, which begins on Friday and conclude on Sunday.

Why the event is held

The event was held for the commercial purposes (Fuller, 2017). The event is held each year in order to market tourism in Hong Kong. There are many tourists across the globe that comes to see the game; they are also able to visit other attractions that the country has which in return brings them financial gains.

Rugby Sevens is a variant of rugby union which teams are made up seven players who are playing seven minutes halves, rather than the usual 15 players who plays for forty minutes halves. Rugby seven originated in Melrose, Scotland in 1883. The popularity of rugby seven increased further with the development of the Hong Kong Sevens in 1975 and the world Rugby Seven series of 7 to 12 tournaments in 1999. Ever since 2016, the rugby seven has been contested in the Summer Olympics.

The aim of the event is to boost the rugby presence in Asia where teams from the world top rugby nations compete. Moreover, the event has proven to be a fertile ground for nurturing of the young players to become start in the 15 man game (Tsui, Yuen & Fung, 2017).

Objectives

• To help the local rugby community in building a number of the young leagues. There has been thousands of kids, both local as well as expats, who are playing mini rugby in a town which traditionally had put little emphasis when it comes to physical activity.
• To offer sporting and entertainment options to individuals (Fuller, Taylor & Raftery, 2016). Many people across the globe to be part of this magnificent event.

The event was a success, Hong Kong Rugby Union has been able to raise the profile of the sport in the city and beyond through this event (Chan, 2014). There were more than 120,000 visitors who were able to attend the event as well as rugby fans around the globe. This was the most commercial thing that the union was doing rather than selling the Sevens.

Hong Kong Rugby Union contributed to the success by making the event a family-friendly event and the children were allowed to attend the game (Rizi, Yeung, Stewart & Yeung, 2017). This gave fans a chance to attend these popular events whereby many visitors came to the events as a holiday with their families. Additionally, the cost of the event was not expensive which made the number of the visitors to be very high and as a result there was overcrowding as some did not find space to the stadium

Description of the event

One of threatening factors to the future events was on the aspect of the location. In the 2017, there were more than 120,000 visitors who attended the event. The stadium for the event could not accommodate many fans (Ho, Yiu & Lam, 2016). It would be important that the union which is the organizer finds a bigger venue which could host large number of people. Another threat which could affect the success of similar event in the future would be on the prices. Changing the children and the adult the same price for the ticket is not fair even though they wanted to curb or a reduction method of people who attended the event, because the stadium could not hold the number of fans. It is important to set a given price for the adults as well as that of kids.

The sponsors of the event have done the marketing of the event through TVs, but they have changed this and the focus is on the digital channels especially the You Tube. In the You Tube HSBC they have put stimulating cartoon to capture what the sevens is all about.  Another strategy used for marketing is via social media, where they have put ads of the events. There are also brand campaigns in Hong Kong offering free tickets are shared widely in the social media. Other campaigns are as follows; Foodpanda nailed their campaign by encouraging the users to input Hong Kong Sevens voucher order any time they made an order through their app. Through these marketing strategies the event was a success (Chan, 2014).

Culturally the event has impacted it positively, through the event local rugby community are building a number of the young leagues. They will be able to borrow the knowledge gained from the events (Lam, 2016). Financially, the country would gain significantly through the foreign exchange. There are many visitors across the globe that came to attend the event and with them they will pay to see the event or book rooms and other expenses while in the country. On the aspect of environment, to some degree it would be affected negatively. This would be from the products which would be consumed some are containers of beer that could be disposed anywhere.

Conclusion

Rugby Sevens is an event that is the world premier sport and the most popular annual sporting that is held in Asia which has attracted both greatest players and visitors globally. The 2017 event that held in Hong Kong was a success, which could be attributed to the HSBC sponsors and the Hong Kong Rugby Union who organized the event. During the event there was increase in the number of visitors from the previous years. The event has been Hallmark since there are many visitors who attend and it is marked with magnificent action in the field where there are greatest players from different clubs in the world. Additionally, the event was a success following the marketing strategy utilized such as; use of the digital channel for example, You Tube that played a crucial role in advertisement of the events. Nonetheless, there were some threats which could lead to failure of events in the future. Some of these are on the location; the previous location was small to hold a large number of fans. Another issue was on the pricing. As much as it was aimed at reducing the number of fans who attended, the price ticket of the children should not be same as the adult ticket.

The recommendations are based the threat which were previously observed and if addressed the future event would be a success. One of the recommendations would be change of the venue. The organizers should find a new venue which has capability to host a large number of people. Another recommendation would be on the price adjustment. They need to come up with a fair price for the ticket for both the children and the adults.

References

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Chan, A. (2014). Hong Kong needs... Australasian Leisure Management, (104), 40.

CHEUNG, S. Y., Roger, K., Jennifer, Y., & Jing, F. A. N. (2017). Destination Image and Sports Tourists’ Consumption Patterns of Major Sports Events. Journal of Multidisciplinary  Research, 9(3), 5-15.

Fuller, C. W., Taylor, A. E., & Raftery, M. (2016). Should player fatigue be the focus of injuryprevention strategies for international rugby sevens tournaments?. Br J Sports Med, 50(11), 682-687.

Fuller, C. W. (2017). Modelling injury-burden in rugby sevens. Journal of science and medicine    in sport.

Ho, G., Yiu, E. Y. M., & Lam, M. H. S. (2016). The Hong Kong games in the eyes of local sports and recreation students. The International Journal of the History of Sport, 33(11),   1209-1225.

Hui, S. S. X. (2016). Hong Kong in the World: Implications to Geopolitics and Competitiveness.   World Scientific.

Lam, E. T. (2016). Sport Culture of Hong Kong: Recent Development and Prospects. Journal of Arts and Humanities, 5(4), 39.

Rizi, R. M., Yeung, S. S., Stewart, N. J., & Yeung, E. W. (2017). Risk factors that predict severe

 injuries in university rugby sevens players. Journal of science and medicine in sport, 20(7), 648-652.

Tsui, K. W. H., Yuen, A. C. L., & Fung, M. K. Y. (2017). Maintaining competitiveness of aviation hub: Empirical evidence of visitors to China via Hong Kong by air transport.Current Issues in Tourism, 1-25.

Wong, K. Y. (2015). Image of Hong Kong Sevens and Hong Kong in tourists' perspective:  tourist gazes from overseas visitors and Hong Kong visitors. Capstone Project.