Fulham’s Craven Cottage could be future of new franchise Project Sevens
The investment vehicle behind a new privately funded rugby sevens league set to launch in 2026 is targeting Craven Cottage as a host venue, City PM can reveal.
Tom Burwell, chief executive of Bia Sports Group – the investment team behind newly promoted Premier League football club Sunderland – explained that the as-yet unnamed sevens series – currently going by the working title Project 7s – will target 20-25,000 capacity stadiums with the aim of being full on Thursday nights for a couple of hours a time.
“Where I would love to be in London,” he tells City PM, “is Craven Cottage. I’d love to be in Fulham with their amazing brand new hospitality, with the opportunity to be really innovative, with some fan experiences, to be in the heart of south west/central London, which is a huge rugby market of all generations in an arena that is not necessarily traditionally known as a rugby stadium.”
Project 7s
Project 7s will be the first ever franchise sevens competition and will run from August next year, to avoid clashes with the existing World Rugby-run competitions.
Burwell says the plan is not to be disruptive to the current sevens circuit, but to add to it.
“I think it would be really fair to say that the next level, the next stage that we go to, which is in franchise sales, some interested parties were interested in sevens and fifteens,” Burwell adds when asked whether those investing in the breakaway R360 project could find themselves buying a sevens franchise too.
“We haven’t had to open up ourselves to that breadth of the investor group, we’ve been able to bring people that we do business with outside of rugby into this space.”
Bia Sports Group, which counts World Supercross Championship in its sporting portfolio, invested in the pre-capitalisation, while seed funding grew the promised investment to an eight-figure sum.
It is understood that the franchises will be sold for sums in the single-figure millions.
Premiership Rugby – which itself is looking at a new franchise model – wasn’t far off with its sevens competition, Burwell says. That iteration of sevens saw full crowds at three stadiums on three evenings before a finals night. Project 7s will look to emulate that.
Sevens of old
“When Premiership Rugby launched the [then] JP Morgan sevens in its first iteration, it filled Kingsholm, Franklin’s Gardens,” Burwell continues.
“It was on a Friday night, it was three hours long and it put 15-20,000 people into each of those stadiums. That was fantastic, they were onto something.”
Plans, albeit early, will target sevens players who are already on the circuit given it will not clash with the 15s game or existing sevens tournaments. But it is hoped that some retiring players would extend their careers by six months to participate in the tournament.
Locations like Paris have been touted alongside London, while investors range from individuals to boutique firms.
It is clear that the vultures are surrounding rugby, with a number of battling organisations looking to capitalise on the issues that exist in the 15s game.
But targeting sevens is interesting – something R360 is believed to have looked at before changing tack – and fresh investment in the short-form version of the sport could be an interesting USP for the firm which this season will enjoy Premier League football with Sunderland for the first time.