World Rugby Sevens Series

The World Rugby Sevens Series, known officially as the HSBC World Rugby Sevens Series from the 2015-16 season, and before that as the HSBC Sevens World Series since 2010, through sponsorship from banking group HSBC, is an annual series of international rugby sevens tournaments run by World Rugby featuring national sevens teams. The series, organised for the first time as the World Sevens Series in the 1999-2000 season, was formed to develop an elite-level competition series between rugby nations and develop the sevens game into a viable commercial product for World Rugby.

Teams compete for the World Rugby Sevens Series title by accumulating points based on their finishing position in each tournament. New Zealand had originally dominated the Series, winning each of the first six titles from 1999-2000 to 2004-05, but since then, Fiji, South Africa and Samoa have each won titles.

As of the upcoming 2015–16 season, the season's circuit consists of 10 tournaments in 10 countries, and visits five of the six populated continents. Australia, the United Arab Emirates, South Africa, New Zealand, Canada, the United States, Hong Kong, Singapore, France and England each host one event. Argentina was originally planned to begin hosting a tenth event in the 2012–13 season, giving the tour an event on each continent, but those plans have been shelved indefinitely. The 2015–16 season will see the return of two previous host countries, Singapore and France, which respectively replace Japan and Scotland, as well as a completely new tour stop in Canada.

Rugby League World Sevens

The Rugby League World Sevens, usually referred to as the World Sevens and sometimes as the World Cup Sevens, was a pre-season rugby league sevens tournament made up over the years primarily of New South Wales Rugby League (NSWRL), Australian Rugby League (ARL) and mostly recently National Rugby League (NRL) teams, along with teams representing NSW Country and nations including Tonga, France, Papua New Guinea, Samoa, Russia, Fiji, the USA and England.

When the National Rugby League was formed in Australasia in 1998 the World Sevens competition was dropped, but it returned in 2003 when Parramatta successfully defended their title from the last time in 1997.

Format and rules

The World Sevens format saw entrants divided into eight pools. The top team in each pool progressed into the quarter finals.

Until 2004, second placed teams from each pool would play each other, as would third placed teams. In 2004, when the competition was known as the Cougar Bourbon World Sevens, this format changed, when only the top placed teams played for the major prize.