HSBC SEVENS SERIES
The World Rugby Sevens Series, known officially as the HSBC World Rugby Sevens Series due to the sponsorship from banking group HSBC. It is an annual series of international Rugby Sevens tournaments run by World Rugby featuring national teams. The series was organised for the first time as the World Sevens Series in the 1999–2000 season, 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 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 season titles.
As of the 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. Two previous host countries, Singapore and France, returned to the circuit for the 2015–16 season to replace Japan and Scotland, and a completely new tour stop in Canada was also added.
