How Rugby Became Asia’s Biggest Sporting Festival: The Hong Kong Sevens at 50 | Jon Pallett and Jamie Farndale | Tank Talks Asia

JON JAMIE: 260318

JAMIE: The whole event is just ridiculous. The Sevens itself, the party atmosphere, it is, over that weekend, that is the biggest party that is happening on earth at that time. The Hong Kong Sevens has the economic impact of an F1 event. It’s just phenomenal, it’s such a huge, huge event. Absolutely not one to be missed, an absolute bucket list for anyone from around the world.

ANDREW: Hello, it's Tank Talks Asia. I am not Manisha Tank. I'm actually Andrew Clark, and I'm stepping in for Manisha whilst she's on holiday. From me and the team at the AsiaWorks studio here in Singapore, a warm welcome.

Now, if you've ever been to a rugby Sevens tournament, you'll know it's an adrenaline filled experience. And here in Asia, one event towers above the rest, the Hong Kong Rugby Sevens, which is celebrating a massive milestone this year, its 50th anniversary.

Picture it. Roaring crowds, music blasting in a stadium that seems to shake with every try. Or maybe that's just the legendary south stand. We'll get to that. But this isn't just rugby. It's a world class sporting spectacle and family event rolled into one. Now in its second year at its new home at Kai Tak Stadium, the party's only getting bigger.

So what makes the Hong Kong Rugby Sevens so iconic? To find out, we're joined by two personalities from Hong Kong China Rugby, Jon Pallett, Head of Communications, and Jamie Farndale, General Manager for Club Development and Sustainability, and also he's a former Scotland Sevens captain.

Now full disclosure here, I’m a little biased when it comes to all of this because I’m Scottish and therefore a long-suffering Scotland rugby fan, and I grew up in Hong Kong so the first Hong Kong Sevens that I went to was about 40 years ago!

Jon and Jamie, welcome. It is an absolute pleasure to have you on the show. I think that what we need to do is to jump straight into a little bit for our viewers to tell us a bit about what the game of Sevens is all about. And I think there's no better person to tell us about that than Jamie, because you are a former player of the game itself.

JAMIE: Yeah absolutely. First of all, thank you so much for having me on.

Sevens is a game I spent the last 13 years really playing professionally. So picked up a little bit of what Sevens is about. It was invented in Scotland, down in Melrose. I think it was Ned Haig who was the local baker who put on a tournament to raise a bit of money and that format has just grown and grown over the years.

Effectively, it is not too complicated. It's more or less the same rules as fifteens. You just remove eight players from the pitch. So, as a player, it's a lot harder to play. You have to pass a lot longer. You've gotta defend much bigger space. The fitness aspect is absolutely brutal. You've gotta be an absolute athlete to play it.

I remember there was an opinion piece before the Olympics, I think, where someone described it as being in a washing machine. And it was sort of this idea of getting absolutely batted on the field, tackled and tackling and running a hundred meters for a turnover and you go the length of the field the other way, and everyone's just out on their feet. It's a phenomenal spectacle to play, but absolutely to watch as well.

ANDREW: And Jon, why has Sevens become this globally popular sport?

JON: Well, firstly, thanks for having me on. I think as a fan, what really attracts fans to the Sevens is that we can have up to 24 teams playing on any given day.

So at the Hong Kong Sevens, 24 teams will take part, who all bring a different style of play, of different energy, and who bring a different fan base. So it really becomes a festival of rugby. Because we're only working to 14 minute games, we can actually have our entertainment in between the games. So while the fans come and appreciate the rugby, we can also regularly entertain them, with different entertainment acts, different activations, different things to fill the field of play. So it all helps us to build a real party atmosphere.

ANDREW: Just ahead…how kids are stepping up to shape the future of the Hong Kong Sevens.

Sevens that I went to was in: 1986

But that event was definitely an amazing festival of rugby with obviously teams from all over the world. But also at the same time a real sort of festival atmosphere with pipe bands and processions around the pitch. And we all played mini rugby as kids back then. And one of the big things was being able to play mini rugby in the center of the pitch halfway through, I think it was the Saturday of the event.

JAMIE: We still have that minis aspect. So in the domestic team, we're helping organize, get 3,000 minis kids down onto the pitch. They march around, at the same time our headline act is bringing a stage onto the pitch that they set up, I think it's Venga boys this year. They play to the stadium with all these kids marching around, it's just chaos but what a day, it's just phenomenal.

ANDREW: Jon, what's so special about the Hong Kong Sevens?

JON: Well, I think what we've tried to do over years and through the evolution of the tournament is try to just appeal to a kind of broader and broader fan base. We've identified that we want to engage a young audience here in Hong Kong and in the Greater Bay Area, so fans coming across from China. So the Friday night has very much become a local celebration with a traditional opening ceremony in K-Pop.

And then on the Saturday we kind of migrate across into party mode, as Jamie mentioned, we've got the Venga boys, and then we have a popular DJ on the Saturday evening and on the Sunday we traditionally have a rock band and a kind of more of a sing-along vibe. So I think what happens in Hong Kong is every hour of the Sevens is different.

inly when I was a kid back in: 1986

JON: No, and I think we're quite careful with our marketing. We have some adverts where it's a group of young people in fancy dress drinking beers in the South Stand because we know that’s a certain percentage of our demographic and our target demographic, and we don't want to lose those fans. But similarly, we'll have other advertising that carries pictures of older fans, or two or three generations of the same family or young kids running around.

We try to show the absolute breadth of what we do, to try and entice people in and make everybody feel that they're inclusive and that they're welcome and they can come and be part of the event.

ANDREW: Coming up…does the South Stand still reign as the ultimate party zone?

ANDREW: Now anybody who's been to the Hong Kong Sevens knows about the legendary South Stand, it’s a full on party where fans turn up in wild fancy dress and create a loud, irreverent, anything goes atmosphere that’s, well it’s arguably as famous as the spectacle of rugby itself at the Sevens. It’s named after the South Stand at the old Hong Kong stadium, but now it has a new home at the Kai Tak stadium.

So Jamie, why don’t you tell us about the new South Stand but perhaps also, what about some memories that you have of the old one?

JAMIE: I've always looked very jealously from the pitch at the people in the South Stand. I do remember scoring a try against England right in the corner, in front of the South Stand, I remember it being maybe an important try in the game. What a feeling. The whole South Stand there and, you know, when you used to have that England, Scotland, Wales rivalry that was played out there. You just see all sorts going on.

But we also used to warm up for the games quite often. You kind of had a choice. There was a bigger pitch that was down the hill that you could warm up. You had more space, you could, you know, get your stretches done and run through your moods properly. Or there was this tiny sort of, almost like the sort of center of a cricket pitch size, tiny little strip of land that you could warm up on in front of the south stand. And we used to, as the tournament went on, it was less important to get your body moving 'cause you're so knackered anyway. We actually moved up and into the stadium and the atmosphere, the singing songs, you couldn't hear someone shouting at you from a meter away. And that energy before a game was just phenomenal. So being in front of that South Stand is just an experience as a player that you cannot match anywhere else.

And yeah, it's pulled over into the South side. I can tell you my wife was born in Hong Kong and grew up in Hong Kong. And the one thing she said about the move to the new stadium was, you know, the stadium looks great. It's got this closing roof, it's got, you know, these upgraded speaker systems and light shows and all this stuff that looks amazing and fancy. But you'll never get that South Stand atmosphere.

Now, I got her a ticket last year and she was in that South Stand. She came out and she was like, nope it's still the same. It has endured. It’s passed my wife's test.

ANDREW: Oh, it's wonderful to hear that the madness endures. But besides all of the madness there at the stadium and the spectators, obviously back to the Festival of Rugby, it is all about rugby.

Jon, tell us a little bit about Hong Kong China Rugby and what role you are playing with Hong Kong China Rugby in helping the Hong Kong sevens develop.

JON: So the Hong Kong China Rugby is the union for rugby in Hong Kong and has delivered this event now for 50 years. But our real brief all along is to use rugby to inspire the next generation of kids to get into the sport. So the Hong Kong Sevens over 49 years now has been great at doing that.

But we also have a clear brief outside of men's and women's Sevens, but also men's and women's fifteens rugby, pathways, and then the community, and youth and mini game that Jamie and his team oversee. So yeah, I think for us it's about the more successful the Sevens is, the more tickets we sell, the more international fans we bring in, the bigger outreach on social media, the bigger partners and government partners that we attract. It just all helps us to put rugby front and center, not only in Hong Kong, but also into China.

So we're always looking at what opportunities do we have to make the event bigger and better year on year.

ANDREW: Coming up…how the Hong Kong Sevens packs the same economic punch as Formula One.

ANDREW: You guys did a study, didn't you recently, and found some pretty, pretty awesome stats out of it.

JON: Yeah, we did. So we did the economic impact, which Nielsen produced for us, and they found an economic impact of, I think 97 million US dollars. So that puts us right up there in and around international competitions, World Championships in sports and Formula One, which a lot of people see as the very top, top event to bring into your city for the weekend. What we found in that research was that a lot of fans that come in from what I call the global rugby core markets, so Europe, North America, Australia, New Zealand, South Africa, they're coming into Hong Kong for 5, 6, 7 days. So this is people making a bucket list trip. They see it as an iconic event and they're gonna come over, take a week off work, buy a flight, buy a hotel.

But they're also gonna spend three or four additional days in Hong Kong. So that's all of the great tourist attractions that Hong Kong offers. But also during Sevens week, there's a lot of activity in and around the Sevens, which is essentially a whole calendar of activities that rugby fans would like to engage with.

ANDREW: A question for both of you then, in terms of the international attraction of the Hong Kong Sevens, Jamie first, what would you say to convince someone it's worth the trip if they've never been to the Hong Kong Sevens before?

JAMIE: The whole event is just ridiculous. The Sevens itself, the party atmosphere. It is, over that weekend, that is the biggest party that is happening on earth at that time. It's phenomenal what Jon said, the Hong Kong Sevens has the economic impact of an F1 event.

It's just phenomenal. It's such a huge, huge event. Absolutely not one to be missed, an absolute bucket list for anyone from around the world.

ANDREW: And Jon, if I was to say, oh, I've never been to Hong Kong, so I don't know what, I've never heard of this thing before. What would you say to me to convince me?

JON: I think the thing with the Hong Kong Sevens, and if we're talking about a global sporting event that's iconic, it's very much up there with a Monaco Grand Prix, a Super Bowl, a Wimbledon final.

So not only are you coming and having a great three day event, but you've got the whole of Hong Kong really excited to welcome the fans and actually we sometimes say that it's akin to Mardi Gras. So if Hong Kong had a Mardi Gras, it would be the Sevens.

ANDREW: I think that I can see that as well. Definitely the Mardi Gras type of atmosphere that the Sevens brings with it. And then of course you've got the whole of Hong Kong to explore as well. What type of thing would you encourage that visitor, Jamie, to do in Hong Kong outside of the Sevens?

JAMIE: It's actually quite a funny time for you to ask me. I just had a couple friends of mine from school came out and stayed four days with me and as they left, the same day, a couple of my wife's friends came and stayed. So we just about repeated the same sort of itinerary. But very much based around food, street food, just phenomenal, you know, going out and having breakfast at a sort of local restaurant and then going for dim sum, getting the Star Ferry across. Up on the Peak, the views are just phenomenal.

There’s just so much to fit in. It's a city where you've got nature, you've got the hustle bustle, you've got the busyness. You know, I'm very lucky to call it home.

ANDREW: Would that be the same for you, Jon, or any other nuggets?

the Peak Tram, they opened in: 1888

And then you've got the hustle and bustle of downtown. You've got brand new office complexes. You've got brand new malls. But it's a real old meets new city. And I think the other point Jamie made was nature. There's only a couple of cities on the planet, I think Cape Town is one and Rio is one, where the city is completely surrounded by nature.

So I could leave the office here and in 20 minutes I could be up in the forest looking down on the top of the skyscrapers, and that's always the iconic skyline shot. We often use that shot when we do the captain's photo before the Sevens. We'll either take people out on the ferry so we get a view of the skyline from the water, or we'll take them up high into the hillside so you've got the view from above. But those are the kind of things that you can't come to Hong Kong and not see those.

ANDREW: So let's move into the importance of this 50th, I can't believe it's the 50th anniversary of the Hong Kong Sevens.

I think one thing which I’m really interested in, so Jamie, I'm really keen to find out from you how that experience for the player, for the players has evolved. You started playing 10 years ago in the Hong Kong Sevens, and I'm sure that was a very different experience to what it is like now, especially in this 50th anniversary year.

JAMIE: It was. Back when I first started, there were 16 teams. It was, for example, wherever we went, it was the Kenyan supporters that were the loudest, you know, wherever you went, it was phenomenal. They were sort of everyone's second favorite team.

I was there where, you know, when the women's game came into the Sevens and watching the growth of that has just been phenomenal because for me as a player, I was used to being part of this sort of male approach to sport, and you'd see everyone lining up in the tunnel, ready to go out with sort of serious faces and all this sort of anger ready to unleash on the pitch. And then you see the women's players lining up and they're dancing, you know, before they go on and bringing this sort of vibe and party energy. And actually the male game is learning so much from that.

In terms of the Hong Kong Sevens itself, I'm so jealous. My last Hong Kong Sevens was the last one at the old stadium. I never got to play in the new stadium. Looking at it with that closed roof and when the music's blasting and when the lasers are playing and when the crowd's going crazy, I've still got a lot of friends that play on the, well now the Great Britain side, it's now an amalgamated side. You know, they're just saying it is the best place to play. I'm just so jealous. The evolution, it's just getting better and better every year, and watching from the outside is, yeah, it's phenomenal to see.

ANDREW: Jon for Hong Kong China Rugby, how important is this 50th anniversary?

JON: Well, I think there's two parts to it. Obviously it's the second time at Kai Tak, so we have a lot of ideas from Kai Tak last year that we implemented and we have other ideas that we didn't quite get round to. So I don't think we've fulfilled the total potential of Kai Tak yet.

So for example, we have a fan village at the Sevens, which is just outside the stadium, open to all ticket holders. But that's an area for us where our partners can activate, we can have athletes meeting fans, signing autographs, taking photos. We can have the players warming up there. We also have live entertainment and a stage, so dance troops and bands and theater performances. So that's something that we really want to go even bigger for, for the 50th year.

And we also want to use that space to bring in some supplementary activities. So we have an indoor arena at Kai Tak. We have a second pitch, which is called the Youth Sports Ground with 5,000 capacity. And we build this fan village, so we're gonna have paddle, we're gonna have a primal fitness race, we're gonna have fitness classes, we've got a netball tournament.

So this is all ideas that we wanted to bring in for Kai Tak, and we decided to do it in the second year, which happens to be the 50th anniversary.

And I think the other point as your question was around Hong Kong China and our role at the 50th, I think we have to have a history and heritage to this tournament that recognizes everybody that's gone before.

final of the first Sevens in: 1976

ANDREW: Goodness.

JON: He'll be flying in and he'll be our guest. So there's very much a history and heritage piece that we have to recognize all of the hard work and dedication that have gone in to grow the tournament year on year to get to where we are now.

JAMIE: I just think it's so clever the stuff going on around the event because, you know, you're always gonna have the people that dress up and get drunk and get into the South Stand. But I love the idea of someone coming to compete themselves, you know, in one of this primal race that we mentioned and, you know, getting involved in that fitness race or someone gets involved in a netball team and go along with their mates and, you know, play themselves.

And then they're also sports fans and they get into the stadium and watch the rugby. It's, you know, you think about this event that's been around 50 years, what does the next 50 years look like?

ANDREW: And I think that that's a really important question. And Jamie, if I can stay with you on that, what about the future for Hong Kong China Rugby, certainly for you, in your role as development and sustainability in the club, what does the next 50 years look like?

JAMIE: It's a really exciting time for Hong Kong China Rugby. You know, everyone thinks of Hong Kong China Rugby as the Sevens itself, but there's so much going on around it. And yeah, working in the domestic team, we've got, I think this year it was 10,201 players registered to play across Hong Kong, you know, three and a half thousand minis, one and a half thousand youth, 3,000 seniors.

You've got this number of players that are playing domestically in rugby and growing, you know, over the last three years, it's up 11.5% the numbers, which creates another problem itself 'cause Hong Kong's not a huge space and there's not a huge amount of pitch availability. And we've got more and more players interested in the game.

Now we're moving to Kai Tak and the event itself is evolving. I just think the next 50 years on all aspects are just looking so exciting.

ANDREW: Coming up…find out who our guests are tipping for the win this year.

Jon, I'll let you talk about this. Hong Kong's qualified for the Rugby World Cup?

JON: Yeah, that's correct. If we consider, we have four representative teams. We have our men's and women's Sevens, and our men's and women's fifteens. Our men's and women's Sevens firstly, are gonna be at the Asian games in Japan later this year. The men are defending champions, the women are bronze medalists. Both of those teams have got real aspirations to make the next Olympics in LA.

Australia at the back end of: 2027

And our women's fifteens are at the start of a four year World Cup cycle. They actually played at a World Cup back in 2017, and they're playing in world rugby's WXV competition later this year as part of a global series. So all four of those teams have got major tournaments coming up, and all that does is it just impacts all the way down the pyramid into our age grade and our pathways and our domestic game.

Because as soon as you have your star players, our role models and their heroes, and they're on television and they're playing against the world's best players on the biggest stage, that just inspires everybody into the game.

EW: So yep Rugby World Cup in: 2027

Jamie first, who are the players that we should be looking out for this year and who do you think is gonna win?

JAMIE: Good question. There's still a few of the players that I played against running around and Henry Hutchison was always phenomenal to play against for Australia. And yeah, he just seems to be going from strength to strength at the moment, from what I'm watching. So I think he'll probably have a strong tournament and would be one to watch out for.

The Argentinians over the last few years have been particularly strong. You can never rule out the Fijians. They can, you know, pull off something that no one else can pull off in terms of skill and athleticism.

You're putting me on the spot in terms of a winner. I'm gonna go Fiji and Hong Kong. There's just something special there. Yeah, so I'm gonna go with my heart and go for Fiji.

ANDREW: Brilliant. And Jon, what about you?

JON: I kind of agree with Jamie. I think Fiji, I made a note of this, they won 19 out of 49 Hong Kong Sevens as the Fiji men's. They bring a huge traveling fan base. They have a good local community here in Hong Kong, they create a great atmosphere. They've had less success in recent years. But if they were to win, it would be incredible to finish for 50 years with 20 wins.

And then on the women's side, obviously we know New Zealand, Australia have been very dominant. And we're always looking out for China because we think that's a huge opportunity if their women can stay on the World Series. There's a huge population there to be inspired into rugby.

ANDREW: Amazing. Well, thank you very much to both of you for this fascinating chat. But before you go, we have our tradition on Tank Talks Asia of our guests giving us a memento at the end of the show.

And obviously you are not here in person, but Jon, you very kindly sent us this. Let me lean over. Look at that. Thank you very much for this. Can you tell me what this is all about?

JON: Yeah, so we at the Hong Kong Sevens every year we try and maintain a brand consistency, but we also try to ensure that every Hong Kong Sevens looks and feels slightly differently.

So that's our water bottle from last year and I think it's got some Hong Kong icons like the ding ding as we have to call it.

ANDREW: Yep the tram’s there, and what else do we have on it?

JON: I think I sent you my last one, so I haven't actually looked at it since putting it in the post, but I think it's Hong Kong landmarks.

ANDREW: Yeah, the stadium's there with a plane flying over it. There's a big dragon there. There's a traditional junk, that's an iconic image from Hong Kong, isn't it?

JON: Oh yeah, of course. Yeah.

ANDREW: And then of course we've got the sort of the skyline. It's fantastic. Thank you very, very much indeed. Wishing you all the very best with the tournament this year. And all the best for Hong Kong China Rugby.

JAMIE: Thank you so much. Thanks for having us on and we'll see you at the next one, I'm sure.

ANDREW: That's it for this episode. We really appreciate you listening all the way through. It takes a lot to listen all the way through to each of these episodes, and we really appreciate when you do, it means that you are a super fan of the podcasts.

Now, don't forget to check out our show notes where you'll find all the relevant links, including all of the dates for the Sevens in Hong Kong, and the whole Seven series and how to get tickets and all of that sort of stuff in case there's anything you'd like to follow up on. There's lots of links and information in there for you.

And please do like, follow, subscribe, watch, listen to Tank Talks Asia on all of your usual and favorite podcast channels and YouTube as well. That way you'll never miss a single episode.

I'm Andrew Clark, from me and the team, thanks again for your time.

Tank Talks Asia is an AsiaWorks production and the views and opinions shared by our guests are their own.