Global women's seven-a-side football series launched with $100m investment
A lucrative new seven-a-side global women's football series has been announced with the first event set to take place in Portugal from 21-23 May. The new competition has been named the 'World Sevens Football' and it is understood there is a commitment to invest $100m (£77m) in the series over a five-year period.
The new series of invitational 'grand slam' tournaments, first reported by the Guardian, will feature $5m prize money per event. It is funded by investment from the US-based philanthropist Jennifer Mackesy, co-owner of the NWSL club Gotham FC, and will be broadcast live by the streaming platform DAZN.
The teams involved in the first eight-team competition have not been confirmed, but a different set of clubs will compete in the second event in November-December, which will be staged on a different continent. The winning team at each event will receive $2.5m.
The organisers say players will be 'at the heart' of the series and they have been guided by a player advisory council, which is led by the former USWNT winger Tobin Heath and also includes the former Sweden captain Caroline Seger, the former England and Team GB defender Anita Asante, the ex-USA right-back Kelley O'Hara, and the former France defender Laura Georges, who previously spent more than seven years as the secretary general of the French football federation.
'World Sevens Football' has named the former US women's international and Bay FC co-founder Aly Wagner as chief of strategy, and she told the Guardian: 'This is one of those really pivotal moments in women's football, and an opportunity for us to do something unique and different. This is a global series that will travel the world and one of the keys to this is really opening the market and growing the market of women's football in those places.
'The seven-v-seven format is one the players love, it's one of their favourite things to do in training, the small-sided games and it's one that I think fans will end up clamouring for. It's so intense, action-packed and it's all the stuff that players love, one-v-one duels, shots, goals.
'This is going to be a world-class event for these players, they're going to be treated the way we always dreamed of being treated as players, from the moment they step off the plane.'
The inaugural tournament will be staged from 21-23 May in Estoril, Portugal, on a grass pitch at Estádio António Coimbra da Mota, where it is understood a 'stadium within a stadium' will be built around a half-sized pitch for the seven-a-side games. That is directly in the run-up to this year's Women's Champions League final, being staged nearby in Lisbon, so the two finalists will not be involved in the first event.
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The venues for future events have not been announced but the organisers say they are planning to go to cities 'across the United States, Mexico, Asia, Europe, and beyond'. The group have been in dialogue with Fifa and Uefa but do not expect to need any governing body's permission to run the series, because seven-a-side is not a codified form of the game.
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