IRB Sevens
Current season, competition or edition: 2016–17 World Rugby Sevens Series
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| Sport | Rugby union |
|---|---|
| Founded | 1999 |
| No. of teams | 24 |
| Countries | Worldwide |
| Most recent champion(s) |
 Fiji (2015–16) |
| Most titles |
 New Zealand (12 titles) |
The World Rugby Sevens Series, known officially as the HSBC World Rugby Sevens Series due to 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 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.
The first international Rugby sevens tournament was held at Scotland, which was celebrating a century of the Scottish Rugby Union. Seven international teams took part in the first tournament, which had England taking the trophy. In 1976, the Hong Kong Sevens tournament began. Over the next two decades the number of international sevens competitions increased, the most notable among these being the Rugby World Cup Sevens with the inaugural event being played in Scotland in 1993.
The first season of the World Sevens Series began in 1999. Dubai hosted the first event which was won by New Zealand, the first of what would be five events for the season as they took the trophy over Fiji.
New Zealand won the first six seasons and was the favourite for the 2005–06 season. But it wasn't to be, as they didn't make to any of the cup finals that year. The main two teams that were in contention for that year were Fiji and England. Fiji would clinch that season trophy on the last day of the season at London when they defeated Kenya in the quarter finals of the cup tournament. New Zealand would finish fourth before regaining the trophy in 2006–07 season in the last tournament of the season.
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