Hong Kong Sevens | Better late than never for our tourism chiefs

“See you at the Sevens” has taken on a whole new meaning for Hong Kong Tourism Board officials, who are now bending over backwards trying to please a sport which most local people used to call “Rubby”.

In those years gone by the annual festival was regarded by the community at large as nothing more than three days of having to endure drunken gweilos traipsing all over Causeway Bay and Wan Chai singing strange songs and dressed up in even stranger outfits, or none at all.

The Chinese media used to turn up at the stadium only to click pictures of streakers encroaching on the field of play, or the semi-nude debauchery in the South Stand. Their backs were to the pitch, perhaps wondering why on earth grown-up men, and now women, engage in this brutish sport.

No more. The period of enlightenment has now dawned. These days, the Sevens is a much-anticipated event, which the community waits for with the eagerness of a pilgrim nearing journey’s end. In this case the altar is the one to Mammon for the Sevens brings wealth to many in this city.

Last year, for the first time, the tourism board released figures of a survey it undertook during the 2011 tournament. Among the many interesting facts was that more than half the crowd (21,931) came from overseas. They stayed an average six days and spent an average of HK$12,873.

This amounted to more than HK$282 million in direct economic benefits. There is no other sporting event which can even come close to generating these sorts of figures. Now government agencies are tripping over each other to accommodate the union. In the past, this body of (essentially) volunteers was ignored.