Work starts now to ensure Sevens hits all the right notes
Organising the Cathay Pacific/HSBC Hong Kong Sevens is a task most easily equated to painting Scotland’s 2.5-kilometre Forth Rail Bridge – no sooner have you completed the job than you have to start again. Although on the plus side with the Sevens, you don’t often get orange paint on your clothes.
Organising the Cathay Pacific/HSBC Hong Kong Sevens is a task most easily equated to painting Scotland’s 2.5-kilometre Forth Rail Bridge – no sooner have you completed the job than you have to start again. Although on the plus side with the Sevens, you don’t often get orange paint on your clothes.
With the 2014 event wash-up report having been put to bed last month, attention has already turned to preparations for the weekend of 27-29 March 2015, all the more exciting this year as we celebrate the 40th anniversary of Hong Kong’s sporting mardi gras.
And like the South American carnival in Rio de Janeiro, music is one of the key entertainment components of our event, and in the past two years we’ve introduced a live performance element to keep Hong Kong one step ahead of the game.
In 2012, the legendary Beach Boys rocked Hong Kong Stadium, followed this year by The Queen Extravaganza who headlined the Saturday lunchtime slot. We also proudly showcased some local talent with hip hop heroes 24 Herbs joined by Hong Kong’s number one axeman Eugene Pao for a Friday evening gig that clearly went down very well with the 8,000 students who joined us as part of the annual school visit programme.
So how does one go about choosing the music for the Sevens, an event whose audience is about as ethnically and culturally diverse as you can get, with an age range from toddlers to pensioners?
Well, you could approach the challenge scientifically, a la Moneyball – we know from our market research that the average punter in the stadium is male, in his early 40s, is British, and works in finance ... but unfortunately the event can’t afford Dire Straits and Genesis have stopped touring.
We could throw it open to the court of public opinion; this year our partner Kely Support Group ran a "Song for the Sevens" competition, in conjunction with RTHK Radio 3, which generated a lot of youth interest.
The winner requested a song by someone whose name sounds a bit like DJ Dr Yo-Bro-Mofo, so rather than actually play the track we changed the prize to a 30 minute education from tournament DJ Simon as to why Led Zep’s Stairway to Heaven represents the peak of human musical achievement.
To get back to basics, the ideal music act for us has six immediately recognisable sing-a-long numbers that have universal appeal regardless of age or nationality. There also has to be a minimum of one original member of the band still playing and, preferably, they shouldn’t be the subject of a current criminal investigation. Anyone got Ringo Starr’s phone number?
