The first event in a new, lucrative seven-a-side global women’s football series will take place in Portugal from 21 to 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 five years.
The Guardian first reported that the new series of invitational “grand slam” tournaments will offer $5 million in prize money for each event. It will be streamed live by the streaming platform DAZN and is funded by an investment from philanthropist Jennifer Mackesy, who owns Gotham FC in the NWSL and is based in the United States. 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 organizers 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.
“This is one of those pivotal moments in women’s football and an opportunity for us to do something unique and different,” said Bay FC co-founder and former US women’s international Aly Wagner, who was appointed chief of strategy by World Sevens Football. This is a global series that will travel the world and one of the keys to this is opening the market and growing the market of women’s football in those places.
“The small-sided games in the seven-versus-seven format are one of the players’ favorite things to do in training, and I believe that fans will demand it. It’s so intense, action-packed and it’s all the stuff that players love, one-on-one duels, shots, goals.
“From the moment they step off the plane, these players are going to be treated the way we always dreamed of being treated as players, and this is going to be a world-class event for them.” 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.
The organizers have stated that they intend to visit cities “across the United States, Mexico, Asia, Europe, and beyond,” though the locations of any subsequent events have not been disclosed. 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.
