India Rugby backs sevens franchise for 10 years

India Rugby and its partners have committed to backing the Rugby Premier League (RPL), the world's first franchise-based sevens league, for the next 10 years.

President and Bollywood actor Rahul Bose told RNZ Pacific from Mumbai that all the six franchise teams plus their funders have signed on for the first event, which will kick off on 15 June, and the next nine events down the line.

The tournament will take place in Mumbai at the Mumbai Football Arena and will feature 30 international players playing alongside local players.

Six teams are representing the Indian cities of Mumbai, Delhi, Bengaluru, Hyderabad, Chennai, and Bhubaneswar.

The franchises are Bengaluru Bravehearts, Chennai Bulls, Delhi Redz, Hyderabad Heroes, Kalinga Black Tigers, and the Mumbai Dreamers.

Thirty international players are now with the six teams, with five players per team from the field of 30 invited to play at the event.

The list includes Fijians Jerry Tuwai, who will play for Mumbai Dreamers, along with Waisea Nacuqu, plus Australian pair Harry Hutchinson and James Turner.

South African playmaker Rosco Speckman and his Australian counterpart Maurice Longbottom, who have clashed over numerous times on the world sevens circuit, will team up for the Kalinga Black Tigers.

New Zealand players Akuila Rokolisea, Scott Curry and Tone Ng Shiu team up with Spain's star Pol Pla and Fijian Ioane Teba for the Bengaluru Bravehearts.

All six head coaches are well-known on the world sevens rugby circuit and these are Mike Friday (former USA sevens head coach), Ben Gollings (England sevens legend and former Fiji sevens head coach), DJ Forbes (New Zealand sevens icon), Tomasi Cama (New Zealand sevens coach), Paco Hernandez (Spain sevens coach) and Tim Walsh (Australia women's sevens head coach).

The league will also feature 30 Indian players.

Boost for India rugby

Bose said the event will be a big boost for rugby in India, and one that has been in the pipeline for some time.

He said sevens is one of the most attractive television sports in modern history.

"This is a league that's been six years in the making, but we wanted to do everything right," he said.

"The first extraordinary development came thanks to World Rugby, who gave us a 15-day window in which no international rugby sevens would be played anywhere in the world."

The league will be broadcast live on Star Sports and JioHotstar.

Bose said the event will be a major boost for rugby in India.

"It's going to transform and create pathways for many more people to enter the rugby ecosystem, and also players, who would normally never get a chance to upskill under the Indian national team environment, will now be picked up," Rahul said.

He said viewer numbers could be anything between 10 and 50 million in the first year.

"And whatever it is, it's been an impressive number, and sponsors who were earlier never attracted to rugby, because rugby was never seen on television, will now have commercial interest in the sport.

"So between the regeneration and the rejuvenation and new talent, both on the field and off the field, happening internally, there will also be money happening externally, and when the two meet, that will result in a massive infusion of energy into the game in the country."

Learning curve for local players

Bose said having international players play alongside local players in the six franchise teams is going to be massive for the players and the development of the game, especially sevens, in India.

He pointed to performance and culture as two key lessons for the local players.

"One is the Indians, the best of India, to understand how much further they have to go to become world class players," Bose said of the flow-on effect he and Rugby India expect from the players' interactions.

"So definitely, performance on the field, nutritional conditioning, rehab, habits on and off the field. I think that will be a huge learning experience for any of these boys. Psychological preparation, temperament, readying yourself during a match for the next challenge, readying yourself between matches for the next challenge.

"And the second is culture.

"What is the unspoken culture that is being cultivated amongst these players that makes them who they are? What are the kind of things they do when nobody's watching? What are the kinds of things they don't do when nobody's telling them not to do something? These are the things that build culture."

All the players and the six coaches plus team officials recruited for the franchise events are being paid fees in accordance to World Rugby guidelines.

Bose said this is something Rugby India had worked on with the franchise owners and funders, to ensure that finance is a non-issue.

"The entire league is privately funded; World Rugby has nothing to do with it," he said.

"We have six franchise owners, each of them pay a franchise fee, which goes into the central pool, and the central league engages sponsor that also goes to central pool.

"The player's fee is separate. The coach's fee is separate. The transportation and living experience expenses of coaches and players is separate. We have been guided by World Rugby as to what to tell the team owners, what they can spend, what they should be offering the coaches and the players."

Excitement in the air

On the tournament previews, Bose said it is exciting for India.

He said the league offers the opportunity for players to play alongside each other rather than against each other, over a new format that focuses on giving players a lot of time to recuperate and recover, so they can be at their best.

"And the players are very excited because they are going to be playing alongside players they've never played with, and they've always played against, whether it is an Irish player playing against a Fijian and now playing with a Fijian; whether it is a South African player, playing against an Argentinian player and now playing with the Argentinian player," Bose said.

"And everybody's very excited that this new format, of just one game a day per team.

"People should expect world-class rugby in a way that they haven't seen before."

The event kicks off on 15 June with the Bengaluru Bravehearts taking on the Delhi Redz while the Chennai Bulls face the Mumbai Dreamers.

The third game of the day will be between the Hyderabad Heroes and the Kaling Black Tigers.