Bournemouth 7s Festival

Bournemouth 7s Festival takes place at Bournemouth University Sports Campus in Christchurch, just east of Bournemouth. It is situated on a 65-acre site, which houses the main festival arena, the sports pitches, the campsite and glamping.^[2] It was created by Dodge and Fleur Woodall, who still privately own the event today.^[3] Dodge Woodall was introduced to the events industry while at Loughborough University, where he created two student nightclub brands and held 1,500 events over a 10-year period.^[4] In 2007 there were fewer festivals taking place in the UK, and having identified a market for a multi-sports and music event, Woodall saw the opportunity to use his skill set to launch a festival.^[5] The launch of Bournemouth 7s Festival saw 96 sports teams compete and 8,000 general admission tickets were bought on the day, at the gates.^[5]

Each year over 400 teams come together for their sports tour and compete across a large variety of elite and social sports tournaments.^[6] The festival currently has five sports: rugby, netball, dodgeball, hockey, and CrossFit.^[7] Volleyball and ultimate Frisbee were added in 2018.^[8]

CrossFit, hosted by the National Fitness Games, is now the festival's fifth sport, having been introduced in 2021.^[9]

The 65-acre festival site accommodates each of the sports, with a total of eight rugby pitches, 12 netball courts, two hockey pitches, two dodgeball arenas, and one CrossFit arena.^[10]

Bournemouth 7s first took place in May 2008 with 8,000 people attending and 96 rugby teams competing. It quickly became known for being an end of season rugby tour.^[11] The festival was extended from 2 days to 3 days. Attendance grew to 20,000 and 300 teams competed.^[12] After the success of the taster netball sessions in 2008, netball tournaments became a permanent fixture. In 2011, Nintendo became the first headline sponsor.^[13]

Dodgeball was introduced as the festivals third sport in 2013,^[14] followed closely by the addition of hockey in 2014 which brought the total number of teams competing to 360.^[15] The number of festival goers reached 25,000 and 2016 saw Bournemouth 7s’ first headline performance by Fatman Scoop.^[16]

The festival reached its capacity of 30,000 people on its 10th anniversary.^[17] In 2018, volleyball and ultimate frisbee were introduced, two new arenas were established and Example headlined on the Saturday.^[18] A further two arenas, Funky Forest and Ya Mum's House, were added in 2019 to take the total to 12. The Saturday was headlined by Professor Green.^[19]

The festival 2020 was cancelled due to the ongoing COVID-19 pandemic.^[20] The 2021 festival was scheduled to take place on the usual May Bank Holiday weekend, but had to be moved to the August Bank Holiday weekend due to COVID-19 restrictions.^[21] In August 2022, the 14th edition saw CrossFit make its debut ^[22] as well as Bingo Lingo.^[23] Records were broken for the number of attendees and the number of teams competing, of which there were over 400. Ella Eyre headlined on the Saturday.^[24]