"It's About Jeopardy" - Ultimate Sevens Director Tom Mitchell reveals vision behind inaugural Championship

Sport & Innovation Director Tom Mitchell admits there is a mixture of excitement and apprehension as the pioneering competition prepares to go live in a few hours time.

The former England and Team GB star has spent much of his career operating at the highest level of rugby sevens, captaining Great Britain to Olympic silver at Rio 2016 before moving into coaching, commentary and sports innovation.

Now, however, Mitchell finds himself on the other side of the equation, helping bring an entirely new professional sevens concept to life across Cardiff, Biarritz and London.

“To finally get to event week is really cool, and there's a degree of apprehension because we want this to be amazing.” Mitchell told RUCK at the Ultimate Sevens media launch event in Cardiff Bay.

That anticipation will increase when international stars from across the globe arrive in Cardiff, with players who normally compete against each other now sharing the same colours. Mitchell believes the Welsh capital provides the perfect setting for the competition's first major test, with the aim of attracting established rugby supporters alongside a wider sporting audience.

“It’s the joy of coming somewhere like Cardiff, where it's an amazing city in general,” he explained. “Brilliant to be bringing players from 20 different countries here to experience it, like lots of who are here for the first time. Then also, when we get to event day on Saturday, bringing some of the local rugby crowd, and bringing in some people who just love sport and want to come and see what the action is going to be like.”

For Mitchell, reaching beyond the traditional rugby audience is central to the project's ambitions. Ultimate Sevens is not attempting to replace international sevens, but instead showcase what already makes the sport compelling in a new environment.

“What we've always gone out to do is to try and take the best bits of sevens and showcase those in the best way possible,” Mitchell said.

Much of that appeal comes from the franchise model, with Albion Athletic, Clan Taran, Foudre Bleue, Pacific Current, Sol Feroz and Atlantic Novas bringing together international players who would normally be opponents.

“I watched them train last week in Madrid, and it's awesome,” he said. “Seeing not only socially when they were taking their selfies and like, ‘Oh yeah, I'm so used to seeing that person in this jersey or this person in that national team jersey,’ then they're all mixed into the same photos.

“But then seeing those combos come to life on the training field alone has been awesome, it does have real potential to elevate the next level of performance because you're seeing combinations of the best players in the world alongside each other.”

The new identities also offer fans another way to engage with the sport, whether through their chosen franchise or an individual star.

“That was definitely part of the innovation that we wanted to develop, like that unique element of the best players in the world,” he explained. “Players that we've seen play in Olympics, play in World Cups, play on winning World Championships on the World Series, bringing them together and developing the first professional club sevens of this nature.”

That philosophy extends beyond the pitch, with the “Don't Call It Rugby” campaign and Reebok partnership designed to connect Ultimate Sevens with fashion, lifestyle and wider sporting culture.

“It was never about being super disruptive because we don't really need to be,” Mitchell said. “We wanted to challenge some elements. We wanted to see what we could do differently and be brave with doing some things differently.

“Not wild or crazy or gimmicky, but just finding the way to tweak things so that we're able to try and do our bit to drive the sport forward.”

The biggest changes, however, come through the competition format. Ultimate Sevens has been condensed into a four-hour event featuring straight knockout rugby, while conversion kicking zones and tactical timeouts add further jeopardy.

“It was more about the format was probably the big innovation, so condensing it into a four-hour event and making it a straight knockout. It’s about jeopardy. People enjoy watching sport when there's something on the line. I think it gets the best out of the athletes. I think it creates the best spectacle.”

The conversion zones are intended to put greater emphasis on kicking while creating decisive moments.

“To showcase that as a skill set, I think it's fun,” Mitchell said. “But also because you can have a big swing with one of those, and it creates a big moment, and that's what it's about. It's about creating breathless moments.”

The same principle applies to the introduction of timeouts, which could provide coaches with new opportunities to influence games.

“It creates a pivot in the game,” he explained. “It creates a narrative as well. We'll try and tease out what the coaches are saying in those things and build out, talk about their strategy and what they're getting after.”

Equality is another central pillar, with men's and women's squads operating under unified club structures, alongside equal salaries and prize money.

“It's something we've become very used to, but it is still fairly rare in sport,” he said. “We've got clubs here, that are set up with a central management team, so the coaches and the strength and conditioning and the physios all sort of work as a central unit.

“It is very much this kind of one-club setup with a men's and a women's squad attached to it.”

Now, with Cardiff ready to provide the first test, Mitchell knows the next stage is no longer about explaining the concept. It is about seeing whether it works.

“We work hard to then get to the point where you can deliver and share it with punters who are coming to watch and watching online and on TV,” Mitchell said.

“That's the reason we do it and do this, so that we can feel good about ourselves and our little team here, but so that we can grow this sport, take it to more people.”

Ultimate Sevens is about to move from an ambitious idea into a live sporting competition. For Mitchell, that is where the real story begins.