The Bournemouth 7s Festival team have announced that the fourteenth edition of the multi-award-winning sport and music festival will take place over the August Bank Holiday weekend (Fri 27th – Sun 29th August 2021).
Bournemouth 7s, founded by Roger and Fleur Woodall in 2008, welcomes some 30,000 festival guests and 400 sports teams to the 65 acres of Chapel Gate in Christchurch for a weekend full of sport, music and live entertainment.
The festival, which normally takes place on the Spring Bank Holiday, was rescheduled as part of the team’s ongoing response to the Covid-19 pandemic. With the rapid rollout of the UK vaccination programme, there is increasing hope that large scale events will be able to take place towards the end of Summer 2021.
Festival owner, Roger Woodall, was delighted to see some positive news on the horizon:
“We have been blown away by the positive response to our new August dates and, in fact, all of the support we have received over the past 12 months. Over 80% of our amazing fans retained their tickets whilst our contractors, suppliers and partners have all been incredibly supportive.”
Bournemouth 7s, which is headquartered in Poole is planned and delivered by a small team of 6 people who are responsible for all elements of the festival from sales and marketing to event operations, safety planning and entertainment programming.
After a challenging year which saw the thirteenth festival cancelled, the team have been working hard on a host of contingency measures to hopefully enable the festival to take place. This process involves a host of work with multi-agency partners including the county’s public health team.
This frequent engagement process, headed by Bournemouth 7s Managing Director, Craig Mathie, is a long-standing component of the festival’s management process and contributes significantly to the festival’s professional reputation across the County.
Mathie, who also chairs the recently formed South Coast Events Forum, is proud of the work the team have accomplished in a difficult year:
“The pandemic has had a seismic impact on the events industry with almost the entire industry closing down for over a year. Through that time, we have re-organised the festival dates on 3 occasions which has taken a lot of work from an incredibly talented team.
We cannot wait to bring back the festival for our loyal fans and the 1200 people who are employed as part of our operation each year. We are, of course, aware that things may change again but we hope that positivity and courage give us the best chance of bringing the UK’s favourite sport and music festival back to Bournemouth later this summer.”