There are many things that are great about our cool little capital: Wellington’s wind, its regular earthquakes, and of course the Sevens.
 
Though we can’t do much about the former two, at least we can destroy the latter. That’s what event planners probably thought when they changed the tried-and-tested Sevens formula.
 
In sports they say, “Never change a winning team”. In sports management, they must think “If it ain’t broken, fix it anyway.”
 
Let’s face it, the Sevens weekend has always been less about the rugby than it has been about the festivities surrounding it.
 
Before its fall, the spectacle was a great fit for quirky Wellington. It always kicked off with the parade down Lambton Quay. Later the crowds, dressed in tasteful and not-so-tasteful costumes, would descend on the city. Some of them eventually even found their way to the stadium.
                                                                                                                
And of course there was beer. Lots of beer. Granted this meant the streets were full of boisterous adults behaving in child-like ways. But the party was generally peaceful – and fun.
 
And it sold. There were millions of reasons why the Sevens did not need to change. Roughly the amount of dollars the event injected into Wellington.
 
Unfortunately some planners, supported by the men-in-blue, decided they knew what people wanted better than they knew themselves.
 
They were puzzled why folk would spend their hard-earned cash on a game of rugby without properly watching it.
 
So to bring the focus back to the game and lure in ‘real’ rugby fans, they scrapped the parade this year and slashed ticket prices. The biggest change though was to turn the Sevens from an event for childishly behaving adults into an event for actual children.
 
The result? The adults keen to party hard were no longer interested in coming for a bigger children’s birthday. And the most colourful thing about the Sevens 2016 were the almost 20,000 bright yellow seats screaming to be occupied.
 
Sometimes change is warranted. Other times, it is just messing with a classic.