Fort Lauderdale to host 2nd women's World Sevens Football series

Fort Lauderdale, Florida, has been confirmed as the host of the next World Sevens Football (W7F) tournament, taking place in December.

Beyond Bancard Field, home of the USL Super League's Fort Lauderdale United FC, will host the eight-team tournament on Dec. 5-7, 2025.

The competition, made up of two 15-minute halves with a group and knockout stage, carries a $5 million prize fund, the largest pool in the women's game.

Bayern Munich won the inaugural European tournament in May. Adrian Jacob, the head of World Sevens Football, told reporters on Tuesday that the second edition of W7F will be a "bigger, better" production with less "European conservativism" and more fanfare.

"We all want to make it faster. We want to make it louder, bigger, brasher, just really embrace it. I think that's what we're going to be doing...

"If you go to the States, you've got to be bigger. You've got to put it all out there, really."

Jacob declined on multiple occasions to comment on the clubs that will participate in December's tournament, including whether Fort Lauderdale United FC would participate as the host.

All eight participants in the inaugural event in Portugal in May were from Europe.

"The women's football calendar is not the easiest to navigate," Jacob said. "There's a lot of overlapping and a lot of gaps there. It's trying to find those gaps where you can have more than one continent playing."

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Event organizers targeted Florida for the ease of travel and the ideal weather in December, with hopes of replicating the "holiday vibe" from Lisbon. Jacob said that Fort Lauderdale United FC's "infrastructure is fantastic."

The winner of December's tournament will receive $2 million, Jacob confirmed -- down from $2.5 million in the inaugural event, with the idea that the other seven teams deserved more of the total prize pool.

Former United States women's national team defender and two-time World Cup winner Kelley O'Hara is part of the W7F player advisory council.

O'Hara said that the first tournament's participants were begging to be part of upcoming events, which makes sense because "7-v-7 is our favorite format of football."

Instead of playing those small-sided games at training, players get to do so against other top clubs and for a significant payday.

"We want a place where players can enjoy themselves [and] have fun, but we want it to be good football, we want it to be competitive," O'Hara said. "That went into the thinking of the clubs that we brought in and how we set it up."