Rugby: France to host the 2023 Rugby World Cup

France will host the tenth edition of the Rugby World Cup in 2023, announced the World Rugby Council at the Royal Garden Hotel in London (United Kingdom) on 15/11/2017. The other two candidate countries were South Africa and Ireland. France beat South Africa 24-15 in the second round of voting. In the first round, France had 18 votes, versus 13 for South Africa, and 8 for Ireland.

The board of Rugby World Cup Limited unanimously recommended to the World Rugby Council the choice of South Africa to host the 2023 World Cup, on 31/10/2017. "The evaluation of the detailed bid submissions has been led by a team of World Rugby and external area experts. This was supported throughout by stringent independent evaluation and analysis from The Sports Consultancy to ensure evidence-based objectivity and consistent application against a set of weighted scoring criteria (see below)," said the international federation.

"This is the first Rugby World Cup host selection to take place following a complete redesign of the bidding process to promote greater transparency and maximise World Rugby’s…