The Australian Rugby Union says it wants to turn the Gold Coast into the country’s home of sevens rugby in the build-up to the 2018 Commonwealth Games.

For the past three years the Coast has hosted the opening round of the International Rugby Board’s sevens world series and the ARU wants to extend the event beyond its current deal with the Queensland government, which ends next year.

ARU sevens general manager Anthony Eddy said it was hoped the Gold Coast leg of the world series could one day match the status of iconic events such as the Hong Kong, Dubai or Wellington rounds.

“It is in its infancy and it takes a long time to build an event such as this to the same sort of level of a Hong Kong or whatever it might be,” Eddy told AAP on Sunday.

“There’s a Commonwealth Games here in 2018. From that perspective I think we can build this event and really make this a home of sevens rugby.

“Ultimately then with the Commonwealth Games here in 2018 people around the world are aware of Skilled Park, the Gold Coast and the fact that this is one of the premier sevens events on the IRB circuit.”

Eddy said discussions about extending the deal with the Queensland government would commence straight after this weekend’s tournament.

He said while crowd numbers had been steady since the tournament’s inception in 2011, there will certainly be an imperative to build attendances with the aim of getting a capacity crowd at the 27,400 Skilled Park.

“It’s a fantastic stadium for the event but the reality is we’ve got to start increasing the numbers,” he said.

“We’ve had around that 25-27,000 over the two days in the last three years, this being the third year. We’re about that mark again.

“We’ve got to continue to look at ways to continue building crowd numbers through different initiatives. We’re three years into the event and Hong Kong, Wellington, Dubai and those sorts of events that have the ticket selling out in six minute-type mentality, that’s going to take time.”