Host nation United States No. of nations 7 Runner-up Japan | Dates July 9 – July 18 Champions United States Third-place Mexico | |
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The 2015 IFAF World Championship was the fifth instance of the IFAF World Championship, an international American football tournament. The United States hosted the tournament. Seven teams had confirmed their participation for the tournament in Canton, Ohio.
Contents
The tournament was to be hosted by Stockholm, Sweden with all games to be taken place at the new Tele2 Arena, but on 19 December 2014, the local organizing committee (LOC) for the Stockholm 2015 VM Amerikansk fotboll announced that it could not raise the sponsor structure to run the event and thus had to cancel. USA Football then stepped in and announced the Championships would be held at the Tom Benson Hall of Fame Stadium in Canton. Several days later both the German and Austrian teams announced they would not be able to attend the 2015 Championships citing the increased financial costs of travelling to the United States and also questioning the choice of Canton for hosting it due to the lack of facilities for a large number of teams.
The United States won their third consecutive championship in their third appearance, defeating Japan in the final. The Gold Medal Game international broadcast was carried on Sports Radio America.
History
The 2015 games in Sweden were originally scheduled to be the first ever to consist of a field of 12 national teams in World Championships. The teams were to be divided into four groups for the preliminary round.
Budgetary considerations caused several teams to withdraw from the 2015 Championship. After the move of the tournament to Canton a new schedule containing only 8 teams was announced.
The schedule in Canton originally had five rounds, with teams divided into two brackets of four teams each. The preliminary rounds consisted of three games for each team against each of the other teams in their bracket. The top three finishers in the higher bracket- which included the higher seeded teams (USA, Canada, Japan, and Mexico), and the lone top finisher in the lower bracket would reach the semi-final and final single-elimination round.
In late April #2 seed Canada (Silver Medal winners in 2011) announced it would withdraw, citing sponsorship, budgetary and scheduling difficulties.
The revised final schedule included 7 teams playing 4 rounds with three games each day on July 9, 12, 15, 18. #3 seed Japan received a bye in Round 1, while #4 seed Mexico drew a bye in Round 2 as a result of its loss in the first round game versus the US team.
On July 18, the United States defeated Japan 59–12 to win the 2015 IFAF World Championship.
Qualifying
Teams with an asterisk did not attend.
Notes
This was the fifth IFAF World Championship tournament for Japanese defensive lineman Yasuo Wakisaka, 46. He is the only player to appear in all world championship tournaments since its inception in 1999.
Venue
All games of the tournament were to be played in the 30,000 spectator Tele2 Arena located in Stockholm, Sweden but were moved to Tom Benson Hall of Fame Stadium in Canton, U.S. instead.
Bracket
Canada withdrew from the tournament after the revised schedule was announced, giving Japan a bye to the second round.
Winner
All times in Eastern Daylight Time (UTC−04:00)
Round 1
Game 1