Sports Extra (TNT/Premier)

Rumours swirling tonight, fuelled by this report by Brendan Fanning on RugbyPass, that Premier Sports have won either all of the rights to the Champions Cup and European Challenge Cup or (in another version of the story also doing the rounds) a share of the rights with TNT retaining a smaller share, in a similar arrangement to what pertained between Sky and TNT’s predecessor BT Sport in 2014-2018

https://amp.rugbypass.com/news/premier-sports-swoop-in-for-champions-cup-rights/

One of the reasons the “share the rights” version seems plausible. Premier are already covering 8 games a weekend for the URC, but moving up to the 12 the Champions Cup would require (plus at least some coverage of the European Challenge Cup) seems to be too far.

For me, my worry would be that Premier simply couldn’t do this tournament the justice that we’ve come to expect over the last two decades or so. They simply don’t have the resources that Sky or TNT would have. I would expect a lot of games, certainly those hosted by French, South African, or Italian clubs, to move to whistle to whistle coverage.

Means no pre game build up or post game analysis, half time coverage, if there is any (and there often isn’t on Premier, who prefer to show any one of their myriad of prerecorded clips of goals/tries from the previous week) will just be the commentators talking over some replays. So coverage starts with the kick off whistle (in reality it’ll be a few minutes before to show the team sheets) and ends moments after the final whistle. Hence “ whistle to whistle”.

You have to kinda break the market down.

In ROI there’s not much difference between it being on TNT or Premier, from a subscriber point of view it’s the one pack, at least for twelve months more. Really this shouldn’t drive any change in subscription format in this market.

For the UK, I think you need to break it into Scotland/Wales/NI, where the URC’s already on Premier, and so there would be a subscription driver for rugby fans there already, particularly in Scotland where Premier have more or less exclusive rights to Glasgow and Edinburgh games. England is an entirely different kettle of fish, the URC is not a subscription driver there, and so that will be where the main bone of contention over Premier getting the rights may lie. As I recall the 2014-18 split gave BT (as was) first pick over PRL teams home games, and maybe if it really is a split deal there’ll be something similar this time around.

@TonyK45 I take you are referring to a site that is for press use only and most of us wouldn’t have access to? I’m not sure that it’s fair to refer to such a site on a public forum?

Incidentally, Premier still don’t have Premier 2 listings back on their website, I know they can be obtained elsewhere (Sky guide online or entertainment.ie).