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”.