Each week we take a look at the world of the Irish and international sports media, the stories, the numbers and the organisations that are, more than ever before, our window on the world of sport…
********
SIX NATIONS SECURES DEAL WITH BBC AND ITV
Following on from its joint rights arrangement across all three tournaments with RTÉ and Virgin Media, Six Nations Rugby has now done the same in the UK with BBC and ITV.
It means the tournaments will remain fully free to air for the next four years and also that they will get maximum exposure across all the biggest audience free to air channels in both markets.
While in Ireland the deal runs down the middle of each tournament, In Britain there is a different mix.
ITV will show all of the home games played by England, Ireland, France and Italy in the men’s tournament, while the BBC will show the home games of Wales and Scotland.
The BBC though will have exclusive rights to the Women’s and U20 Championships with what is described as ‘unprecedented investment’ going into the Women’s in particular.
“For the millions of Six Nations fans across the UK, the Championships remaining free-to-air is wonderful news,” said BBC Director of Sport Barbara Slater.
“We look forward to delivering live action from both the Men’s and Women’s as well as the Men’s Under-20’s Championships to the widest possible audience over the next four seasons.”
“BBC Sport has led the way in increasing the profile of Women’s sports, so we are thrilled to now include the Women’s Six Nations as a permanent fixture on our broadcast calendar.”
“ITV is delighted to have reached this agreement, which extends free-to-air coverage of such an important tournament and will ensure it remains centre stage each spring,” added Niall Sloane, ITV Director of Sport.
“With the addition of France home games to those of England, Ireland and Italy, we look forward to bringing ITV viewers a wealth of superb rugby from the Six Nations in the coming years.”
Read our analysis of what the new deal means in Ireland.
********
DISNEY ACCELERATING MOVE TO STREAMING
The Walt Disney corporation has revealed that it plans to close down as many as 100 of its international cable TV offerings over the next twelve months as it moves more and more content towards its Disney + streaming offering.
The existing Disney+ offering includes all that you might expect from Disney’s catalogue of classic movies as well as everything in the Marvel and Star Wars Franchises.
ESPN+ has also been delivering more by way of the monthly subscription service and now the potential for moving its Asian facing sports business Hotstar, with its strong cricket offering, to online looks inevitable.
The latest deals with the NFL, NBA and NHL all include substantial streaming rights which will be exercised more over the course of the coming years.
It appears that making the delivery of service agnostic to the device you are watching it on is here in full, with mass market distribution driving down the unit cost and customers as well as sports and broadcasters benefitting in the long run.
********
JOIN US FOR STREAMING SPORT IN 2021
Our next Sport for Business Conference which will look in-depth at the world of Sports Streaming. This will take place now on the morning of Thursday, June 24th and places can be reserved now at the link below.
No single factor has emerged as a bigger opportunity for sport, and a bigger positive for fans than the growth of awareness of what streaming is capable of.
From professional leagues to local clubs, streaming technology has democratised the ability to deliver live sporting content to audiences at local and global level.
We will look under the covers of what the streaming revolution will mean for sporting bodies, sponsors, fans and media companies.
Each of the four conferences we have hosted this year has attracted strong audiences of hundreds of sporting and business leaders from across Ireland and around the world.
Sport for Business Streaming Sport in 2021 will be the same.
We will be announcing our lineup of subjects and speakers over the coming days but you can reserve your spot by registering at the link below.
REGISTER TO JOIN US, FREE IF YOUR ORGANISATION IS A MEMBER OF SPORT FOR BUSINESS
********
PREMIER SPORTS SECURES TOP14 RIGHTS FOR IRELAND AND UK
Premier Sports which broadcasts here as part of the Sky Sports Extra platform has secured the UK and Ireland rights to the Top14 Rugby tournament in France.
With two teams qualifying for the final of the Heineken Champions Cup this season, and Ronan O’Gara leading the way at La Rochell, interest in the French domestic game has never been higher.
The contract starts immediately with coverage through to the Play-offs, semi-finals and Final on June 25th.
Premier Sports is an investor in digital platform SportsJoe which has the rights to clips and highlights from its output which should see another raising of the bar for that medium in terms of its sports coverage.
********
NARROWING THE GAP BETWEEN DIGITAL AND LINEAR
We were joined this week by Paul O’Donohoe, Executive Vice-Chair of Greencastle Media who rescued Joe.ie and its titles including SportsJoe from examinership here last year.
We discussed the rescue and why they felt it was a worthwhile exercise, the changing face of sports content and consumption by fans, and the blurring of the lines between media across the written word, audiovisual content and clip rights.
Amongst the insights you will find by watching or listening back are:
“It gave us a platform to explore other opportunities, new formats and perhaps some ancillary activities like live events.”
“When you take a company out of examinership it’s not a bed of roses.”
“We are only at the start of the journey. We will be investing into the organic content.”
“We’ve doubled the editorial teams and hired Lucille Gavin as Head of Original Content to develop that team.”
“There was damage done to the brand but we have worked hard sitting down with all the stakeholders to restore trust.”
“It’s a challenge to engage with Gez Z and even Millenials but we are well-positioned in order to reach that audience.”
“The distance between digital and linear TV is narrowing.”
********
CHAMPIONS LEAGUE FINAL FREE ON YOUTUBE
Since 2016 it has been one of the most counterintuitive broadcast arrangements but once more on Saturday night BT Sport who pay over €1 billion for the exclusive rights to the Champions Cup in the UK, will show it all free to air on youtube.
With two English teams competing the stream is sure to attract millions, the bet being that at least some of them will then sign up for next season to watch on the BT Sport channels and App.
It also showed the Man United defeat to Villareal last night in the Final of the Europa League.
The match will be shown here on Saturday night on Virgin Media Two and the Virgin Media Player.
********
PODCAST OF THE WEEK
The High-Performance Podcast led by Jake Humphreys is back with a fifth series and running up to last week’s Monaco Grand Prix they had Christian Horner, the principal of the Red Bull team on the show.
His was a story of having risen through the ranks and getting to the top of the sport without any background in engineering, aerodynamics or any of the skills you would imagine as pre-requisites. He took over the team in F1 at the age of 31 having created his own team from scratch in the next division down, now Formula 2 but back then known as Formula 3,000.
It was anything but an easy ride though as this quote from the episode reveals.
“I was having to do everything. So I was booking hotels, I was doing the VAT returns, I was paying the wages every Friday, I was paying for the fuel, buying the parts, borrowing as much money as I could from the bank, speaking with them every week about how far overdone I was on the overdraft, the credit card was maxed out by paying for tyres, you know I was washing the truck and getting the pizzas for the mechanics at the end of the day.”
RTÉ, Sky Sports, OTB, TG4, Nemeton TV, TVM, Iris Productions, Pundit Arena and Balls.ie are among the more than 250+ members of the Sport for Business network of sporting and business organisations working together across a number of key areas.
Sport for Business Partners
