Allowing the United Rugby Championship Time and Freedom to Grow

The United Rugby Championship has been formally launched this week and will hit the stadia and our screens on Friday, September 24th.

It is a bold reshaping of the way in which Club Rugby is presented across Ireland, Scotland, Wales, Italy and now South Africa and it comes with the added heft of being played in unison with the international rugby calendar as opposed to how the old Guinness Pro 14 felt at times to be taking part in parallel.

We had an opportunity to sit with the CEO of the new Championship Martin Anayi in which we explored a number of these issues and more…

SFB: Let’s start at the beginning of the idea of the United Rugby Championship. What was the catalyst for change?

MA: Expanding to include the top club teams from South Africa gave us an opportunity to reimagine what the tournament was and how it might be presented.

We wanted to ensure that the potential of a great sporting tournament was matched by the experience of the fans and that it should become more accessible.

A large number of stakeholders were involved and one of the key things to emerge quite quickly was that we should focus on quality rather than expanding the number of games.

Creating the structure we have allowed for a more comfortable fit in the International calendar, meaning that for the new season our fixtures will be stand-alone, away from the clamour of international weekends and synchronised with the Heineken Champions Cup.

SFB: Getting the games seen by as many as possible was clearly important. Was expanding the free to air element and bringing RTÉ to the table a key part of your planning?

MA: We had a strong existing partnership with Premier Sports in the UK but the deal with eir Sport here in Ireland, which had served us well in the PRO14 era, was coming to an end so that presented an opportunity to look more closely at free to air.

There was a desire to make the broadcast deal more expansive in Ireland and RTÉ was a very interesting party to bring in. TG4 have been with us from the very beginning and once they were comfortable working alongside each other, a lot of other positives began to emerge.

We wanted to grow the OTT streaming aspect of our coverage and RTÉ’s experience of that working with another strong rights holder in the GAA was clearly of real interest.

Gathering the different strands together has given us our strongest ever four-year cycle of media rights in Ireland with 26 games on each of RTÉ and TG4 and a streaming product that will serve Ireland, Europe, the United States and the growth markets around the world.

SFB: Was that deal already in motion at the time of your investment from CVC?

MA: It was. CVC have a lot of experience in this area and they were able quickly to validate that it was a good strategy and that the partnerships we were building were exactly the right ones.

Their input and advice has been of real value.

SFB: You announced Vodacom as the main partner for the South African Commercial Rights. Is this a new model that will lead to similar deals for each of the different countries?

MA: Vodacom has been a very strong partner of South African Rugby for the past 25 years. They were interested in continuing that through the United Rugby Championship and they will bring real strength and credibility to establishing it in South Africa.

They do not have a commercial offering in Europe though so that gave rise to the possibility of having partners based on region rather than one overall naming deal.

Vodacom’s strong backing and a number of other deals in place or in the pipeline gave us the time and the freedom to allow the tournament to grow into itself, and into the minds of potential partners over the course of this first season.

SFB: So there will be no naming partner here for the time being?

MA: That is something that will more likely be in place for the second season in 2022. We are still facing into what will be a Covid affected year, though we are hopefully through the worst of that.

We are conscious of the ecosystem that surrounds the Rugby Unions, who are our stakeholders, and of the partnerships which they have in place. The clubs are also significant sponsorship properties in their own right and we need to be part of that overall picture.

The expansion of our free-to-air model, as well as what we know we will be a significant step up in terms of interest and quality of the Championship, through the addition of the South African teams and the avoidance of international windows will set a new benchmark in terms of the appeal of what we offer to different brands.

The United Rugby Championship has a very clear proposition, the branding is strong and the games themselves will be outstanding. That all adds up to an opportunity that we feel will be attractive as the world and the world of sport resets itself.