Today is the closing date for bids to secure broadcast media rights to future Guinness Six Nations tournaments.
British media reports over the weekend suggested that the BBC Director-General had signed off on a higher joint bid with ITV to keep the tournament on public service, free to air, TV, as it has been throughout its history.
That is the way it has always been in Ireland as well with Virgin Media providing the pictures for the past four years and RTÉ potentially looking to win the Irish rights back this year.
Virgin Media’s loss of UEFA Champions League games from next season will potentially free up budget for what is expected to be a higher asking price for the tournament.
The 14 per cent stake taken by Private Equity Fund CVC is expected to deliver a different perspective to analysis of the bids and rumours are rife that Sky and BT Sport are both interested in paying higher to take the tournament behind a paywall.
Amazon Prime has also been mooted as a potential bidder but it is thought that interest has cooled due to the timing of the year and a potential focus on US Sport and European Football for the next major breakthrough on their development timeline.
The tournament has always been a staple of Irish TV viewing.
In 2020 the five games were watched by an aggregate audience of 3.26 million viewers with 850,300 tuning in for the Irisnd Vs England clash and all five games featuring in the Top 27 programmes of the year.
In 2019 the numbers were higher at 3.53 million aggregate and 980,200 for the biggest game against England.
In the Grand Slam year of 2018 975,600 tuned in for the key game against England and 3.53 million watched in total.
None of the games are ‘protected’ for free to air broadcast in a live format, a result of lobbying from the IRFU to protect the potential revenue from a more competitive bidding process.
There will be no immediate announcement on a winner in this rights cycle but when it comes it has the potential to be a short term financial shot in the arm for the sport but also a longer-term fading in terms of its place in the collective national consciousness.
The club game has held onto its grip on mainstream media coverage, in Ireland at least, despite being seen live by only a small proportion of those who tune in for the Six Nations.
The gamble that must now be taken is whether the audiences for TV sport in the future will be more targetted, with better data on the viewers and better ways of monetising that, as opposed to the big national events that lead to a collective gathering around the TV on a Saturday or Sunday spring Saturday.
Sport for Business Partners
