We know that the next Rugby World Cup will be broadcast live in Ireland on eirSport and that from 2017 the 6 Nations will be moving from RTE to TV3.
The European Champions’ Cup and the Guinness Pro12 have been split between BT Sport, Sky Sports, RTE and TG4 in Ireland so Rugby fans could be forgiven for a sense on uncertainty about what to watch and how.
It could be about to get more confusing still with news on Bloomberg over the weekend that Amazon was considering Rugby and tennis as the first elements of a new strategy to bring sport to its own streaming service.
In layman terms Amazon Prime is a similar service to Netflix where for a monthly fee you can stream material on a range of devices from phones and laptops to the smart TV in the corner of the room.
Amazon has been snapping up sporting talent from Sports Illustrated and You Tube in order to create a compelling sports product.
It won the audio rights to the German Bundesliga from 2017 and is reported to have targeted Rugby as a global sport with a fan base likely to adopt streaming services.
These are fascinating days for the changes being wrought in how sport is broadcast. The amounts of money being paid range from over €6 Billion for the premier League in its next iteration to twice that for the US rights to the Olympic Games.
Big brands like Red Bull are also making inroads into creating their own content, often from their own events, which are being broadcast to attractive niche audiences using the latest technology which 20 years ago would have seemed an impossible dream.
Sport for Business will shortly be announcing details of a special Members event in Dublin, aimed at brand managers who need to be on top of the changing nature of TV consumption. Please do get in touch with us here if you would like to know more about this event.
