Ahead of the Investec Champions Cup, City AM sat down with Richard Sweeney of Premier Sports as the broadcaster takes on European rugby’s rights.
When the Champions Cup TV deal between TNT Sports and European Professional Club Rugby (EPCR) came to an end, many assumed a copy-and-paste agreement would see the partnership continue.
But the Warner Bros Discovery-owned network instead chose to buy international rugby rights and renew its contract with the English Premiership, leaving the way clear for Premier Sports to seal one almighty coup.
Despite being 15 years old, the Irish broadcaster remains in the “challenger” bracket compared to Sky and TNT.
Its portfolio includes top-flight Spanish football, NHL ice hockey and US racing series Nascar.
But the addition of every Champions Cup match, which begins on Friday when Bath host La Rochelle, and a number of Challenge Cup matches establishes the platform as a hotbed for rugby, chief executive Richard Sweeney tells City AM.
Really happy
“We’re really happy. Our strategy is to have very good rugby,” he says. “We have shown a huge number of live games but when you move from market to market it is difficult unless you have something of interest.
“We do 150 URC games and if we can do similarly on the Top14 we thought – while the Premiership was locked up for a couple of years and the autumn internationals are on TNT – that EPCR would be great with the other rugby content that we have. [And] we said we’d really focus [on it].
“Football is tied up in England, there’s very little ability, so the EPCR we thought was just a great fit for our rugby content.”
European rugby is in an interesting place at the moment. The pinnacle of global club rugby is still adjusting to the challenges of adding South African sides into the mix while banking giant Investec is into its second year as title sponsor. It is understood to have a break clause after the third year of a five-season deal.
The French clubs – Toulouse and La Rochelle – have shared the last four titles and governing body EPCR has lost its highly regarded COO Anthony Lepage. So Premier Sports seem to be a tonic for European rugby, and the broadcaster plans on keeping it that way with a dedicated channel for the sport in the pipeline.
24/7 ovalball
“The idea for a 24/7 rugby channel is that the market is very split, and you can see how Sky try to do it by naming a channel after a specific sport,” adds Sweeney.
“Well we thought a rugby channel specifically on the linear would be a place for a fan to go to and it sends a message that we are serious and in it for the long term.
“It will evolve with other types of rugby content. So at the moment we have three competitions and then after that we are in discussions for other rugby content around the world.
“But on a weekend there’s only so much space. We are going to look down to schoolboys rugby, maybe the Japanese league. There’s a new South American competition coming up and maybe [we will] look at podcasts as it evolves.”
Outside Premiership grounds last weekend you would have seen billboards advertising Premier Sports’ rugby offering – access to all games across all of the competitions it shows for a flat season fee of £70.
Premier Sports still a challenger?
But the so-called challenger is in rugby’s big time now, albeit Sweeney knows where the group – owned by Mickey O’Rourke – sits in the broadcasting pecking order.
“There are bigger players in the market and we need to respect that,” he says. “We’re careful about what we buy and how we invest.
“There’s no [external investment], Mickey runs the company at the moment but watch this space. If anyone said two years ago that Premier Sports would own the EPCR you’d have said ‘really?’, but there’s lots of opportunities and it does happen.
“We look strategically and financially and once we know what works for us we will put in an offer. It may not work for the rights holders but it works for us. That’s how it works.”