Premiership Rugby on BT: What does it mean for fans?
The telecoms giant BT has today announced that it has signed a four-year broadcasting agreement with Premiership Rugby at the staggering cost of £152 million.
The agreement will mean that from the 2013/2014 season till the end of 2017, BT will hold the exclusive live broadcasting rights to all the Aviva Premiership games and the JP Morgan Sevens Series.
This new deal brings to an end the agreement between Premiership Rugby and BSkyB which had been running since 1994, and more recently from 2010 with BSkyB and Disney’s ESPN, which both shared the broadcasting rights.
This is a further big hit to Sky and its prominent place as the largest sport broadcaster in the country. They will still have the live rights to England’s summer tours, the Autumn Internationals and the British and Irish Lions tours, but rugby union in England will no longer have a weekly presence on its stations.
From 2014/15 BT will also hold the exclusive rights to matches played by Premiership clubs in any future European competitions, for three years. This is key as the English clubs, along with the French clubs, have given two years’ notice that they will pull out of the Heineken Cup and the Amlin Challenge Cup unless the changes that they have been pressing for are met.
This new ground-breaking agreement means that from 2014 BT will have live broadcast rights for up to 69 matches per season, making it the place to be for any rugby couch potatoes.
Mark McCafferty, the chief executive of Premiership Rugby, declared that, “This is a game-changing agreement and will deliver a service that I know our club supporters will enjoy.”
For the basic rugby fan all this information is great, but you’re still probably asking what does this mean for me?
The increase in value of the contract can be seen as a positive step: the money can be reinvested by the clubs into their infrastructure and at grass-roots levels and help improve to the game across the country. BT have also said they will help all twelve Aviva Premiership clubs improve their technical infrastructure so that they can be at the forefront of this new technical age.
But conversely, there do seem to be some grey areas in terms of how people can actually watch the coverage. Does the consumer have to have own a BT Vision box to watch the matches, or will the games be available through a Sky subscription or similar?
Does the average rugby fan have to switch to BT broadband and then obviously a BT phone line in order to get a BT Vision subscription? Will people really jump through these hoops to watch the coverage, and how much will it cost?
Marc Watson has tried to down play these concerns and stop rumours by saying that BT plans, “to bring the excitement of the very best matches to as wide an audience as possible. We will also be bringing all of the action together in one place and will look to distribute it on a variety of platforms.”
Is this good for the game? In the short term it means more money for clubs and investment in the sport, but will it result in fewer people watching the game than before?
Let us know your thoughts about it below.
37 Comments
Leave a Comment
Recent comments
Take us on at SuperBru
My concern is around the BT Chief’s comments about a ‘dazzling new European tournament’ being around the corner. BT will not be part of a publicity stunt by the PRA so there has to be some depth to this comment. I also cannot work out what gives the PRA the right to sell ERC matches, surely the rights to the European Cup lie with the European organising body?
My conclusion is that Heineken are not going to renew their sponsorship and BT will take over. That then gives him his ‘dazzling’ new European tournament as they will caveat their deal by making qualification a meritocracy. I for one then worry about the future of the European game as we will end up with a football situation where money, money, money is the priority and whoever has the deepest pockets has the most success. The playing field is not even between England, France, Wales, Scotland, Ireland and Italy. England and France have larger and more affluent populations, as such it will be nigh on impossible for anyone else to compete against them. They have more money and larger squads to deal with European qualification
I don’t for one second think the current system is correct but as the ERC are building the game in Italy and rebuilding it in Wales and Scotland, removing the existing checks and balances and going to an absolute meritocracy is short sighting and too commercially driven for me
” England and France have larger and more affluent populations, as such it will be nigh on impossible for anyone else to compete against them” – Yes, and this is what the Eng and Fra clubs also know and want to use to their advantage (though do not discount Leinster and Munster from being in the same financial position).
The Eng and Fra clubs (as opposed to their unions) see no personal value in ensuring European rugby as a whole prospers. They make some noises about a new comp that enables Spain etc. to play some third tier rugby but this is just to distract people from what is really going on here, a power grab by the clubs from the unions.
I think the Eng and Fra clubs are misguided, they will turn RU into Rugby League, played and well attended in small geographical areas, with no interest outside those areas because there is no national game, only Leics/Saracens/Northampton/Gloucs/Exeter/etc.
The more I think about it the more I think that this is the potential doomsday trigger than kills off NH international rugby by making Eng and Fra the only viable places to have a professional game. All the players go there, Celtic national teams wilt (short term gain for Eng/Fra but they will get bored of playing 2nd rate teams eventually). Eventually even all of the best SH players will go there as the money keeps getting concentrated there. Rugby reduces down to Eng v Fra, much like RL is about Aus v GB.
Whilst an increased value on television rights is a good thing I was hoping this would result in more clubs being less reliant on benevolent owners, allow investment in infrastructure and academies, etc. I am however very concerned that the money will just go and fuel more wage inflation to compete with the French. I completely agree with your assessment as to where this leaves the longer term future for the European game.
For the future of European comps I would like to see:
- A salary cap for the squads registered to play HC or Amlin
- An equal distribution of television revenue across all clubs (HC Revenue + Amlin Revenue)/No of Participating Clubs
- Promotion/Relegation between Amlin and HC, e.g. Amlin Semi Finalists make next year’s HC and bottom 4 HC pool finishers drop down. This way we will end up with the best teams playing HC, but because of the distribution of revenue the likes of Zebre will not lose out (and may benefit from playing in a comp where they may win a game)
I think it will be detrimental to the game long term if 3 of the 6 nations can’t field competitive teams in European competition. So whilst I welcome the additional money, I am concerned over how it may be used.
How long before the no promotion and relgation issue gets raised again by the English clubs?
Staggy, do you mean their proposal there should be no relegation in the AP or their completely contradictory moan that the Rabo Pro has an advantage precisely because it has no relegation?
The former! The haves of the AP want to keep out the have nots, and thereby stultify rugby in the lower leagues.
The only way this could ever happen, is for the model of the regions to be used with RFU control, but it never will (and the thought of RFU (or ERFU if you prefer!)control fills me with dread!).
I have to say that the more that I hear about this saga, the worse it gets. The arrogance of the English clubs seems unbelievable. Its no wonder the Celts hate us!
I have to say that I really dislike the fact that certain nations e.g. Scotland – has two teams and both automatically go into the HC – I believe that you should have to earn the opportunity to play in the HC not view it as a right – otherwise, where is the pride in being in the competition? So, I believe, something had to change.
& given that rugby is now professional – money talks and bulls**t walks
The money is with the English and French
2011-2012 average attendance
French Top 14: 14,024
English Premiership: 12,979
Pro 12: 7,721
& Heineken cup: 14,837
(so if the French walk away from the HC – would it really hurt them financially? Doesn’t look like it to me)
NickC, that’s a tidy encapsulation of one side of the view.
To take the money point first – where do you stop with following the money? Why stop at letting England and France play with themselves because no other leagues are as financially viable? In the English league itself start by pruning the bottom 4 leeches who do not make money – Newcastle, Sale, London Welsh, etc. Follow the money, and it’s all in Leics/Gloucs/Saints really. Then let’s stop all of this subsidising the SH teams by touring there in the summer and giving them all the money. So now we’re down to two countries with leagues, no international rugby to speak of, and why not go the whole hog and admit there is even more money in France so let’s get all of the best players over there, ditch Anglo/Welsh because the French would always win, and then close down the English leagues … slightly over the top I know, trying to use farce to point out the folly in only thinking about money when it comes to sport. We (all of us, not just the English) need a sustainable sport across multiple countries to keep interest at the level we want. This means that those with the luck of naturally bigger populations and urban centers need to share out some money in the pot, or first Scottish and Italian rugby will die, then Wales, then SH, etc.
As for the HC – again, that is one viewpoint. Another is that it’s a European cup and was never intended to be a “best of the best” but rather a “best of each country in Europe”. It is not the Champions League, it is a cross-Europe competition which therefore entails a different qualification strategy to ensure cross-Europe representation. Too try and limit the Rabo Pro qualification in the suggested ways simply penalises those of us without countries large enough to support 10 or 12 team leagues. If we disbanded the Pro 12 in order to avoid the English interfering in our qualification process, thus getting even more of this supposedly advantageous “rest time”, would that be acceptable then to the English? How would you beat us up then to compensate for not winning the thing for years? I don’t think this is an idle threat either – the Irish have always been a bit wary of having the full resources to do the Pro 12 so I can easily see them dropping out of it if it threatens their 3 guaranteed HC places.
I switched from BT to SKY after BT informed me they were not increasing my monthly rental
because I was a loyal customer. Approx. £22 per month.
When they found out I was changing BT called offering me a deal for approx. £12 per month
as I was a loyal customer. Betrayal of a customer I thought (they should have made the £12 offer from the start) so I joined SKY.
Beware of what’s up their sleeve. It’s only money their after. Do you honestly believe they are doing this for the sake of rugby or the fans?