TG4 aims for Champions Cup highlights package
The tournament starts next week and is to be screened exclusively live in Ireland and the UK on subscription channels Sky Sports and BT Sport.
The Irish language station aired a similar snippet programme throughout the last three years of the now defunct Heineken Cup and, with no plans to screen highlights on RTÉ or BBC, the hopes of hard-pressed Irish fans rest with the Galway-based outfit.
Should TG4 fail to secure an agreement with the new organising body, supporters wishing to guarantee access to all of their province’s games on television would be obliged to fork out for two subscription packages for the first time.
A long-term player in the TV rugby market, TG4 already shares rights to screen live Guinness Pro12 games with Sky Sports. It also offers a league highlights programme and has shown other significant events such as the Women’s Rugby World Cup.
Paul McNaughton, a director of organisers European Professional Club Rugby (EPCR), said supporters’ needs had been considered when striking various satellite TV deals around Europe, but that bang for their buck had to be the bottom line.
“Everybody has thoughts for the fans but stakeholders — which are the six unions and the three club organisations including the Welsh regions — they have a duty to maximise the revenues from these games because it is becoming an expensive game to run.
“It would be great to get the most money and the widest audience, but sometimes that is not possible,” said McNaughton, who was a multi-talented sportsman and team manager to the Ireland international side in years past.
McNaughton added that live European games have been screened exclusively on satellite TV for a decade in Ireland and the UK and questioned the view that splitting rights between Sky and BT would reduce viewing figures and the tournament’s visibility.
“Time will tell if there are less viewers in Britain and Ireland.”
It was only on Sunday evening that the last of the various live TV packages was agreed, with the terrestrial France Télévisions awarded nine games in the Champions Cup and the same again for the second-tier Challenge Cup.
Satellite company beIN Sport had already secured rights to every game, but it was deemed necessary to make the tournament available to a wider audience in France in order to attract a higher class of sponsor.
Much other business remains to be done.
As it stands, Heineken was the only major commercial partner on view at yesterday’s Dublin launch of the tournament at the Convention Centre while Renault and Turkish Airlines have been mooted as other possible suitors.
The drinks company’s presence was the source of some amusement on social media and the use of the same ERC staffers who ran the old competition and even the same theme music added to the sense that, though much has changed, much remains the same.
With a fortnight to go before kick-off the EPCR still has no chairman, at least four major sponsors have yet to sign up and it will be next season before the gig is orchestrated from its new HQ in Neuchâtel in Switzerland.
McNaughton explained the delays by dint of the fact that the terms of agreement were only agreed last March and that much of the commercial work had to be held off until the French TV deals were in the bag and a complete package could be put out to tender.
And he denied the suggestion that the absence of basic building blocks such as key sponsors and other instrumental infrastructure made for an embarrassing start to the tournament’s inaugural season.
“I’m not embarrassed. You gotta get the right [sponsors] and you gotta get them for the right price.
“We have to play the right commercial game here.”
It is the commercial game that won the political war between the English and French clubs on one side and the unions on the other last season. The promise was that the pots of money would be larger and, according to McNaughton, they are.
Television contracts are apparently worth 60% more than the previous accords and the plan is to have all five tournament sponsors tied down to lucrative four-year deals by the start of next season’s tournament.
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