The upcoming rugby season for Irish fans will see a significant shift as the Champions Cup and Challenge Cup broadcasts transition from TNT Sports to Premier Sports. This transition signifies that Premier Sports will provide full coverage throughout all the province matches this season. Ryle Nugent, the chief executive of Premier Sports, is confident in delivering an improved product while taking on this challenge.
Premier Sports has secured a contract for live telecast of all Champions Cup matches involving Leinster, Munster and Ulster. Depending on the broadcast agreements, they may be responsible for Connacht’s away games and their respective Challenge Cup games as well, marking their first season of a three-year contract with EPCR.
Premier Sports succeed TNT Sports, who decided to step back from the Champions Cup in favour of the Autumn Series TV rights. Their predecessor, BT Sport, was initially agreed for exclusivity in broadcasting the Champions Cup and Challenge Cup in 2017, thereby cutting off Sky Sports’s 14-year association with the tournament.
RTÉ, who resumed its Champions Cup coverage in 2022 after a hiatus of 16 years, plans to continue airing one match per round for an additional season. This will start with the Munster v Stade Français match at Thomond Park on December 7th, followed by the Leinster v Clermont match in the subsequent Saturday.
Besides these matches, Premier Sports will exclusively present the Toulouse v Ulster and Bristol v Leinster matches on Sunday, December 8th. Furthermore, they will cover the Castres v Munster and Ulster v Bordeaux/Bègles matches the next weekend, along with Connacht’s first two Challenge Cup matches at home to Zebre Parma and away to Perpignan.
While RTÉ and TG4 will maintain some URC matches, Premier Sports will also telecast all of this season’s URC matches and up to three games every weekend in the Top 14, building on its newly obtained TV rights for the expanded European Champions League.
Premier Sports has expanded its broadcast offerings, now featuring all dozen pool matches of the Champions League and four games from the Challenge Cup per round. While most games will be transmitted live, some may be pre-recorded, mostly if they coincide with an Irish provincial game or a Premier League match airing at 3pm on the channel.
In the words of Nugent, this expansion portrays a positive change for rugby viewers. Sky, NOW, or Virgin Media users can access the expanded service through their respective platforms’ pay-per-view packages.
Nugent acknowledges that Premier Sports, which started its operations in Ireland in 2021 as an effective replacement of Setanta Sports and Eir Sport, was able to broaden its portfolio after repossessing Premier Sports and its digital platform from the Viaplay Group, in November 2023. This assertive business strategy is viewed by Nugent as a promotion for the sporting channel.
Premier Sports’ new chapter brings top-league tournaments like the Champions Cup, the Challenge Cup, and the URC, besides Premier League and the Champions League matches, along with Shamrock Rovers in the Conference League. None of this would have been possible without the established framework of their UK business that has been brought back under the same ownership.
Ex-rugby commentator at RTÉ (since 1999) and head of sport from 2010 to 2018, Nugent is keen on extending the impressive line-up of pundits which already boasts names like Stephen Ferris, Andrew Trimble, Ian Madigan, Rob Kearney, John Barclay and Tom Shanklin.
In 2022, Premier Sports had attempted to make strides from square one in a more restrained setting with limited resources, following the company’s UK sale. Now that things are back to normal, Nugent is optimistic that fans will appreciate the transformation.
He commented that Premier Sports has an outstanding team of seasoned presenters coupled with a robust array of pundits and analysts. They are also set to announce an additional Irish panel member and make several new additions in England. Nugent firmly believes that Premier Sports’ expansion is a challenge they are equipped and enthusiastic to undertake.
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