‘Do you want to be the person who shot Bambi’ – Six Nations set for ‘massive moment’ in £100m paywall debate

01/28/2025 11:16 AM

The Six Nations returns this weekend for what could be the final time rugby’s elite takes over terrestrial TV.

The tournament offers the sport a chance to compete with football for the coveted slots in pubs around the UK for two months a year.

Under the current deal, BBC and ITV share live coverage of the Six Nations, with the Beeb televising Wales and Scotland’s home games, while ITV broadcasts the rest.

However, the £90million agreement expires this year, and the competition’s value has since jumped to the £100m threshold.

Unlike football World Cups or Wimbledon tennis, the Six Nations isn’t protected as a ‘Category A’ event for free TV by the government.

This opens the door for subscription-based channels to snare the rights should BBC and ITV be priced out by escalating costs.

talkSPORT rugby commentator, Andrew McKenna, explained on White & Jordan: "Every time that the contract comes up, it takes a step closer because it’s a sport that needs money.

"Unfortunately, terrestrial broadcasters, while we’ve got the situation that it has to be on free to air, the broadcasters know they don’t have to offer as much because they don’t have to compete with the subscription channels and therefore, they will pay less.

"Subscription channels, by their very nature, pay more for the rights because they can get it back through the subscription, through the sponsorship, through the advertising.

"So it’s a simple way up for Rugby Union. You’ve got a Six Nations game on a regular Saturday on the BBC will probably get six, or seven million people. TNT’s domestic rugby at the moment is probably doing 150,000. So you’ve got a choice to make.

"Do you want to get it seen as if you like a free advert to have it on BBC or ITV where you get big numbers? Or do you want to take the money and the sport needs the money and go to a subscription channel?"

Former Crystal Palace owner Simon Jordan agreed, pointing to the fact that the Broadcasting Act of 1996, (amended from the original act five years prior), which categorised the Six Nations as a Group B event, as ‘enshrined in law.’

He said: "Sports broadcasting has moved on and every sport now that goes behind the paywall, whether we like it or not, is being massively enhanced in some way or another.

"The sport in of itself, maybe not the spectator ability to see it, but behind the paywall, the darts, the footballs, even the crickets of the world that have gone into that space have created an enormous revenue stream for the game.

"The challenge from the broadcast point of view is that the free-to-air stuff is actually diminishing the advancement of the sport because whilst there was a right for people to watch it, the sport in and of itself is suffering and there has to be some sort of change.

"If you want to kill this argument, there’s got to be a change around the competitive pricing that a free-to-air broadcaster has to pay to be able to acquire it, which means then you get back into the argument of licence fees on the BBC and around and around you go."

The bidding process for the Six Nations will begin later this year, but TNT have claimed it would be a challenge to acquire the rights.

That stance won’t deter other subscription services from throwing their hat in the ring.

Sky Sports famously captured the rights to show Open Championship golf in 2015 after six decades on the BBC, which also had a reduced broadcast of the Paris Olympics, following a superior broadcast bid from Warner Brothers Discovery (WBD).

When asked if every sporting event is gettable in time, McKenna continued: "There will be pressure that increases every year on this one because, I mean, you’re talking about that act of 1991. Rugby Union didn’t go professional until 1995.

"So the landscape changed completely there. They now have to pay for central contracts for men and women.

"The RFU [Rugby Football Union] needs more money because it’s spending more money and that’s true of all the nations.

"So there will be an increased amount of pressure. The one thing that makes, has me having doubts about whether it’ll happen is if you take it off of free-to-air, do you want to be the chief exec that shot Bambi? Because that’s basically what we’re talking about."

He added: "Once it’s gone, it’s probably never coming back. So this is a massive, massive moment.

"The chief execs know that they’ve got to be absolutely certain – as you mentioned, it’s the quality of the broadcaster as well.

"At the moment, you might get half an hour build-up to a game if you’re lucky for a Six Nations game.

"I flicked around the channels the other night. I saw that Monday Night Football came on at 6.30 for either a 7.45 or an 8 o’clock game.
You’re not getting that on a free-to-air channel. You need a dedicated sports channel to be able to do that.

"So it’s a real balancing act. One of the other problems that rugby has got, and this may be why TNT is sort of stepping back, is that there are also language issues in the fact that in Wales, S4C can broadcast Six Nations games in the Welsh language, and in Ireland, there’s also a deal that it appears in the Irish language.

"Do TNT want to have that hassle? Let’s call it that. I don’t know. Is it worth it in their business model to have that as well?

"When Amazon did the Autumn Nations games a couple of years ago, they did actually do a Welsh language commentary. But it might be easier for another broadcaster to say, we’ll simply subcontract it. You do it on your channel. You take our pictures and we therefore don’t have them, but that’s one of the other issues."

Despite golf fans being impressed by the Open’s enhanced coverage since leaving terrestrial TV, McKenna admitted the Six Nations might not enjoy the same boost.

He told talkSPORT: "I’m not sure the coverage would be that improved because a lot of the people that work for TNT are freelancers who will also therefore work for the BBC or ITV in their coverage. So I don’t think you get a massive change.

"That’s then down to the producers and the directors if they want to do something slightly different. As we’ve already mentioned, what you will get is a longer broadcast.

"You get more time, more space to breathe, more analysis, and you’re not crowbarring everything in.

"Do you want that special thing of having an hour’s build-up to a game?"