United Rugby Championship (new name for Celtic League/Pro14) TV rights

kooga

united rugby championship will be on RTE and Tg4 seems to be just a focus on the irish teams - dont know who has the Uk rights.

https://www.rte.ie/sport/rugby/2021/0616/1228458-united-rugby-championship-tv-rte-tg4/

Mod:
With apologies to kooga for hijacking their post it might be useful to summarise in the OP what’s been awarded for 2021-25 - I’ll update as more details are announced.
* Premier Sports - all 151 games live for Sky/Now/Vodafone Sports Extra subscribers
*URC TV - stand-alone packages offering all 151 games live, or all 60 games involving Irish teams. Weekends and individual games available on a PPV basis.
* TG4 - 26 regular season games involving Irish teams and 16 games not involving Irish teams + selected playoffs + final every second year live and free to air.
* RTE - 26 regular season games involving Irish teams + selected playoffs + final every other year live and free to air.
*BBC NI - six home Ulster regular season games + final if it involves Ulster.
*BBC Wales - 18 regular season games involving Welsh teams / shared coverage of playoffs involving Welsh teams
*S4C - 27 regular season games involving Welsh teams / shared coverage of playoffs involving Welsh teams.

roadmaster

Is the OTT service GAA GO rebranded? If it is does the gaa get a cut of the money or is that just the name rte used for the gaa service?

icdg

We don’t know the details of the URC service, it hasn’t been set up yet. Celtic Rugby’s press release only refers to RTE and not GAAGO as the operator.

However the now defunct WatchLOI did use GAAGO as its platform and yes the GAA took a cut, they own 50% of GAAGO.

Delta2113

Be interesting how much they want to charge for Republic of Ireland for this service or if they will have one or two tier options.

RTE and TG4 will have a lot off games and if you have BBC as well -doesn't leave much.

icdg

I think we’ll need to see the details of what sort of OTT service is being offered in Ireland, which in turn will be influenced by the shape of the remaining TV deals.

The initial reports were only of an overseas service, and then suddenly it emerged there was a domestic element too.

The only thing I can think of is that Premier Sports rights may remain U.K. restricted, and the games being offered on the OTT service will be primarily those games and those offered by U.K. regional broadcasters. That may be a hard sell particularly for those with Freesat as they will have access to U.K. regional broadcasters that way so it would literally only be games exclusive to Premier Sports that they would be missing. (Which will possibly hit Ulster fans the hardest, as they are apparently set to have a large number of away games going to Premier Sports, with home fixtures on BBC NI. I suspect these are exactly the eight games which are apparently not in the Irish TV deal. Also annoying for those of us paying for Premier Sports here - which I suspect a large number of Irish fans are, as it’s bundled with BT who have the Heineken Cup).

The domestic deals are, in summary, 26 games involving Irish teams on RTE, 26 games involving Irish teams on TG4, and 16 games not involving Irish teams on TG4. Irish teams will play a total of 60 games between them (12 derbies, and 12x4=48 games against non-Irish opposition). Overall there will be a total of 151 games (18 regular season weeks with 8 games each week + 7 playoff games) meaning 68/151 games on Irish TV or slightly less than half of all fixtures.

mike2084

Annoying that it looks like the Premier Sports games will be blocked here at least you could watch pretty much all the games on eir 1 or 2.

icdg

mike2084 wrote: »

Annoying that it looks like the Premier Sports games will be blocked here at least you could watch pretty much all the games on eir 1 or 2.

Well, we don’t know that yet, and the earlier reports were that Premier Sports would have UK and Irish rights. But that was before the mention of an OTT platform came into play. I have Premier Sports, and so I’m not particularly keen on the idea to pay an additional subscription for games that (Ulster away fixtures notwithstanding) won’t involve Irish teams. 16 of those games will be on TG4, and hopefully their picks might include some of the SA derbies, which I think are probably the tastiest of the non-Irish games. There is enough other rugby on TV tbh - as I mentioned elsewhere, a Sports Extra subscriber would have access to PRL and Top 14 games every week as well as the Heineken Cup - and I think this OTT platform will be a very hard sell given the amount of FTA games, except maybe to Ulster fans.

icdg

Well, crisis averred on that front. Premier Sports to have (non-exclusive) rights to all URC games in both U.K. and Ireland, no more 08s:

https://www.pro14.rugby/latest/news/urc-premier-sports

mike2084

Looks like I was too pessimistic in the end Premier Sports games will be available in Ireland.

https://www.pro14.rugby/latest/news/urc-premier-sports

Delta2113

"Every Ulster Rugby game live game plus every Ulster away game exclusively live on Premier Sports in the UK"

So these games won't be available in Republic of Ireland on Premier Sports?

kooga

Delta2113 wrote: »

"Every Ulster Rugby game live game plus every Ulster away game exclusively live on Premier Sports in the UK"

So these games won't be available in Republic of Ireland on Premier Sports?

from reading the the press release premier have all the games and will be showing them all in the ROI for the first time.

this is great news - no more geo blocking of games

icdg

Delta2113 wrote: »

"Every Ulster Rugby game live game plus every Ulster away game exclusively live on Premier Sports in the UK"

So these games won't be available in Republic of Ireland on Premier Sports?

I take that to mean that BBC Northern Ireland won’t have those games - ie that these games will, within the U.K., be exclusive to Premier Sports - not that those games won’t be available in Ireland.

Interestingly it looks like there won’t be any deal with a regional broadcaster in Scotland as they are saying all but two of Edinburgh and Glasgow’s games will be exclusive to Premier.

lowbatt07

Anyone know if the premier player works here on iOS ?

I’ve a few sky freesat boxes (&cards) and my plan is to sign up to a uk premier sports sub via the sky box

Having a working app that casts to Chromecast (similar to eir sports app) would be v handy

icdg

There is no discussion of circumventing regional restrictions here

lowbatt07

icdg wrote: »

There is no discussion of circumventing regional restrictions here

My question was with respect to the premier player and if there was geo blocks / can u clarify ?

You are all too quick to note it’s not on line / accordance - maybe take a few mins too clarify

icdg

There is also no posting solely to question moderator rulings.
Your legal options to sign up for Premier Sports in Ireland, assuming you live in Ireland, are:
*Sports Extra Pack on Sky
*Sports Extra Membership on Now TV
*BT/Premier Sports Pack on Vodafone TV.

You will not be allowed sign up to the Premier Player in Ireland. You need to address any queries as to why this is the case to Premier Sports. Any attempts to circumvent Premier Sports rules in this regard cannot be discussed here as it is against the charter.

You will receive an automatic 48 hour ban if you reply on thread to this post

Elmo

One question reading the press release from TG4.

To me it sounds like TG4 won’t provide their games online. And that URC will provide an online service in partnership with each of The broadcast rights holders, in Ireland’s case with RTÉ.

icdg

U.K. FTA. rights announced, I’ll update the OP. BBC NI get six home Ulster games not involving Scottish teams and the final if Ulster is in it, BBC Wales get 18 games involving Welsh teams and S4C get 27 games involving Welsh teams and the two Welsh broadcasters will share coverage of playoffs involving Welsh teams.

https://www.unitedrugby.com/latest/news/free-to-air-coverage-in-the-uk-confirmed-for-urc

icdg

Updated OP to include URC TV, that’s all the packages announced afaik.

Season Pass (151 Games) - €119.99

Irish Provinces Only (60 Games) - €99.99

Weekend Pass €19.99 (usually 8 Games)

Individual Game €9.99

Digifriendly

Munster vs Sharks tonight on RTE2 geo blocked on Freeview in N. Ireland but 'in the clear' on Sky.

icdg

Were TG4’s two fixtures (Cardiff v Connacht, Leinster v Blue Bulls) blocked?

Digifriendly

https://www.boards.ie/discussion/comment/117940446#Comment_117940446

No. TG4 is never geo-blocked here in N. Ireland when there is Irish language programming. I think this is because of the 1998 GFA (Peace Settlement) which guaranteed promotion of Irish language rights for the whole of the island. IIRC there have been just a few programmes which were English language ones on TG4 which have been geo-blocked in the past but recently I have not seen any geo-blocking of any sort on this channel.