ITV is on the verge of securing broadcasting rights for the inaugural Nations Championship after tabling a bid of £90m to ensure that every rugby union Test match next year will be shown on free-to-air television.
Telegraph Sport understands that ITV outbid TNT Sports, who had just broadcast this year’s autumn internationals.
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The surprise bid surpasses the £63m that ITV and the BBC paid for the Six Nations Championship in a new three-year deal earlier this year. It represents a shift away from major sports such as football, cricket and Formula One moving to pay TV and is regarded as a major boost to the new tournament.
“This is major money and guarantees exposure for a major tournament,” one source said.
The Nations Championship is the new tournament involving the Six Nations sides and their southern hemisphere rivals from the Rugby Championship – South Africa, New Zealand, Australia, Argentina, as well as Fiji and Japan. Games will be played in July and November.
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The French broadcasting deal is already done, with free-to-air channel TF1, and a similar deal is expected in Ireland.
The ITV deal is expected to cover the first two tournaments, with the second scheduled for 2028. The World Cup in Australia in 2027 is also being shown on ITV, so the sport can expect to benefit from unprecedented exposure through to at least 2029, when the current Six Nations deal concludes.
ITV already holds the rights to broadcast the Rugby World Cup and Six Nations Championship in the UK – Getty Images/David Rogers
Insiders say that ITV have been clearing their decks to invest in live sport, indicated by the swiftness and seriousness of their bid.
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ITV’s coverage of England v France this February was watched by a peak of six million viewers across all devices, giving the station its largest audience of the year at that point and their most-watched weekend broadcast since football’s European Championship in 2024. Across Europe the match peaked at 13m viewers.
England will open their Nations Championship campaign with the eagerly awaited match against world champions South Africa in Johannesburg in July, followed by a game against Fiji in Port Elizabeth. Steve Borthwick’s side will then fly to Argentina to face Los Pumas.
England will then face Australia, Japan and New Zealand at Twickenham in November before the Nations Championship will be decided during a finals weekend (also at Twickenham). In this, the top-ranked sides from each hemisphere will meet in a final, with the rest playing off against each other based on their respective rankings.
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Tom Harrison, the chief executive of the Six Nations, speaking at the launch last month, said the new tournament signalled a “tectonic shift in the sport.”
“Rugby’s strongest nations have collaborated with a clear vision to grow the game, by challenging traditional ways of operating to create a tournament structure with genuine global relevance, which will unlock the true value of the sport,” he said.
“The world’s biggest and best Championships are defined by intense sporting drama, and the Nations Championship will stand alongside these. The Finals Weekend will add a totally new dimension for fans, and promises to create an incredible spectacle, crown Champions, and act as a catalyst to grow rugby’s reach, globally.
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“By bringing together the best teams and players in the sport and injecting another layer to the fierce cross hemisphere rivalries, the Nations Championship will take international rugby to new heights.”
TNT were favourites to secure the rights, after an impressive production of the autumn games, but they are now expected to focus on securing the rights to the European Champions Cup to complete their coverage of the Gallagher Prem.
Bill Sweeney, the RFU chief executive, said last week that financial agreements were in place for the distribution of broadcast, commercial and sponsorship and ticketing revenues.
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“The initial negotiation was around the revenue splits between the northern hemisphere and the southern hemisphere and there’s three main revenue streams to that,” said Sweeney. “So your broadcast, commercial sponsorship and then match day and they’ve all got slightly different percentages given the value of our rights there.
“So once that was agreed and settled, the amount of money that then flows into the north, that will be subject to the existing model we’ve got under what was called Project Light, which is the Six Nations Agreement that we did with CVC previously and there’s already set criteria there in terms of how the revenue splits go across the unions.
“That will go into that pot, and it will be split according to that existing agreement. We believe the entire game will benefit from this. One of the reasons we did the Nations Championship was we were getting very clear feedback from commercial partners and broadcasters that they wanted a more meaningful competition.
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“Autumn internationals are great, but they didn’t have the meaning to them that was necessary and we were hearing some of that from the fans as well. So that was the primary reason for going for the Nations Championship. The fact that it’s now been over the line will help us challenge and sustain against some of the financial challenges we have.”
Telegraph Sport contracted both the Six Nations and ITV, but both declined to comment.
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