ITV are to deepen their commitment to rugby union by extending their deal to broadcast live Prem Rugby games to 2028, Telegraph Sport can reveal.
The move comes after ITV secured the broadcasting rights for the inaugural Nations Championship – the new 12-team competition featuring all the Six Nations and their major southern hemisphere rivals, plus Fiji and Japan – after tabling a bid of £90m to ensure that every home nation’s Test match next year will be shown on free-to-air television.
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ITV had already secured the rights to all of England’s Six Nations matches until 2029 and is the favourite to secure the rights to the 2027 World Cup in Australia.
This new extension to its current deal with Prem Rugby will see it broadcast seven games live, including the final on ITV 1, for another two seasons, with an option to extend again to 2029. As well as the final, ITV will also broadcast high-profile league matches, such as Harlequins against Bristol at Twickenham on Saturday – the so-called “Big Game” – which is being shown on ITV 4.
The deal complements the contract with TNT, which earlier this year signed a new agreement to show all the Prem games until 2031.
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‘Real game-changer for the sport’
The free-to-air element helps to gain greater exposure for the sport. The record for a TV audience for the Premiership final was in 2022, which was shown on ITV and BT Sport, which drew an audience of 1.3 million viewers.
This year’s final on June 20 is on course to be the quickest sell-out on record and insiders hope that interest generated by the coverage of the Six Nations on ITV and BBC – and in the upcoming Nations Championship – should further propel interest.
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ITV is expected to take the whole TNT production for this year’s final, and can use it to promote their coverage of the Nations Championship, which opens with England taking on South Africa in Johannesburg on July 4.
“Having so much rugby – both club and internationals – on free to air next year is a real game-changer for the sport,” said one insider. “Particularly now we have club and country aligned on the same free-to-air channel for the next three years – including the first ever Nations Championship.”
Telegraph Sport revealed earlier this month that ITV had made a surprise bid for the Nations Championship, surpassing the £63m that ITV and the BBC paid for the Six Nations Championship in a new four-year deal earlier this year. It represented a shift away from major sports – such as football, cricket and Formula One – moving to pay TV and was regarded as a major boost to the new tournament.
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