[Rdd]

Did both RTE and VM1 show the final in Ireland?

Yes.

[Brekkie]

Interesting that the next Rugby World Cup will start a good bit later on the 1st of October compared with the 8th of September this time. Although with it been in Australia bad weather should hopefully be less of an issue. It may actually be quite hot in some of the match locations. It’ll also be a far less attractive time zone for broadcasters in this part of the world, with breakfast time matches as opposed to prime time matches.

I'm sure it was Oct/Nov last time Australia hosted, probably because their big NRL/AFL leagues finish up at the beginning of October.   From our point of view that makes the scheduling even worse though due to daylight savings - in September it's 8pm in Melbourne/Sydney at 11am in the morning here, but that becomes 9am by November thanks to the clocks going in opposite directions.   

Rugby Union increasingly less of a big deal in Australia though - think they only showed the Aussie matches (wasn't many of them!) and the final free to air this time with everything else on Nine's subscription streamer Stan.   I'd imagine they'd be a bit of pressure to show more than that for a home tournament (the recent Womens Football World Cup found huge audiences in a country that doesn't really do football) but may be a bit of power to get key European fixtures as late as possible.

[lookoutwales]

Final averaged out at 4.1 million last night, peaking at 6.9 million.

twitter.com 

The third-place play off on Friday averaging at 2.9 million, before peaking at 4.5 million.

[itvblocks]

That final few minutes was tense, best team in the competition won.

Shame about England but we did well to get to the semi-finals.

[Medianext.MX]

New format announced today - they are indeed going for the 6x4 format with a round of 16 introduced.

www.rugbyworldcup.com 

As part of the new format for the men's tournament, a new logo has been unveiled, and will be used by both tournaments, beginning the Women's tournament in 2025:

twitter.com 

www.world.rugby 

New visual identity revealed as Rugby World Cup embraces exciting future and rug…
With bold ambitions, Women’s Rugby World Cup 2025 has officially become the curr…
  Source: www.world.rugby

[Brekkie]

That logo is awful - the current one is still only 4 years old in World Cup terms anyway.

[Rdd]

I agree. I thought they had originally changed to bring it into line with the World Rugby logo, but if they were breaking that link anyway, why not just go back to the blue and green rugby ball logo (it’s colours even now still echoed in the World Rugby logo) that was introduced in the very first tournament in 1987 and served them well virtually unchanged right up to 2015? I’m not sure what was wrong with it that it needed to be changed in the first place.