[Brekkie]

The dates for 23-24 were announced today with four weeks for the pool stages, as in recent years, so seems safe to say we won’t be going back to four team groups next season at any rate.

But this particular TV rights deal is unusually short, only covering this season and next. That does give scope for a format change in 24-25. There has been reports in some media outlets that, at that point, the EPCR, PRL, and URC rights will be bundled together, at the behest of common PRL and URC shareholder CVC. The idea is that the winning broadcaster would become the U.K. and Irish “Home of Rugby” but it would be a mammoth task to take on that on a weekly basis. The URC is a tricky one as it effectively demands all games be broadcast; fans in each country mainly want to see games involving that countries teams.

Really wouldn't be great news for club rugby bundling everything together - and the URC would likely suffer the most.   It needs it's regional arrangement across the home nations to be relevant.

Already think international rugby coverage is suffering from being lumped together - of course the Six Nations should be but putting all the eggs into one broadcaster for the remaining coverage is just closing off options moving forward - granted Amazon were paying more but ensuring the BBC, Sky, BT and C4 had a foot in the door for the internationals meant that moving forward there would be interest in future rights.  

We've seen with Sky and cricket in particular that they'll pay up at first to keep the competition away but down the line those selling the rights don't have other options as the broadcasters who have been locked out for years are no longer interested in the product.


And on that note still think it's foolish County Cricket isn't debundled from the England rights.   Sky aren't interested in it, well certainly not the County Championship Games.   They are screening one this week but IPL takes priority on Sky Sports Cricket.    OK, maybe the market isn't there for it and nowadays counties have their own streaming arrangements, but if one broadcaster did take it on - even for a nominal fee - and gave one match coverage every week regardless of what was going on with England cricket and the shorter forms of the games it would raise the profile significantly.