If ever an occasion deserved the biggest television audience possible, you’d have thought it would be Connacht’s first game in front of the new Clan Stand when hosting Leinster at the Dexcom Stadium on Saturday (kick-off 5.30pm).
This is a chance to showcase a momentous event, the product of a €50 million investment in sport in the West of Ireland, and you can’t help but wonder if the URC missed a trick when allowing this game to be shown exclusively behind a paywall.
Granted, on foot of the URC selling the rights to Premier Sports and TG4 to the exclusion of RTÉ for four seasons, this is just the way the chips have landed, for the scheduling was finalised before it became known that this weekend’s game would see the Dexcom’s grand opening.
Under the terms of URC’s television deal in Ireland, as well as showing every game, Premier Sports also have the rights to exclusive coverage of a Leinster or Munster game in each round, along with two Connacht games over the course of the season.
READ MORE
In this weekend’s Round 10, Premier Sports chose the Connacht-Leinster game and although it appears as if the URC and TG4 were amenable to the latter televising this game as well, this never came to pass.
Admittedly, there’s also something of a myth around audiences on subscription/pay-per-view versus free-to-air television. Rugby matches behind paywalls are no longer the niche markets they used to be.
Premier Sports audience figures are now available through Nielsen’s ratings, which tell us that in the Republic of Ireland TG4’s audience during the biggest quarter (most watched 15 minutes) of the Leinster-Munster match at the Aviva last October was 283,000.
When Munster hosted Leinster at Thomond Park over Christmas, which was exclusively televised by Premier Sports, the audience figure for the most watched 15 minutes was 163,000.
Granted, the audiences would be bigger again were these Irish derbies still on RTÉ, but there’s clearly been a fundamental change in the way sports enthusiasts are prepared to pay in order to watch their favoured teams, events or matches.
Even so, you have to wonder if the provinces really understood what they were signing you up to when they and the URC agreed to the new four-year rights deal with Premier Sports and TG4 which began this season.
One of the ironies of the deal is that Connacht will have the biggest reach to wider television audiences of any of the provinces. This weekend’s marquee game is the only fixture of their nine regular season home URC games at the Dexcom Stadium which will not be on TG4 and, by extension, free-to-air television.
What’s more, all but one of their nine away games – against Ulster at the Affidea Stadium on March 20th – will also be on TG4. That means 16 of their 18 URC games have been, or will be, broadcast on TG4 this season.
By contrast, 10 of Munster’s 18 regular season URC matches (four at home and six away) will be on TG4, with the other eight exclusive to Premier Sports. Only eight of Leinster’s 18 matches have been, or will be, on TG4, 10 being exclusive to Premier Sports.
For their part, none of Ulster’s home URC matches will be on free-to-air television this season, or for the next three seasons. Their only two away games to be shown on TG4 this season were against Leinster and Connacht in December. For a province whose players must have been instantly recognisable in the streets of Belfast and beyond when BBC NI were on the Ulster beat, the lack of eyeballs on them is significant.
Indeed, commercially this must be hitting all the provinces, albeit less so Connacht. They might not be showcasing the new Clan Stand at the Dexcom Stadium this weekend, but they will be for their remaining four home games and will continue to reach out to a bigger audience for the next three seasons as well.
