One of the best aspects of the Six Nations has always been its availability to the masses with the free to air TV deal. Unfortunately, that could be ending soon as the Six Nations is considering its options.
BT Sport and Sky Sports have a monopoly on rugby TV for all other tournaments, with TV money a large portion of the reasoning for the European club rugby re-structuring. The Six Nations may be looking to get in on increased finances after it indicated for the first time that it's considering offers from pay-television operators for the next deal.
Speaking to The Telegraph, Six Nations chief executive John Feehan said:
So the reality is that this is an extremely important revenue stream and broadcasting is an extremely important element of that revenue. So I don’t think it is good enough just to say we wouldn’t consider every option.
Clearly it has worked extremely well on free-to-air terrestrial and clearly they continue to be interested in going forward and we will engage very strongly with them.
But it is an open market place and we need to keep that in mind.
The current TV deal with long standing Six Nations provider the BBC runs out in 2017. RTE's Irish Six Nations rights deal also ends in 2017.
Neither the Irish or British laws have the Six Nations as designated free to air events, only deferred coverage is compulsory. This isn't the case in Wales however, as all of their home internationals and Six Nations games must be provided on a free to air channel.
Picture credit: Brendan Moran / SPORTSFILE
