Owen Farrell fears the prospect of losing the Six Nations on free-to-air television would be a “real challenge” for the sport to maintain its audience if the championship went behind a paywall.
The England captain expressed his concern the day after the BBC’s head of sport, Barbara Slater, warned the culture, media and sport select committee that the corporation may not be able to afford the rights to televise matches in the future.
“This is the first I’ve heard about it, but I’ve obviously heard about it in the past when it has come up before,” Farrell said at the launch of the 2023-24 Champions Cup. “I don’t claim to understand what it would do for rugby, what it would do for the tournament or for the nations involved, in terms of the knock-on effect for how many viewers it has, but if it is significant in terms of viewers then yes, that’s going to be a real challenge.”
The Six Nations is shared between the BBC and ITV but is not included on the list of protected events, which means the authorities would be free to sell the rights to a subscription broadcaster. The creation of a new world league could also mean that the tournament rights are sold as part of a bundle with other events, which would likely mean the BBC being priced out. Slater has acknowledged that they are unlikely to ever be the highest bidder.
Farrell grew up in rugby but was quick to point to the influence that the time he spent watching the game on TV as a child had on him. “When I was at school and watching the rugby I couldn’t wait for the Heineken Cup weekends,” he said. “You’d just sit there all day, all Friday night, all Saturday, all Sunday – sometimes you didn’t move, because there was just big game after big game.” Farrell said he used to dream of playing Munster at Thomond Park and Clermont at the Stade Marcel-Michelin, “and having had the chance to play at those stadiums, it lived up to it.”
The Champions Cup is shared between free-to-air and subscription TV services in England, France and Ireland. “Our main responsibility is to grow the revenue and make sure we have sufficient coming through to go back into the clubs,” explained the European Professional Club Rugby chairman, Dominic McKay. “But what’s important is that we always try, where we can, to make sure we have great pay TV broadcast partners complemented by free-to-air broadcasters.
“That balance allows us to tell our story as broadly as we can, and bring in new fans to the sport, but it also allows us to generate strong revenues.”
But things are changing. Like many in the business, McKay imagines that in the future, online and social media broadcast rights will matter just as much as TV ones. “In the past it’s been obvious that it’s very helpful to have that balance because it helps us get more people excited about the sport,” he said. “But the future is evolving.”
The Champions Cup itself has a new format, with four pools of six, while the Challenge Cup will feature a team from Georgia – the Black Lion – for the first time, as well the Cheetahs from Free State, who will have a home base in Amsterdam. Farrell is currently weighing up the prospect of a trip to play the Bulls in Pretoria. “It’s another new challenge, but one we’re going to be really excited for,” the Saracens fly-half said. “The thing I’m really trying to get my head around the most is playing in the sun in December.”
Beyond the next few games, Farrell is also preoccupied with the conversations around the introduction of hybrid international contracts, which would give the England management more control over players’ careers when with their clubs. “This is an interesting time in terms of everything that’s coming up,” said Farrell, who is an influential voice in the negotiations behind the scenes and made it clear the players expected to have a significant input into what the new contracts might look like.
“As players, we come back and go straight back into playing, we don’t sit and think about how the programme should be best shaped for us going forward,” Farrell said. “But we have ideas. The players now are not scared of giving their opinions, and are not scared of saying what they think.”
