Champions Cup: New TV deal for rugby's marquee club competition - what it means for Edinburgh and Glasgow coverage

Premier Sports has cemented its position as a major player in the sports television market by striking a deal to be lead broadcaster of the Investec Champions Cup, European club rugby’s marquee competition.

The three-year agreement begins this season and will see Premier Sports cover all 63 Champions Cup matches and launch a dedicated rugby channel. It will also continue to broadcast the EPCR Challenge Cup, showing two pool matches per round, two last-16 ties and all quarter-finals, semis and the final.

Premier takes over from TNT Sports whose predecessor, BT Sport, first agreed an exclusive deal to show the Champions Cup and Challenge Cup in 2017 and renewed the contract in 2022. In recent seasons ITV has also shown a number of fixtures as a terrestrial broadcast partner but that agreement has now ended.

Toulouse's Scottish full-back Blair Kinghorn holding the European Rugby Champions Cup trophy and Toulouse's French fly-half Thomas Ramos holding the "Bouclier de Brennus" Top 14 trophy as they celebrate with supporters. (Photo by VALENTINE CHAPUIS/AFP via Getty Images)

The only free-to-air element in the new deal in the UK will involve a handful of games being shown on the Welsh language channel S4C although plans are in place to make the finals of both competitions available freely.

The new deal is a big leap for Premier Sports which has been building its portfolio steadily in both rugby and football. Founded in 2009 by Michael O’Rourke, it was acquired by Viaplay in 2022 but bought back the business from the Swedish media company in April this year.

It has been the lead broadcaster of the United Rugby Championship and its predecessor, the Pro14, for the last six years, covering all Edinburgh and Glasgow Warriors’ league games. It has also emerged a big player in Scottish football, acquiring the rights to the Scottish Cup and Scottish League Cup and becoming the title sponsor of the latter. This season Premier has also agreed a deal to show 20 live Scottish Premiership matches.

Having now secured the rights to show the Champions Cup, Premier Sports is planning to create and launch a 24/7 rugby channel with a mix of live matches, talk shows magazine programmes and highlights. In addition to the Champions Cup, Challenge Cup and URC, Premier’s rugby stable also includes the French Top 14 but this represents the broadcaster’s first major foray into the English market.

“We will now provide the most comprehensive rugby club coverage available across the UK and Ireland with 80 top European rugby fixtures, 151 URC games across five rugby nations and 110 Top 14 games live - making Premier Sports the destination for any rugby fan – and we will be driving significant investment into raising the profile of EPCR’s competitions to new and existing audiences,” said O’Rourke, the managing director of Premier Sports.

Jacques Raynaud, chief executive of EPCR, European club rugby’s governing body, said Premier won the rights to the Champions Cup with “a compelling offer” after a “very competitive” process. The broadcaster met three key criteria, said Raynaud: “Growing the game, finances for the clubs and viewership and sponsorship exposure.”

One of the main attractions of Premier Sports for EPCR was its promise to refresh the presentation of the Champions Cup where they will look to tap into a younger audience and maximise the use of social media. Ryan Wilson, the former Glasgow Warriors captain, played a starring role in Premier’s URC coverage last season as pundit and roving reporter and is likely to be given a key role in the Champions Cup coverage. Wilson’s enthusiasm and willingness to engage with supporters and players alike is seen as an important element of the Premier package.

There will be some changes to the scheduling of the Champions Cup matches with both broadcaster and EPCR keen to avoid clashes with big English football matches. Raynaud was notably irked that last season’s Champions Cup final between Toulouse and Leinster went head to head with the FA Cup final between Manchester United and Manchester City and such scenarios will be strenuously avoided in future. There is also likely to be a return of Champions Cup matches on Sunday evenings which were popular with views but dropped off the schedule in recent seasons.

This season’s Champions Cup kicks off in December, with Glasgow Warriors drawn in Pool 4 where they will face Sale Sharks, Harlequins, Racing 92 and RC Toulon. Edinburgh are in the second-tier Challenge Cup and will play Gloucester, Aviron Bayonnais, Vannes and Black Lion.

Richard Sweeney, chief executive of Premier Sports, said: “We are especially excited to be the broadcaster of the world rugby’s best known club tournament. We obviously respect the traditions, the heritage and the value of EPCR club rugby. We’re not new to rugby. We’ve obviously been broadcasting the URC - 151 games per season - for the last six years so we’re quite comfortable in delivering top rugby to rugby fans in the UK and Ireland.

“We are delighted that it becomes part of our rugby package and that it will enhance not only our URC subscriber base but that it brings a new audience for Premier Sports in England.”

The hope for Premier Sports is that it becomes a one-stop shop for rugby viewers. For supporters of Glasgow Warriors and Edinburgh it certainly appears to a good deal given that all their clubs’ games in the URC and Europe will now be broadcast on the channel which is available from £10.99 per month.