The Sport Thread

Being shown on Sky Documentaries as well. The trailer stating "A Netflix Original Series" at the start and end.

Do hope they’ve left the team radio uncensored, oh and Guenther Steiner

The Red Bull / Renault spat is very amusing.

Looking forward to series 3.

Some reports today (The Rugby Paper/WalesOnline) that Sky are on the verge of retaking the Pro14 (or whatever name it will be going by next year) rights, which is interesting. No surprise if Premier want out as it didn’t seem to be worth what they were putting in as main host broadcaster but it may put the continuing viability of eir Sport in question as spring league GAA is the only other major exclusive rights they have.

Premier bet the farm on the Pro14 but the product is substandard, the fans jaded, the games on at all sorts of nondescript times and the presentation and commentary, by using the local teams who used to work on TV4, BBC Wales and BBC Scotland, is always biased in favour of the home side.

Sky will at least give it some professionalism.

Very interesting, perhaps weight to the theory of Sky looking to maybe rebuild their rugby rights with new long-term deals.

It’s a difficult one for broadcasters in that there’s an expectation from the various camps that every game will be broadcast, all of the time (not just COVID). This is allied with the fact that in each nation, there is a high interest in their own nation’s franchises but less in games that don’t involve their nation’s teams - Zebre v Treviso is never going to rate highly in Ireland. Just picking two or three top games for broadcast isn’t a runner, and even in the last Sky deal there was (and has remained with Premier Sports) still a free to air element to proceedings. If Sky are indeed going to pick this up I’d expect a similar deal to last time with Sky having “top pick” rights and TG4 and S4C (and possibly BBC Alba?) having the rights to pick up fixtures that haven’t been selected by Sky.

Some bbc Alba games were also on bbc2 Scotland so that may return. But would such a deal allow for games on bbc2 wales and bbc2 northern Ireland as well?

Hard to know, if this happened it would be the same as the deal prior to Premier Sports which was spun that one company would have the rights instead of the situation of matches on BBC NI, BBC Wales, BBC Scotland, BBC Alba, S4C, TG4 and Sky. In the case of BBC NI they have replaced Friday Night Ulster Rugby with Friday Night Irish League/Cup Football with 13 league and cup matches per season but I don't know if this is just for this season BBC NI are streaming 50 league matches on the iplayer this season as well so would be a significant outgoing in their sports rights.

I'd imagine Sky may have exclusive English language rights and anything else FTA would be limited to S4C, BBC Alba and TG4.

That said though I believe the English language commentary option has returned to the S4C games in recent months.

That's great news to hear. When did the English language option return for live sports on S4C? I had been watching some Leinster games and it was still the same regarding language options. They were still stuck in Welsh for the Pro14 at that point.

Eir confirming tonight that they are not bidding for any further sports rights for the moment - effectively putting eir Sport into wind down mode and opening the way for a renewed Sky deal for the Pro14.

Will that have any effect on Premier Sports in the UK?