BELIEVE – AND BLOW ENGLAND AWAY
ENGLAND v THE WELSH NATION, TWICKENHAM, 4.45PM
IT’S England v Wales day – a fixture steeped in heritage, rivalry and the kind of cultural baggage that resurrects tales of Phil Bennett’s furious team talk, Paul Ringer’s red card and Scott Gibbs’ wondrous Wembley jink year after year.
The Six Nations creates more folklore than the Mabinogion, transcending sport with its brother and sisterhood of travelling support and broad appeal to armchair fans who might not usually consider themselves rugby afficionados.
But savour it while you can. If it goes behind a paywall this great carnival of European rugby – arguably the best oval ball tournament in the world – could leave its mass audience on the wrong side.
As the Rugby Paper revealed this week, Six Nations officials are apparently open to shifting the event away from free-to-air television.
Reports suggested that when the current television rights deal expires in 2021, Sky Sports lead the charge to secure a deal worth £300m while the BBC and ITV would be banned from making a joint bid.
The latter scenario of forbidden joint ventures is preposterous – an anti-competition move that would hand the prize to Sky with them barely having to get off their backsides to bid. It’s a process that should be under microscopic scrutiny from the UK government’s Digital, Culture, Media and Sport committee.
All this against the Faustian economic backdrop of private equity firm CVC seeking to finalise a £300m deal to gain a 14% stake in the Six Nations.
They are an entity with no previous interest in rugby and one which exists to guarantee the greatest possible return on their investments.
As Brian Moore outlined in The Daily Telegraph this week, citing their ownership of Formula One as an example, CVC appear to extract more from sport than they put in.
They must be thrilled with a return of more than 350% on their investment in F1, but those who actually love motorsport are distraught that viewing figures are said to have fallen 137 million globally in recent years.
Closer to home, it’s not possible to gauge the impact of placing the Pro14 behind a paywall on viewing figures because Premier Sport never release them.
I can only cite anecdotal experience of Welsh regional rugby disappearing from the conversational ether among many in my social circle.
Making people pay for the privilege of watching the Six Nations can only worsen this exposure issue because early access to the international game is often the spark that lights the flame of interest in the domestic scene.
Yet despite the public uproar and a cross-party political response that has ranged from Plaid Cymru leader Adam Price nailing the issue by warning we must not be “priced out of our own culture” to Cardiff West MP Kevin Brennan tabling a motion in Parliament, can the Six Nations resist the unfathomable riches that may be within their reach?
And should we as fans and viewers have such a sense of entitlement in this era of commercially-driven, professional sport?
I’d argue yes. If I were a Six Nations official, I’d be very mindful of the cultural implications of shifting the tournament away from terrestrial TV to chase the biggest buck.
Sky Sports cover rugby with technical panache and analytical depth, but they would have to make a major departure from their unrelenting Anglo-centricity to cover the tournament with sufficient objectivity.
Nothing I have seen on Sky thus far convinces me they would view the Six Nations as anything more than England plus Five Other Countries. (Let’s not forget this is a company that employed Dewi Morris for years and could never bother to pronounce his Christian name correctly.)
BBC Wales has traditionally had a significant role in the production of the Six Nations beyond our own matches which helps ensure coverage doesn’t slip into EBC territory.
With a punditry team reflecting every nation, the Celtic countries are given the parity that is essential to balanced broadcasting.
I believe the BBC do a great job – from jargon-free analysis to the arty pre-match packages. Give me Eddie Butler’s purple poetry over Sky’s greyer prose any day.
There’s the frisson when Jiffy squeals: “Numbers!”; the chuckle when Brian Moore shouts: “brainfart”
and the ouch when Sonja McLaughlan goes in for the kill with a spectacularly awkward – but completely necessary – question.
And while we’re on the subject of uncompromising female sports broadcasters, the BBC has always pioneered inclusive coverage with the likes of Gabby Logan, Jill Douglas, Sara Orchard bringing balance to their presentation.
Where are the female rugby union presenters on Sky?
And given that Sky Sports News, for example, has a 73% male audience are they even interested in moving beyond blokeish presentation and bringing diversity to their traditional audience demographic?
It’s not just about style preferences, of course. There is also the issue of access. Even if the pay-to-air broadcasters brought a dazzling new edge to Six Nations coverage it would be pointless if fewer people actually watched the tournament.
The Six Nations bosses should not take rugby’s appeal for granted.
In a crowded entertainment market just a few events cut through to the masses who are only attracted to sport in its most compelling forms.
That’s why the biggest events like the Olympics, Wimbledon and the World Cup are given protected “Crown Jewel” Category A status for terrestrial television.
The Six Nations has to fight for free-to-air survival in Category B. But it is a battle worth fighting.
Die-hard rugby devotees may despise the dilettantes who only take an interest in February and March but the Six Nations is the best PR tool the sport has and as such should be available to the widest possible audience. It is the first date that can lead to a life-long love affair. That’s certainly how it started for me.
My older brothers may have been in the schoolboy enclosure at the Arms Park, but aged eight I was in front of the box with Mam and Dad for the Five Nations.
Curtains drawn to prevent rays of winter sunshine hitting the screen, slap-up lunch of sausage, beans and chips on the coffee table and a soundtrack of Bill McLaren’s metaphors and my mother shrieking “Geddit it out! Geddit it out!” every time a ruck was formed.
As a young girl in that era, I wouldn’t have been able to play the game while the local club was the preserve of my male relatives.
But television was my portal into rugby and this magical tournament that combined sporting spectacle and cultural pride.
It was the start of a passion that has informed my personal and professional life.
I’ve made more than 100 radio and television programmes on rugby, written two books on the game and, most importantly of all, formed friendships from Murrayfield to Melbourne.
None of this would have happened without that first encounter with the Five Nations through the small screen.
And as International Women’s Day collides with this weekend’s internationals, I think of the specifically female dimension to putting the Six Nations behind a paywall.
I think of the sixty-something widow who tweeted that she wouldn’t be able to afford the subscription and would feel uncomfortable taking her elderly mother to a pub or club to watch the game – a scenario that a lot of women on their own would relate to. I think of the single mum on a tight budget who said her kids loved rugby but paying for it would be a luxury beyond their means.
And I think of people on low incomes per se – from pensioners to young families.
Plus for those who are able to swap the settee for the bar, it’s also not a given in the current economic climate that every Welsh club could afford to show rugby behind a paywall.
Rugby is traditionally the people’s game in Wales, but just as the rising cost of tickets is changing the stadium demographics across the Six Nations – narrowing the crowd to wealthier fans and corporates – so taking rugby off terrestrial television will dilute a mass and pan-generational audience.
Last year’s Wales v England game peaked at an incredible 87% share of the television audience in Wales – a figure subscription services could only dream of matching. As we switch on to the clash of rose and dragon today it is to be hoped this access for all continues.
We each have our precious memories of the “greatest rugby tournament on Earth” but if the next generation are to build their life-long relationship with the sport the Six Nations needs to stay where everyone can see it.
And as rugby’s money men consider the most lucrative deal for the small screen they should also keep an eye on the bigger picture. A huge profit may come at the cost of cultural bankruptcy.
Don’t sell the sport’s soul along with the rights and risk rugby becoming a profitable irrelevance.