Fiji and Samoa will miss out on free-to-air coverage of rugby union matches from the Super Rugby, Rugby Championship and Mitre 10 Cup tournaments this year after a promised distribution deal failed to materialise.
A year ago New Zealand Prime Minister John Key announced a deal to allow the Pacific Islands to receive free-to-air coverage of the tournaments across the Cook Islands, Fiji, Niue, Samoa, Papua New Guinea, the Solomon Islands, Tonga and Vanuatu from early this year.
However, New Zealand Foreign Affairs Minister Murray McCully said that a commercial dispute had erupted after Sanzaar, the body representing the southern hemisphere’s major rugby union nations, sold on its rights to an agency that has “not provided the content”, according to New Zealand’s Stuff news website.
McCully said that all parties remain in talks and are trying to come up with a better arrangement for next season.