Premiership Rugby, the organising body for the top division of club rugby union in England, has confirmed three television rights deals that will result in the Premiership being broadcast in more than 50 African countries from September.
The three new contracts are the first distribution deals signed following Premiership Rugby’s July 2015 agreement which assigned international rights to the RDA TV agency and multinational telco Altice.
RDA and Altice’s five-season agreement runs from 2016-17 to 2020-21. It includes the top-tier domestic Premiership and the Premiership Rugby 7s tournament in all markets outside the UK, Ireland and the United States.
Under the new deals, Premiership Rugby will have three different broadcast partners in sub-Saharan Africa for the first time. The agreements include two new partners in the shape of sports broadcaster Ma Chaîne Sport and start-up pay-television operator Kwesé TV, alongside long-time partner, pay-television broadcaster SuperSport.
Ma Chaîne Sport, which is owned by Altice, will broadcast exclusive French-language rights to Premiership live matches, and non-exclusive English-language weekly highlights programmes in sub-Saharan Africa, excluding South Africa. Altice will also broadcast Premiership Rugby in France, Belgium, Luxembourg, and Switzerland via its SFR Sport networks, and also in Portugal.
SuperSport has licensed rights to all matches in the Premiership and weekly highlights programmes in South Africa. SuperSport has the rights in all languages and will broadcast every match produced, a minimum of 135 per season. This is a three-season agreement from 2016-17 to 2018-19.
Kwesé Sports has acquired the exclusive English-language rights to all live Premiership Rugby matches and the non-exclusive rights to the English-language weekly highlights programmes for sub-Saharan Africa, excluding South Africa. This is a five-season deal, covering 2016-17 to 2020-21, and Kwesé Sports plans to broadcast more than 100 matches per season.
Dominic Hayes, Premiership Rugby’s commercial director, said: “The recently announced broadcast deal with NBC Sport in the USA along with a number of other new international TV agreements for 2016-17 will see Aviva Premiership Rugby broadcast in 200 countries, reaching over 170m households around the world.
“The new contract with RDA TV and Altice group is an important step forward for Premiership Rugby, not only delivering a worldwide presence for Aviva Premiership Rugby and the Singha Premiership Rugby 7s Series but it represents a significant uplift in revenue for its clubs.”