The Pitch: Could GAA be next in the incredible rise of Premier Sports?

The deeper question is what’s next for the Mickey O’Rourke owned network?

Six Nations rights (from 2026 on) will be put out to tender in the coming weeks, but will likely come just a little early in the channel’s evolution – that battle may even see TNT Sports or Amazon testing the market.

Could GAA rights be in play the next time they come to the market?

We'll dig into that a little later, but what is certain is that Premier Sports will be part of every future rights conversation.

Whatever happens next the channel has established itself, not only as a disruptive pay alternative to RTÉ, but as a significant rival to the state broadcaster which has enjoyed a free rein within the marketplace in recent years.

Before looking at what might be, it is worth looking at how the channel became such a significant player in such a short space of time.

In 2022, its founder and major shareholder O’Rourke sold UK Premier Sports to streaming service Viaplay for €35m.

However, just over a year later negotiations were opened by the Swedish broadcaster for O’Rourke to buy the business back, which he did at a greatly reduced price, perhaps as low as half of its sale value.

During the period in which the UK operation was under Viaplay ownership, O’Rourke was left with Premier Sports Ireland and just a skeleton crew including CEO Ryle Nugent, a scheduler and a planner running things at the top of the business.

However it was in possession of a golden egg, exclusive rights for the Premier League on a Saturday at 3pm, a significant product which continued to allow the business to “stand on its own two feet”.

It also allowed the channel to look at other premium rights and a highly ambitious move for an exclusive Champions League licence – the preferred option was match choice on a Tuesday night.

While many had expected a major streamer, like Amazon, to enter the Champions League rights market, Premier Sports took a gamble and launched a bid for coverage, winning its preferred package, as well as Europa League and Europa Conference coverage.

Such a bold move to get into Europe’s leading football competitions proved to be a shrewd gamble that paid off.

“The sports rights business is always calculated risk - sometimes it's calculated in your favour and sometimes it’s calculated against you,” says Nugent.

“Very quickly we now have in Ireland the Premier League, the Champions League, the Europa League and we already had non-exclusive rights to the four Irish provinces in the URC and the Champions Cup comes in December.” 

For RTÉ these developments are concerning, having effectively had the premium sports market all to itself in recent years – with some exceptions including shared Six Nations rugby rights and Champions League rights with Virgin Media.

So dominant has RTÉ been, it does not have the space to broadcast many of its investments. Now it has a serious job on its hands in retaining that dominance, given the seismic shift in the sports rights space in recent times.

“We are here now and offering an alternative,” says Nugent, who was Group Head of Sport at RTÉ from 2010 to 2018.

“In my time (at RTÉ) you had TV3 (now Virgin Media), who were always capable of coming in and springing a surprise and still are.

“They were always capable of taking a couple of the premium properties - remember they were GAA focused for a long time, then Champions League, then Six Nations.

“What has happened within the last three or four years is that that trend had changed a little and RTÉ had become pretty dominant.” 

Nugent believes that a strong RTÉ is still essential in the sports broadcasting landscape and that the state broadcaster should be, and is, the natural home for major international events like Olympic Games, World Cups and Euros.

Should it have Champions League coverage when the trend in many territories is to put those tenders on subscription services? The free-to-air viewer might say ‘yes’ but the market certainly doesn’t.

Having sat on the public broadcasting side of the fence, and now coming from the independent angle, Nugent explains the key difference between RTÉ Sport and Premier Sports?

“That’s an easy one,” he laughs. “Oil tanker. Speed boat.” 

“It doesn’t make either better, there are just different ways of approaching the end product which is providing sports broadcasting for an audience, but a completely different challenge.” 

Instead of minding how he spends public money, these days Nugent is focused on the commercial side of broadcasting, in a role he has been in since 2021 when Mickey O’Rourke brought him in to look after a channel acquisition in Asia - Rugby Pass.

Like Nugent’s view that having a public service broadcaster is essential to the sports broadcast landscape, so too is having a strong Irish pay channel, be that a Setanta, an Eir or now a Premier Sports.

Outside of the Irish and British business, Premier Sports operates in Asia, existing as a linear channel in seven territories, including significant population bases like Malaysia, Indonesia and Thailand, while its app is across 22 Asian markets, everywhere except China and Japan.

Then there’s W Sport, a dedicated women’s sports channel across France, Belguim, Netherlands, Portugal, Turkey and Luxembourg and also on the Canal+ platform throughout Africa, and other Asian territories.

It carries WSL, the Frauen Bundesliga, Serie A Women, the NWSL, and other female sports, a segment which Nugent describes as “proportionally the biggest growth area over the next decade in sport”.

So is GAA next within the sights of Premier Sports when those rights come back to the market?

“I think it’s fair to say that we will – using the old John Giles line - make each individual decision on its own merits,” says Nugent.

“So when rights come to the market, every single right of note, and some not of note, we make a decision.

“Some of those decisions are very, very quick, you know – ‘We’re not going there’ and we move on, others are ‘hmm, let’s have a look’ and others are ‘Yes we definitely are’.” 

“And when IRFU, FAI, GAA and any of the main bodies bring their rights to the market, we will definitely be interested in looking and we’ll make an assessment at that moment, depending on the business needs and what else is going on in the market.” 

What is going on in the Irish market is change and one which independent broadcasters will say is for the better.

$7M Superbowl LIX ads already sold out 

With half of the NFL season yet to run, Fox has run out of advertising space for next year’s Superbowl.

During an earnings call this week, CEO Lachlan Murdoch told senior Fox Corp executives that the ads had sold out despite a record breaking pricetage of $7m for a 30 second slot.

US sports business bible Sportico reported that while the number of ads sold wasn’t disclosed it will drive overall earnings for Fox beyond the $590m generated in ad sales revenue for the Eagles v Chiefs game two years ago.

Then ad prices worked out at $6.5 million per 30 second commercial.

Cork business collaborates with rugby to promote staff health 

In one of the more innovative initiatives by business in recent times, Dornan has embarked on a campaign to promote good mental health amongst staff through its ‘The Elephant in the Room’ project.

The engineering group teamed up with rugby commentator Brent Pope to promote the initiavie which it says “underscores Dornan’s commitment to creating a suporive and empowered environment for all employees”.

Pope unveiled an elephant sculpture at the firm’s Cork HQ, named Thea after the Irish godess of light, sun and moon, representing support for workers through bright and dark times.

“Our collaboration with ‘The Elephant in the Room’ movement is a clear statement that Dornan is a safe space for open conversations about mental health,” said Niamh McAuliffe, Group HR Director at Dornan.

‘The Elephant in the Room’ was founded by Brent Pope and is a movement dedicated to raising awareness and igniting conversations about mental health in the workplace.