Nobody has Premier Sports.
Everyone with a dodgy box has premier sports
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Who?
I do
Nobody has Premier Sports, nobody watches Premier Sports, and nobody will watch rugby on Premier Sports.
More people watch shopping channels.
These âsportsâ channels only exist to downsize sports and competitions.
The GAA will surely sell exclusive rights to them soon.
At the outset, the changes were to âalign the leaguesâ with top placing.
But that never made any sense- it was a European Cup. Not having Welsh or Italian teams in a given year made no sense.
The fact that the Welsh Regions backed the English clubs isnât just funny in hindsight, it was hilarious then.
In exchange for that, they allowed the French clubs to move the competition forward a month (since moved back again).
For a few years there you had the European Cup final and the Champions League back to back. Both Heineken and Sky were delighted with that as the major backers of both and the European Cup was getting better ratings every year.
Whilst the English teams lost out as much as everyone else in the UK&I, at least they got the French on board in getting one over on Ireland.
More recently they have again bent over to the French on format further so that now we donât understand the competition. And South Africans teams are in it.
It is unbelievable what a balls they made of the whole thing.
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I do 
As does anyone who has the BT sports package through sky
If you have BT then youâll have it.
It isnât as accessible in the U.K. I expect they think this will help them. They have been buying up a lot more stuff tbf.
There would have been massive anti Irish rubby sentiment on TFK at the time this was going on and the âshrewdiesâ on here flagged that this was both the bankrupting and the death knell for the Irish provinces and Irish rubby in general
Good for you.
The Heineken Cup was built on the back of the likes of 56 year old Tony from Ballygar watching George Hook ranting to Tom McGuirk on the side of the stand at Thomond Park on a cold dank January afternoon and being converted like Grant Fox converted John Kirwanâs tries.
Tony from Ballygar does not have Premier Sports and neither do I.
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A grand place to watch a 3pm EPL game. Eoin McDevitt is a decent sort and youâd tune in purely to see Kenny Cunninghamâs prediction.
Ya Iâd say most people have premier sports thatâs the 3 pm slot isnât it
RugbyGOGO
That helped in Ireland but it didnât lose ground on Sky really. Whatever about the loss of the ultimate general audience, it being Sky and available in so many places and the increased number of games they showed made up for it.
Sky are the big beast. If you are going away from them, you basically would want to be moving to the BBC or maybe an ITV. All other pay sports broadcasters in the U.K. havenât done too hot, and that includes ESPN (Disney).
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Irish Rugby is too well managed really. It relies on International games but when the international team were down, the provinces have often made up for it. Adding a few mill extra into the central pot.
Ireland basically adapts to whatever system is thrown at them. The problem is the muppets who took it over and their motivations.
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The general interest in Irish rugby was at all time low despite the fairly good performances of the national team mainly because the Irfu have decided to run the whole thing for the private schooled kids.
The what now?
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My impression is that even the Champions League has suffered considerably in Britain due to no longer being on ITV, and then no longer on Sky.
BT Sport isnât called BT Sport any more. Itâs called something else.
These other channels, nobody is aware of their existence. Theyâre graveyards, where competitions go to die.
Why did the Olympics make such a massive impact on the consciousness?
Blanket. Coverage. On. Free. To. Air. Television.
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BT Sport is now a 50/50 Joint Venture with Warner Brothers discovery. TNT is the brand in the U.S., hence why they renamed it that. And there is a tie in with Eurosport and Discovery+. I believe Eurosport is closing which is a shame.
For many years UEFA (and Formula 1) wouldnât leave FTA because of the promotional value of it. In fact the BBC couldnât get the rights because of the lack of ads, which gave ITV a virtual free run at it.
The decision to move away from ITV was not a good one by UEFA.
Sky figured out about 15 years ago that they didnât need everything, so werenât overly concerned about losing.
Sky basically care about their core A and B categories & then their equivalent to the Crown Jewels FTA events. They generally donât need an A or B from every sport.
There is only two champions league games free to air per week so itâll be the same here no? Rte and channel 4 are retaining their free to air games.