Six Nations and Sanzaar agree to sell global broadcast rights together in unique deal

Rugby’s biggest unions aiming to grow revenues

New rights management agency to oversee sales

The Six Nations and Sanzaar unions have agreed to sell all their media rights and commercial deals collectively for the first time in a new revenue-sharing model.

In an innovative arrangement that is the first of its kind in sport, the southern hemisphere nations will receive a share of the profits generated by the Six Nations and British & Irish Lions tours, while the European countries will benefit from broadcast and sponsorship deals generated by the Rugby Championship and the Rugby’s Greatest Rivalry series between New Zealand and South Africa.

The sales process will be managed by a new rights management agency to be set up by a 10-person board that has been created to run the Nations Championship, which resumes this weekend.

Commercial and media rights for the Nations Championship are already sold collectively and the revenue shared between the 10 founding members – the Six Nations plus New Zealand, South Africa, Australia and Argentina – with Fiji and Japan given much smaller appearance fees. Having worked together to create the Nations Championship the 10 biggest unions have moved to pool rights for international rugby outside the World Cup in the hope of achieving growth, particularly in a difficult media market.

The new strategy represents a global extension of Project Light, through which the four Home Nations unions have collectively sold Six Nations rights since 2019.

“In effect, we are creating a commercial rights agency which sits underneath the 10 Nations Championship founding unions,” the Rugby Football Union chief executive, Bill Sweeney, said.

“We think that will result in a much better and more efficient approach to the market, obviously with the intention of increasing overall valuations and growing the commercial side of the game.”

The new arrangements are expected to affect sponsorship and commercial deals from 2028, which coincides with the second edition of the Nations Championship, but will not have an impact on TV rights sales until two years later, as all the Six Nations and Sanzaar’s broadcast rights are secured until 2029.

The next TV rights cycle, from 2030, promises to involve a particularly intriguing auction, with the Six Nations, Rugby Championship and Nations Championship to be sold together. While broadcasters will be offered the chance to buy all three competitions, bespoke packages will also be available in an attempt to create more competition.