Women’s Six Nations rugby deserves linear TV coverage, argues Sarah Rendell
THE COVERAGE of the Guinness Women’s Six Nations on TV has come on in leaps and bounds in recent years. The BBC became the exclusive broadcaster for the competition in 2021, seeing England games featured on their main channels, and there are more matches on TV now than ever before. All of the games across the competition are available to watch for fans, but some fixtures are put on iPlayer rather than on terrestrial TV. It’s good that supporters can watch and engage in matches that they would not have been able to a few years ago. However, with the impressive viewing statistics we’ve seen over the last few years, all of the games should be shown on a channel as opposed to the iPlayer.
In the UK the 2023 Women’s Six Nations was watched for a total of 10.4 million hours. Just imagine the figure if all of the games had been put on a television channel. The games could have been stumbled upon by casual viewers of rugby. Having the fixtures on iPlayer limits the amount of new viewers as they would have to seek the match out when they may not even know it is taking place.
The games selected for iPlayer are those that are likely to have less appeal to viewers. England fixtures are put on a TV channel rather than the streaming service. But as we’ve seen in previous women’s tournaments, not to mention the 2024 men’s competition, exciting fixtures can come from all across the championship.
