Wray - rugby TV rights "massive corporate game"

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Saracens chairman Nigel Wray has labelled the battle between Sky and BT Sport over the broadcasting rights for European Rugby as a “secondary problem”.

“As I understand it, ERC Ltd sold the rights to Sky which of course they didn’t have the authority to do,” he told ESPN. “The English clubs haven’t signed up to it.

“There’s a greater game being played here which is Sky v BT. That’s a massive corporate game. In my opinion, it’s going to be added to very shortly when the massive online companies like Google, YouTube also start bidding for sporting rights. That’s still to come. That will be massive and I think it will come soon.”

As the tit-for-tat argument over the future of European rugby intensified, Wray has already maintained the breakaway Rugby Champions Cup will happen next season despite the five unions, minus the Rugby Football Union, declaring their collective support for European Rugby Cup Ltd last week.

One aspect of the power tussle is the broadcasting rights for European rugby as ERC has already sold the Heineken Cup rights to Sky while Premiership Rugby sold rights to the English teams’ games in Europe to BT Sport.

Tigers chairman Simon Cohen highlighted the significance of this to the Leicester Mercury on Friday saying: “We have given notice to exit the ERC-run competition and our BT Sport contract means we cannot go back into an ERC-run competition. Even if we could, we would have little interest in putting ourselves back in a position which caused so much resentment.”

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Article source: http://www.express.co.uk/sport/rugbyunion/425539/Dylan-Hartley-grateful-for-final-England-chance

Wray - rugby TV rights "massive corporate game"