Rugby Australia (RA), the governing body for rugby union, signed a five-year extension to its domestic broadcast rights with media company Nine Entertainment.
Starting in 2026, the new deal will run through 2030, covering men’s (Wallabies) and women’s (Wallaroos) national team fixtures outside of the Rugby World Cups, the Super Rugby Pacific men’s and Super Rugby Women’s matches, all SANZAAR Tests and the new Nations Cup tournament (once formalized), and Shute Shield (Sydney) and Hospital Cup (Brisbane) club games at least through to 2027.
Go deeper with GlobalData
Every home test fixture from the men’s and women’s teams, as well as the entirety of the annual Bledisloe Cup will be aired on both Nine’s linear free-to-air network, and its Stan Sport streaming platform.
The deal is reportedly worth in the region of AUD210 million ($126.4 million), or AUD42 million ($25.3 million) a year, and includes performance incentives which if met, could bring the rights fees paid up to AUD240 million ($144.5 million) depending on the on-field performance of the national teams.
That fee is a major uplift on the current AUD33.3 million ($24.2 million) per year Nine currently pays for the rights, after picking them up on a cut-price deal in 2020 after the end of Rugby Australia’s broadcast partnership with rival Foxtel, and the body’s failure to agree a deal with Optus Sport before the onset of the Covid pandemic.
In November 2020, Nine sealed a three-year deal, which included a two-year option to extend, worth AUD$100 million ($73 million) with Rugby Australia, for full rights to the code, and ended Rugby Australia’s 25-year partnership with Foxtel, the pay-TV operator.
US Tariffs are shifting - will you react or anticipate?
Don’t let policy changes catch you off guard. Stay proactive with real-time data and expert analysis.
By GlobalDataThe whole-of-game deal, which began in 2021, includes rights to the men’s Super Rugby and women’s Super W competitions, The Rugby Championship for national teams, other Bledisloe Cup games between Australia and New Zealand, and women’s Wallaroos test matches.
Coverage features predominantly on a new sports platform on subscription video-on-demand service Stan. Additionally, Super Rugby Saturday night games are shown on free-to-air across Nine’s suite of channels, representing the first time the competition has been shown live on free-to-air television in Australia.
During the final year of the three-year partnership, Nine took up the two-year extension on its current deal to broadcast rugby until the end of 2025.
Before Nine covered the rugby, Foxtel and commercial broadcaster Network Ten previously held rights in a five-year deal from 2016 to 2020 worth a total of AUD275 million ($198 million), or AUD55 million ($39.6 million) per year.
Under the deal, pay-TV’s Fox Sports showed Australia national team games live, as well as matches from Super Rugby, the competition that includes provincial teams from Australia, New Zealand, and South Africa, along with Argentina and Japan for the first time in 2016.
National network Ten paid around AUD3.5 million per year to simulcast the Wallabies’ games and showed one Super Rugby game on replay each weekend, plus Monday evening highlights. Ten’s delayed coverage of one Super Rugby match each week represented the first free-to-air presence in Australia for the competition.
The contract more than doubled the previous AUD25 million-($23 million) per-year deal from 2011 to 2015.
Table 1: Rugby Australia rights cycle, broadcaster, and value
| CYCLE | BROADCASTER | YEARS | TOTAL VALUE (AUDm) | ANNUAL VALUE (AUDm) | ANNUAL CHANGE |
|---|---|---|---|---|---|
| 2026 to 2030 | Nine | 5 | 210 | 42 | 26.1% |
| 2021 to 2025 | Nine | 5 | 166.7 | 33.3 | -39.5% |
| 2016 to 2020 | Fox Ten | 5 | 275 | 55 | 120% |
| 2011 to 2015 | Fox Nine | 5 | 125 | 25 | - |
