U.K. subscription TV channel BT Sport has announced it will stream a portion of its rugby union show, Rugby Tonight, for free on both Facebook and Twitter, for this season’s Aviva Rugby Premiership. The first 15 minutes of the program will be available on BT Sport Rugby’s Facebook and Twitter feed. In this segment, it will focus on questions and opinions generated from the social media platforms.
According to BT Sport, the idea behind this was to provide “potential subscribers an opportunity to sample the broadcaster’s popular innovative show.”
Simon Green, head of BT Sport, said in a statement: “This is a further sign that BT Sport is at the heart of innovation in sport. Social media enables fans to watch Rugby Tonight on the move for the first part and for those who do not subscribe to BT Sport to see what we offer and sample BT Sport’s approach to sport and strong programming.”
BT Sport had previously won the exclusive U.K. TV broadcasting rights for the English Rugby Premiership in 2015 until 2021. Meanwhile, earlier this year, the subscription channel also won the sole broadcasting rights for the European Rugby Champions Cup and Challenge Cup until 2021. Previous to this, in order to see all the games in the the European Rugby Champions Cup, fans had to be both subscribers to BT Sport and the U.K.’s other main subscription based sports channel, Sky Sports.
The move to broadcast a portion of the show online follows a wider trend of BT Sport beginning to show some of its exclusive content online, despite being a subscription channel. Currently, the broadcaster’s football results show, BT Sport Score, is streamed live on Twitter. Meanwhile, it also broadcast both the UEFA Champions League and UEFA Europa League finals last season on YouTube for fans.
In conjunction with this, BT Sport has also launched a new sport predictor game to let fans of the Aviva Rugby Premiership to predict results and create private leagues with friends.
