Sky Sports announces four-year deal with SANZAAR to show wealth of southern hemisphere rugby union

(Icon Sportswire via AP Images)

• Sky Sports will continue to show the very best rugby from New Zealand, Australia, South Africa and Argentina as part of a new four-year deal with SANZAAR
• Deal until 2025 to include rights to Home Nations Summer Tours this summer, The Rugby Championship, Super Rugby & domestic SA & NZ competitions

Sky Sports has today announced that it has secured an extension to the broadcast rights to the very best rugby union from New Zealand, Australia, South Africa and Argentina.

The agreement provides viewers with at least 150 fixtures a year headlined by the best club and international matches from the southern hemisphere until 2025, including Home Nations Summer Tours, The Rugby Championship, Super Rugby & domestic competitions in South Africa & New Zealand: The Currie Cup and The National Provincial Championship respectively.

In addition, Sky Sports customers will now be able to view a range of summer tours in 2022 as the Home Nations head below the equator, including Australia vs. England, South Africa vs. Wales, New Zealand vs. Ireland and Argentina vs. Scotland.

Jonathan Licht, Sky Sports Managing Director said:"SANZAAR rugby has been in Sky Sports' DNA for almost 30 years and we're pleased to continue our important and valued partnership with SANZAAR to give our customers the very best rugby the southern hemisphere has to offer."

SANZAAR CEO Brendan Morris said: "We welcome Sky aboard once again as our broadcast partner in the UK and Ireland. Sky has been a broadcast partner of SANZAAR for a very long time and we have a very strong and professional relationship that has seen our tournaments delivered into this major rugby market. Super Rugby Pacific continues to be a world class tournament featuring some of the best players in the world. It is followed by The Rugby Championship when current world champions South Africa will battle the All Blacks, Wallabies and Pumas for southern hemisphere supremacy."

This weekend, live on Sky Sports, there are four Super Rugby clashes to keep across, and it begins with an all-Australian affair as table-toppers the Brumbies host the Reds in an 8.45am kick off on Friday.

On Saturday, there are three Super Rugby offerings as Fijian Drua - one of two new franchises making their competition debut in 2022 - host Australia's Western Force (3.35am kick off), Moana Pasifika - the other new franchise making their debut in Super Rugby this year - facing New Zealand's Chiefs in a 6.05am kick off, plus Australian pair the Waratahs vs Rebels meeting each other in an 8.45am kick off. For more details on this weekend's fixtures visit https://www.skysports.com/rugby-union.

The continuation of the SANZAAR rights deal adds to a multitude of top-level sporting action on Sky Sports. Some of other the headline events in 2022 include every race exclusively live from the 2021 F1 season, all men's and women's golf majors, The Hundred, Premier League, EFL, WSL and SPFL football.

About SANZAAR

SANZAAR is a joint-venture enterprise representing the international rugby unions of Argentina, Australia, New Zealand and South Africa. It is the preeminent southern hemisphere rugby administration body whose core responsibilities are the management and delivery of The Rugby Championship and Super Rugby Pacific international rugby competitions and coordination of the competitions global Media Rights sales process. The SKY Super Rugby Pacific tournament coverage is non-exclusive in 2022.

About Sky

Sky is Europe's leading media and entertainment company and is proud to be part of Comcast Corporation, a global media and technology company that connects people to moments that matter. Across six countries, Sky connects 23 million customers to the best entertainment, sports, news, arts and to our own award-winning original content. 

Following the launch of Sky Glass, we now offer customers our strongest ever line-up of products and services. As well as the new streaming TV with Sky inside and everything integrated, customers can enjoy the award-winning Sky Q with all your favourite channels and apps in one place, and with Sky Go you can now access an even better experience on your devices. Sky TV has new channels, new shows and new deals with Peacock, Paramount+ and more. Sky Mobile was voted Best Pay Monthly and Best Value Pay Monthly network by Uswitch, and with Sky Broadband we're offering our fastest speeds yet.

Building on the success of Sky Originals like Chernobyl, Gangs of London and Brassic, we are doubling our investment in original content by 2024 through Sky Studios. Our new TV and movie studio, Sky Studios Elstree, is expected to create over 2,000 new jobs and generate an additional £3 billion of production investment in the UK over the first five years alone. Sky News provides impartial and trustworthy journalism for free, Sky Arts is the UK's only dedicated free-to-air arts channel making the arts accessible for everyone and Sky Sports, our leading sports broadcasting service, brings customers some of the biggest and best global sporting events from the Premier League to Formula 1 and everything in-between. Sky Cinema is the home of Sky Original films with brand new films launching every month alongside an unrivalled range of the latest cinema releases and on demand library.

We believe that we can be a force for good in the communities in which we operate. We're committed to being Europe's first net zero carbon entertainment company by 2030 and we're proud to be a Principal Partner and Media Partner of COP26 - the UN Climate Change Conference. We take pride in our approach to diversity and inclusion: we've been recognised by The Times and Stonewall for our commitment to diversity, and we've set ambitious 2025 targets to continue to increase diversity and representation.  We're also committed to investing £30million across our markets over the next three years to improve our approach to diversity and inclusion, and to tackle racial injustice.