Europe’s top clubs converge on Cardiff this weekend as Bath Rugby tackles Lyon Olympique Universitaire this evening (May 23) in the European Professional Club Rugby (EPCR) Challenge Cup Final, followed by tomorrow afternoon’s showdown between Northampton Saints and Union Bordeaux-Bègles in the 30th Champions Cup Final at the Principality Stadium.
Premier Sports is the lead broadcaster of the 2025 Champions Cup and EPCR Challenge Cup in the UK and Ireland, and as such steps up to take on both host broadcaster and producer roles across this weekend, supported by facilities provider NEP Ireland.
Tonight’s broadcasters are France Télévisions and beIN Sports for France, SuperSport South Africa and FloRugby USA. For tomorrow’s final Premier Sports is joined by S4C in the UK, France Télévisions and beIN Sports, RTÉ Ireland, SuperSport and FloRugby. Both matches will also be available on EPCR TV.
Under a three-year deal, which will run until the conclusion of the 2026/27 season, Premier Sports covers all 63 Champions Cup matches. It also includes two EPCR Challenge Cup pool matches per round, two round of 16, and all matches in the quarter-finals, semi-finals and final. This deal brought to an end a ten-year partnership for EPCR with BT Sport and latterly TNT Sports as lead UK and Ireland broadcaster.
“It’s a massive weekend for us,” Premier Sports CEO Richard Sweeney told SVG Europe. “It’s not as if it’s new to us however, as we’re quite comfortable broadcasting big events and specifically rugby. We’ve been the main broadcaster of the United Rugby Championship [URC] for the last seven years, so we’re quite used to delivering lots of games from all of the venues.
“But we’re very proud to deliver this EPCR weekend, primarily I suppose for the UK part of the company, in that the Northampton Saints win in the semi-final against Leinster has built a major interest in England, along with Bath Rugby in the final of the Challenge Cup in what is close to being a home game for them in Cardiff. The fact that we have two English teams in the finals this weekend is impressive.
“We are a subscription channel in the UK. But success breeds interest, and we’re delighted with the amount of interest heading into this weekend.”
He continues: “We obviously have used lots of third parties such as Sunset+Vine with our OBs and so on, but in the end we have quite a strong production centre in-house at Broadcasting House in Dublin, which we’ve been building over many, many years with our own studios and TX suite on-site.
“We have always had a strong production side to the business. This is what we do week in and week out: we’re quite comfortable and have a very strong and experienced team who understands rugby. I mentioned the URC and we also broadcast the French Top 14 as exclusive UK rightsholders, along with Japanese and American rugby as well.”
In a typical week across its UK and Ireland channels, Premier Sports also has Premier League, Champions League and Scottish football, La Liga, Copa Italia, DFB Pokal, NHL and NASCAR. It is also working on the Scottish Cup Final this weekend.
“But yes, we’re really excited to be in Cardiff at the Principality Stadium. We’re all on-site with the team, along with NEP. Our anchors for this weekend are Claire Thomas presenting the Challenge Cup and Martin Bayfield on Saturday, along with co-comms and pundits including Lawrence Dallaglio, Chris Robshaw, Anthony Watson, Andy Goode, Pat Lam, Matt Banahan and Ryan Wilson,” he continues.
Gavin Muldoon is Premier Sports’ head of rugby production, and match directors are Gruff Davies for the Challenge Cup Final tonight and Dave Murphy for the Champions Cup tomorrow. Commentators are Martin Gillingham and Miles Harrison respectively.
“We have a three-year deal with EPCR, and we’ve just signed a new four-year extension deal with URC. We also launched the first dedicated rugby channel in the UK, Premier Sports Rugby, with a soft launch last month. It’s not in Ireland yet, but it’s a 24/7 rugby channel for the UK. We’re going to build it, but already we probably deliver 400-500 live rugby games a year, so it is a significant number,” says Sweeney.
“There will be lots of eyes on us. There is a significant investment for finals like these as they are in big stadiums and they are complicated. At the end of the day we have to get our supporters, subscribers and fans to watch and enjoy the game. We need to get that right.
“We’re always in the market, looking for opportunities. We work very well with EPCR and the other rugby institutions. Some people think we’re quite new to the market, but we’re not. We’ve been around a while and have very experienced production people. We’re ready to go.”
Champions Cup Final
The camera plan is the same for both EPCR Finals, a 21-camera set up with main wide 22:1, main tight 86:1; low tight 86:1; gantry tight 86:1; two RF handheld W/A; NL, NR and FR 86:1 TMOs; team arrivals W/A; indoor flash W/A; superflash W/A; NR TMO 86:1; reverse RF handheld W/A; high behind left W/A; reverse 86:1; far left runner; studio presentation; spidercam W/A; behind right goal runner; studio presentation 22:1; drone; home coach; away coach; home dressing room and away dressing room.
“NEP Ireland is host facilities provider this year,” NEP senior technical manager Adam Scarff told SVG Europe. “Premier Sports is the world feed broadcaster for the finals and we’re providing the host facilities – one broadcaster for both matches, unlike previous years. And we’re also doing the unilateral add-ons for BeIN Sports and France Télévisions. Our Lír truck is doing the host broadcast production; OBS1 is doing France Télévisions; and Spirit is here for BeIN Sports. S4C are here as well for free-to-air, with their own truck.”
For both EPCR Finals NEP Ireland is providing a six-camera unilateral for Premier Sports, eight-camera add-on for France TV, and seven camera unilateral for BeIN Sports. On Saturday, S4C will also be on-site in Cardiff with its own truck and a seven-camera presentation add-on, including two pitchside studio, PTZ comm cam, ENG and Superflash RF.
The Champions Cup Final will be broadcast live and free-to-air on S4C. It will be broadcast across the UK on all S4C platforms: on television and online via S4C Clic and S4C on iPlayer, as well as on S4C Chwaraeon’s YouTube channel. S4C will also provide English commentary, along with Welsh commentary on all their platforms (linear and YouTube), except on iPlayer where only Welsh commentary will be available.
The coverage will be produced by Media Atom and will include expert analysis and extensive match-day coverage. Catrin Heledd will lead the broadcast, joined by Lyn Jones, Sioned Harries, Shane Williams and Rhys Priestland for expert analysis. Commentary will be provided in English by Gareth Charles, with Gareth Roberts delivering the Welsh-language commentary. Reporting from the sidelines are Lauren Jenkins and former Northampton player Rhodri Gomer.
EPCR recently selected Eluvio to power its global streaming subscription service, EPCR TV. Eluvio provides EPCR with content security and end-to-end anti-piracy protection. Its end-to-end security capability provides strong encryption, digital rights management, authorisation, proof of authenticity, forensic watermarking, and rights control for a tamper-proof streaming experience.
In a first for the competition, referees’ decisions were broadcast over stadium public address systems for the Champions Cup semi-finals and the innovation has been retained for both finals in Cardiff. This allows fans in attendance to hear the real-time discussions and reasoning behind decisions made between the referee and the television match official. Referee microphones are already broadcast into stadiums during international fixtures including the Six Nations and are currently being trialled in the URC and Premiership Rugby.
Tonight, Scotland’s Hollie Davidson will break new ground as the first female referee to take charge of an EPCR Final. She will be joined by an international team including assistant referees Gianluca Gnecchi and Eoghan Cross, and well as TMO Mike Adamson. On Saturday, Georgian referee Nika Amashukeli will take charge of the Champions Cup Final, marking his EPCR Finals debut. Working alongside him in Cardiff will be assistant referees Andrea Piardi and Andrew Brace, as well as TMO Marius Jonker.
