Jill Douglas and Mark Pougatch will lead ITV’s coverage of the Guinness Men’s Six Nations Championship across ten live matches on ITV1 and ITVX, with ITV broadcasting all England matches for the first time under the new four-year deal agreed with Six Nations Rugby running from 2026 to 2029.
Under the deal, every England, Ireland and France home fixture will be broadcast by ITV. Scotland and Wales home matches, meanwhile, will be shown by the BBC – unless they involve England. This means that Scotland’s Calcutta Game against England at Murrayfield on 14 February will be on ITV, not BBC Scotland.
ITV will broadcast the first match of the tournament, live on ITV1, ITVX, STV, STV Player and UTV, between France and Ireland this Thursday evening at the Stade De France. Produced by ITV Sport Production, part of ITV Studios, ITV will kick off live England matches on Saturday with England v Wales at the Allianz Stadium in Twickenham.
“We want to find a way to further return to site, because that’s where you get all the excitement and atmosphere”
“Our basic philosophy for this year’s Six Nations coverage – and indeed the next four years – is we want to find a way to further return to site, because that’s where you get all the excitement and atmosphere, rather than doing things at a distance,” ITV Sport Production’s – technical director Tony Cahalane told SVG Europe.
As part of the Men’s Six Nations agreement, ITV Sport will act as host broadcaster for England matches during the tournament, with Gravity Media as OB facilities provider in the UK. “We run all our host matches using a two-truck operation so we can deliver a very clean world feed to all other broadcasters on behalf of the Six Nations.
“For England v Wales on Saturday we’re using 36 cameras, to include Spidercam, RefCam, corner flag cams, five super slo mos, two hi mos and two RF depth of field cameras, alongside three radio cameras we have covering the touchlines. Our pitch-side presentation set-up in Twickenham involves five cameras, including a small Technocrane jib.”
Multiple reverse circuits
In recent years ITV Sport has presented Six Nations away fixtures via a VR studio in Ealing. “We were always on-site in England, but what we wanted to do as part of the new rights deal was to be more on-site everywhere,” says Cahalane.
“It’s something that Six Nations has encouraged as well, but we specifically want to give that on-site feel to the viewer with the proper atmosphere, and also change the presentation style as well.
“We are able to do that with our new OB hub approach. We have our own bespoke connectivity, being installed for us by BMC TV, and that is all based around the fact that our operation is sometimes pres standalone, sometimes host and pres, but the main reason for doing it is because we want to hub some matches from various sites so we needed to increase the amount of reverse feeds we could get in and also some disaster recovery planning as well.
Credit ©INPHO/Dan Sheridan
“It is all fibre, with some DR elements which we cover off with a combination of LiveU and SRT streams. And we make use of our large ITV Sport Production media management facility, based at Timeline’s Ealing Broadcast Centre, to be able to feed material from other stadiums – and equally live feeds from other stadiums — on the multiple reverse circuits we have at the hub OBs, now due to the connectivity installed.
“This is across all Six Nations locations. As the tournament has grown, there’s more and more draw on the capacity at the grounds, and we have had some issues every now and again. We wanted to be absolutely resilient and have something that is specific to our output.”
ITV’s live coverage of the tournament concludes on Saturday 14 March with Ireland and Scotland followed by France v England. Cahalane says ITV Sport Production aims to provide a ten-camera pitch-side presentation at the Stade de France, with Paris acting as its OB hub for the day.
“We’ll have a small OB at the Aviva Stadium in Dublin as well, and the Ireland OB will come into Paris and we’ll link everything in Paris.” Timeline acts as ITV Sport Production’s OB facilities provider for Six Nations games outside the UK.
ITV’s matches will air across ITV1, ITVX, STV, STV Player and UTV. Each match will be simulcast live on ITVX along with short highlights of every match from the tournament, while ITV Rugby’s social media accounts (on Instagram, X and Facebook) will bring the tournament to life with content and clips of all the action.
The expert analysis punditry line-up joining Jill Douglas and Mark Pougatch includes Jonny Wilkinson, Brian O’Driscoll, Dan Biggar, Ronan O’Gara, Jamie Roberts, John Barclay, Rory Best, Sergio Parisse, Benjamin Kayser, Ugo Monye, Maggie Alphonsi and Greig Laidlaw.
Joining them in the commentary box will be Nick Mullins and Miles Harrison with co-commentators David Flatman, Ben Kay, Shane Williams, Scott Hastings, Gordon D’Arcy and Nolli Waterman. Reporters will be Topsy Ojo and Gabriel Clarke.
Six to twelve: Nations Championship
ITV has also recently secured rights to the first edition of the new Nations Championship rugby tournament for free-to-air TV. The package gives ITV the rights to show every game from the 12-team competition, which features Six Nations rugby sides (England, France, Ireland, Italy, Scotland and Wales) alongside teams from Argentina, Australia, Fiji, Japan, New Zealand and South Africa.
The Nations Championship debuts in July 2026, having been created by Six Nations Rugby and SANZAAR through a joint venture, transforming the July and November international rugby windows into a single competitive tournament every two years. Outside of a Nations Championship year, ITV will deliver coverage of the Summer Nations Series, as teams prepare for Rugby World Cup 2027, as well the Autumn Nations Series.
Commenting on the confirmation that ITV will become the home of the Nations Championship in the UK, Tom Harrison, CEO of Six Nations Rugby, said: “This is more than a new partnership with ITV: it is a statement of intent for the future of rugby. Every major moment from the Six Nations and Nations Championship will be available, free-to-air, for the next four years, giving fans unprecedented access to the best of international rugby. Coupled with significant investment in the sport from ITV, the game has never been in a stronger position.”
