Six Nations debuts new graphics package to engage fans old and new

While the action on the field, including a late win for England against France at Twickenham and Ireland continuing their impressive form, has been keeping Six Nations fans on the edge of their seats this year, the team behind the tournament has also been feeling the nerves, after debuting a bold new brand for 2025. The new look has also been incorporated into the Guinness Six Nations graphics package, which has been renewed with the aim of engaging fans both old and new.

Siobhán McCartan, head of broadcast partnerships, Six Nations Rugby, explains: “The previous broadcast graphics package had been with us for over a decade. Even though we’ve gone through various title sponsor changes, the actual graphics package as a whole hadn’t changed, it had just been reskinned. So this year,with the rebranding across the championship, it made sense to take a step back and redesign the full broadcast package.”

The project began last summer and, in addition to reflecting the heritage of the world’s oldest rugby championship, its goal was to create a strong brand identity that would resonate with new and existing fans.

Michael Ritson, creative lead at Six Nations Rugby, says: “We’ve been working on this for the past three or four years. We started with the Women’s brand, which launched three years ago, and we did a new broadcast design package for that. Then we launched the development pathway rugby, the U6N brand as well, but always with the vision in mind that we were going to have a brand family, and the Men’s would sit within that brand family when we got there.”

The team also recognised the need to attract a younger fan base and realised the graphics package was somewhat outdated in this regard.

“We’ve got a digital first brand now, which is great for the broadcast, because we live very much in a digital world. Working with Interstate Creative Partners, the design agency that helped us with the project, we really thought about how we communicate rugby to the masses. So those graphics that you see on screen, how are they interacting with the fans, especially new fans and younger fans who don’t understand the game? Are we explaining the game well enough in the broadcast to them? The new graphics and all of the motion graphics that we’ve got going on now make it feel like more of an interactive experience, but we still want to communicate the same things to existing fans who already watch rugby and make sure that they understand it and we’re not alienating them. So it all ties in together, a new brand for new fans, for new audiences, but also making it an amplified experience for the fans who were already with us.”

In addition to working with Interstate, Six Nations once again collaborated with AE Live for the test and build of the new setup.

“We did a lot of testing ahead of match one to make sure it was robust and ready, as well as being visually appealing,” says McCartan. “From an ease of use perspective, this current package is far easier for our producers to pull them on air, to turn around the graphics quickly on screen. We’ve got stats feeds coming in from Stats Perform and from our Sportable Smart Ball, which is our chipped ball. That’s all coming in through to the producers on site and they’re reading the game from an editorial standpoint and choosing what comes out on screen. This package allows more flexibility for them to do that and for those graphics when they come on screen to be visually more appealing and easy to comprehend. What we’re trying to do is create graphics that don’t need an explanation, that are easy to pick up and comprehend without full scale commentary.”

This can be a challenge given that rugby can be one of the more complex sports to understand and that two new global law trials are being introduced at the 2025 championships, but the new graphics are helping to keep fans up to speed.

McCartan expands: “We have things like the bunker system, which will have timers for yellow cards and different animations coming out of the clock to describe what’s happening with players who are in sin bins or in bunkers. That’s a pretty complex piece that we want to communicate in as simple a way as possible. But again, appealing to younger fans is really important, so we animate the clock when there’s a try, adding a moving orange banner with plus five saying ‘try’. So new viewers know straight away that a try is worth five points, and we get the same for a conversion, for example. The idea is that they will look as simple and clean as possible, while also providing the information that people need to be able to understand the game.”

Both McCartan and Ritson agree that one highlight of the new graphics package is the player imagery used to illustrate the team sheets and lineups.

Ritson says: “It’s the first time we’ve ever taken ownership of that. In the past, we would get the unions to take photographs and send us them, but that brought its own issues in terms of different styles of photos. Now we’ve been able to shoot the players from different angles, so instead of having front facing players, we’ve got angled shots from slightly below which is a subtle way of us trying to hero the images so they feel a bit more like superheroes. So just like kids who absolutely love Ronaldo, we want to make [France’s Antoine] Dupont feel like that to those guys who are coming into rugby.”

McCartan adds: “There’s far more movement and energy in all of those graphics. It looks visually far more appealing. You get to see more of the player, and I think that’s been a big success of these packages.”

For each match, the AE Live team are on site in the broadcast compound, working closely with the producer and director.

McCartan says: “The AE Live team understands the rules and the movements of the game. When it comes to those new bunker systems and match officiating pieces, that’s really important because their operators have to make really quick decisions when the game is changing and they’re listening to the referees’ decisions. Their operators need to be rugby experts. We find that with AE, we get that knowledge, which is fantastic.

“The graphics operator and graphics logger work very closely with the world feed producer. They’ll be constantly communicating in terms of, ‘bring me up this kick predictor stack’, because they’re about to take a kick that could change the game, and we want to know, do they have a 50% chance of making it or a 10% chance of making it. The world feed producer really being able to tell the story is vital. They need to have that trust and a good working relationship with the graphics operator to quickly get the stat ready and frame it in the right angle with the director beside them speaking to the camera team and the vision mixing team to make sure it looks good for that camera shot at that time based on the flow and story of the game. It’s an amazing job that they all do collectively, to actually bring it to air and for it to make sense.”