United Rugby Championship Reports First-Year Results with Eluvio Streaming Platform

Eluvio and the United Rugby Championship (URC) have announced first-year results for URC TV, the league's streaming platform powered by Eluvio's Content Fabric platform.

The United Rugby Championship is a club rugby league featuring 16 teams from Ireland, South Africa, Wales, Italy, and Scotland. URC TV delivers more than 180 live games to fans in more than 150 countries.

Prior to partnering with Eluvio, URC TV used legacy streaming providers. In the old world, we were running at extremely high streaming costs and expending a lot of effort for relatively little reward, says Adam Redmond, Media Director, United Rugby Championship. We knew we wanted to deliver an exceptional fan experience and transformational cost-efficiency. Eluvio already had a proven track record with our partners EPCR TV, and we believed their innovations could deliver, on both the cost and quality side of the equation, to better serve our fan base worldwide.

In its first year on the Content Fabric, URC TV reported a 62% reduction in operating costs, 64% increase in transactions, and 35% increase in revenue. Subscribers have grown 2.7x, with viewers in 150 countries, over 1.25 million sessions, and an average season watch time of 20 hours per viewer.

For rights holders without unlimited resources, this is the lesson: the right tech partner is not just a streaming decision, it is a business model decision, Redmond adds. Autonomy, cost control, and platform reach are what unlock commercial growth, which is exactly what Eluvio provided to URC TV. Most importantly, Eluvio innovations are all focused on enabling us to drive fan usage and engagement.

We're honored to play such a key role in the commercial success of URC TV, and believe URC TV is a model for sports leagues and content owners of all sizes around the globe, says Michelle Munson, CEO and Co-Founder, Eluvio. We're proving that the Content Fabric can shatter the cost and efficiency boundaries that have held back video over IP for decades, maximize monetization, and expand global distribution and fan engagement. The Eluvio approach significantly simplifies the tech stack while providing maximum efficiency and innovation. Teams, leagues and brands can lessen their operational burden while also delivering an exceptional fan experience and profitability.

Technical Details

Eluvio receives live source feeds directly from the contribution provider and handles ingest, transcoding, publishing, and streaming output, including multiple audio channels and DRM (Widevine, Fairplay, PlayReady). The platform delivers average playback latencies of 5 seconds at full source resolution with serving latency under 200 milliseconds globally. URC TV is available on Android TV, Apple TV, Amazon Fire TV, Samsung, LG, and Roku, as well as browsers and mobile devices.

Eluvio Video Intelligence Editor (EVIE) is used for VOD editing and clip generation. The platform also includes automatic transcription of multi-audio commentary, AI-generated chapters, and play-by-play descriptions.

NAB Show 2026

URC TV and Eluvio will be presented at NAB Show 2026. Michelle Munson will speak at the NAB Sports Summit Theatre (West Hall W3643) on Sunday, April 19 from 2:15-2:45 p.m., and at a broadcaster breakfast event on Tuesday, April 21 from 7:30-9:30 a.m. at The Renaissance Hotel. Eluvio will hold demonstrations at West Hall Meeting Room W237 and AI Innovation Pavilion Booth W2300E.

LINK:	https://www.sportsvideo.org/2026/04/02/united-rugby-championship-repor...
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