
Premiership Rugby Final 2025: TNT Sports gears up for Bath vs Leicester battle with huge uptick in season audience views By Heather McLean
Wednesday, June 11, 2025 - 14:44
Print This Story
TNT Sports expert for the Premiership Rugby Final 2025, Ugo Monye [Credit: Getty images]
This weekend, TNT Sports will draw the curtain on what has been a memorable rugby season, one that has seen the broadcaster continue to engage record numbers of fans through its coverage of Premiership Rugby over the past nine months.
On Saturday 14 June, fans will be able to watch a sold-out Premiership Rugby Final 2025 between Leicester and Bath at Twickenham Stadium, West London.
Meanwhile, average audiences for Premiership Rugby are up 10% versus the 2023/24 season, while TNT Sports' live-to-live scheduling strategy has seen Saturday afternoon Premiership Rugby matches draw a 47% rise in audiences when directly following a Premier League football match versus weeks with no Premier League lead-in.
This season TNT Sports has used a third eye pitchside to get more punditry and more fabulous shots of the action out to viewers
Huge audience uptick
Speaking to SVG Europe, Scott Young, executive vice president at WBD Sports, Europe, comments on the huge uptick in audiences for the Premiership and its relationship to the live-to-live programming that TNT Sports switched to when it cut BT Sport Score, and started handing over from the end of Premier League football matches straight into Premiership Rugby.
Read more Premiership Rugby Final 2025: Vintage clash between Bath and Leicester gets full TNT Sports treatment with AR, RefCam 3.0 and Player Mic
Young elaborates: When TNT Sports took over the mantle of running this business, we lent into live sport matters more than anything. One of the biggest decisions we made very early on was that BT Sport Score, which was the BT Sport show around the three o'clock football matches, had had its run. It was time for us to really focus on a live to live experience with our audiences, so going from our 12.30pm Saturday football match directly into rugby, we wanted to show a new audience just great how great the sport [of rugby] is.
That experience has given us a 47% uplift in audiences, and really just shown our football fan base in the UK, where they are sports-mad fans, particularly in following their club, Young continues.
By removing the commercial break and joining these two sports together, and having Lynsey [Hipgrave, TNT Sports football presenter] throw directly to Ugo [Monye, TNT Sports rugby pundit] and [them each] having some knowledge in what's the result of the Premier League match and which of the two [rugby] clubs are coming up in the Premiership, it just creates this seamless integration and that's why we've seen this product uplift. It's been through programming [schedules] and just understanding that live to live really helps you drive an audience, [as well as] through the fantastic competition that continues to be delivered.
Craig Doyle is set to lead the presentation for TNT Sports at Twickenham Stadium for the Premiership Rugby Final 2025 [Credit: Getty Images]
Pundits on play
On how the production changes made for this season of the Premiership have gone, Gari Jenkins, TNT Sports' executive producer for rugby, says: We've used our pundits slightly differently this year. I think we toyed with a lot of different scenarios. One of the ones we landed on was to use almost a third eye pitchside during the match, because our access is so good because the trust and the relationship between us and the clubs and between us and Premiership Rugby is so good, so we can put one of our guys pitchside.
We've used David Flatman quite a bit in that role, where he's talking in a very, I like to call it a David Attenborough-style low voice, into the mic with the action just going on over his shoulder. That allows us to zoom into the action he'll talk about two props taking each other on then we'll come out and find Dave talking about Beno Obano going up against someone, so that's worked really, really well. That's been a real little innovation that we're proud of, continues Jenkins.
To capture the unique atmosphere inside and outside of the stadium this weekend, TNT Sports will have various presentation positions across Twickenham such as in the fan zones, concourse as well as pitch side and on the pitch itself with on field demos. TNT Sports will also have access to the dressing room and tunnel areas.
Last year's runners-up, Bath, play the Leicester Tigers this Saturday 14 June at Twickenham with a 3pm kick off for the right to be crowned the best club side in England. There will be an extended build up starting from 1.30pm on TNT Sports 1 and discovery+ with a full cast of rugby experts on hand to offer unrivalled insights and analysis for viewers
TNT Sports presentation team for Saturday's broadcast:
Presenter - Craig Doyle
Reporter - Sarra Elgan
Commentator - Alastair Eykyn
Co-commentator - Austin Healey
Co-commentator - Ben Kay
Expert - Emily Scarratt
Expert - Danny Care
Expert - Ugo Monye
Expert - David Flatman
TNT Sports will have a record number of cameras in Twickenham for the Premiership Rugby Final 2025, as well as AR graphics throughout the broadcast, along with the latest enhanced version of RefCam, which was trialled in the play-off games in Bath and Leicester. Pictured, this year's co-commentator, Austin Healey, dances out of the way at the touchline [Credit: Getty Images]
More from Sports Video Group
11/07/2025
Behind the Mic: Amazon Prime Preps for First Season of NBA Action; MSG Networks ...
11/07/2025
SVG New Sponsor Spotlight: Suite Studios' Craig Hering on Adapting to Client...
11/07/2025
2025 SVG Content Management Forum Breaks Down AI's Impact, Continued Transit...
11/07/2025
A Journey HOME: University of Nebraska's HuskerVision Goes IP Leaders from the HuskerVision and Lawo share their IP learnings By SVG Staff
Friday, July 1...
11/07/2025
CMSI, Remote Picture Labs, Ace ESPN's Cloud-Based Editing Efforts for Wimble...
11/07/2025
Netflix Enters the Live-Boxing-Production Ring for Round 2 With Historic Taylor-...
10/07/2025
5G for all? What the DFL's use of Easy5G and RefCam could mean for events in...
10/07/2025
Save the Date: PGA TOUR Studios Welcomes SVG Remote Production Summit on Oct 14-...
10/07/2025
Cloud on the Road: How Remote-Production-Service Providers Are Adapting to a New...
10/07/2025
Seattle Kraken's Ryan Schaber on the NHL Team Taking Live Game Productions I...
10/07/2025
FOX Sports Reboots Small Control Room in Los Angeles as Hub for Vertical-First P...
10/07/2025
SVG Sit-Down: MSE's Zach Leonsis, ViewLift's Rick Allen Go Deep on Joint...
09/07/2025
Monumental Sports & Entertainment, ViewLift Unveil Broadcast/Streaming Joint Ven...
09/07/2025
SVG Europe Audio State of Wireless Mics Forum: If we lose the spectrum, it...
09/07/2025
Tech Focus: Athlete Audio - Venues Provide Sound Just for the Players From locker room to field of play, personalized systems help rev up the athletes By Dan D...
08/07/2025
Groundbreaking Gamecocks: Inside University of South Carolina's Four-Control...
08/07/2025
Monumental Sports & Entertainment's Samantha Brady on the Power of the RSN...
08/07/2025
Live From 2025 FIFA Club World Cup: FIFA, HBS Focus on Tournament Wrap, With an ...
08/07/2025
SVG Rewind: NESN Goes Behind the Scenes of 1975 Red Sox Retro Broadcast NESN is following up the retrocast with a week-long celebration of the Green Monster By...
07/07/2025
1-2 Punch: The Cloud, Generative AI, and the Future of Sports-Content Distributi...
07/07/2025
Tests and decisions: Formula E host broadcaster Aurora on launching new AR graph...
07/07/2025
Building tension: Using new AR graphics for storytelling at the Formula E penult...
07/07/2025
Altitude Sports' Matt Krol on the Success of the RSN's In-Arena Postgame...
07/07/2025
SVG Rewind: Four NFL Clubs Bring Us on Set of Respective Media Day Shoots An in-depth conversation with 49ers Laura Johnson, Ravens Jay O'Brien, Las Vegas R...
07/07/2025
Cosm To Build Fifth Shared Reality Venue in Cleveland as Part of Bedrock's ...
02/07/2025
Progressive realism: Aurora on taking up the broadcast reins for World RX alongs...
02/07/2025
Great speed: New host broadcaster Aurora on getting the World RX 2025 season pro...
02/07/2025
Seat of its pants: Aurora boxes clever and looks ahead for the FIA as new host b...
02/07/2025
UEFA Women's Euro 2025: EBU, BBC Sport and Sunset Vine talk coverage plans, ...
02/07/2025
UEFA Women's Euro 2025: Women's Super League launches new content series...
02/07/2025
UEFA Women's Euro 2025: Ignite puts fans and players front and centre with t...
02/07/2025
Storytelling in the Live Game Broadcast: ESPN Director Jimmy Platt Breaks Down t...
02/07/2025
CONCACAF's Miguel Angel Garcia on the Gold Cup's Enhanced 2025 Productio...
01/07/2025
SVG New Sponsor Spotlight: Spyrosoft's Jonathan Witty on Futher Business Exp...
01/07/2025
The NIL Effect: How the Shifting Business of College Athletics Impacts On-Campus...
01/07/2025
Cherry on the cake: Inside the technical production of the Tour de France 2025 w...
01/07/2025
NESN's Josh Jun on Keeping Alternative Broadcasts Fresh for Boston Red Sox, ...
01/07/2025
TNT Sports Races Back Into NASCAR With Fresh Look, Familiar Edge Production approach emphasizes creative freedom, bold storytelling, casual-fan-friendly tone B...
27/06/2025
How smarter compression is creating a sustainable future By Michael Burns
Monday, June 23, 2025 - 14:13
Print This Story
Live sport is especially vulnerab...
27/06/2025
Behind the Mic: FOX Sports Ratchets Up UEFA Women's EURO 2025 With Top-Class...
27/06/2025
RTL Group To Acquire Sky Deutschland By George Bevir, Editorial Director, SVG Europe
Friday, June 27, 2025 - 8:00 am
Print This Story | Subscribe
Story ...
27/06/2025
Frictionless, At Scale: The Current State of Live Video Streaming Techology Leaders from Bitmovin, Comcast Technology Solutions, Harmonic, IMAX, and Phenix brea...
27/06/2025
Marquee Sports Network's Nick Steger on Meeting the Moment of the Contending...
27/06/2025
NHL Draft 2025: The League Is Primed for First Decentralized Draft in Non-Pandem...
26/06/2025
10th-Annual SVG Regional Sports Production Summit Presents Useful Roadmap for th...
26/06/2025
The Big Cloud Debate: Public vs. Private vs. Hybrid Tech leaders from CineSys, Diversified, and Net Insight breaks down all flavors of cloud By Jason Dachman, ...
26/06/2025
Program Productions' Jess Kowatch on Training the Next and Current Gener...
25/06/2025
SVG College Summit 2025: Select Sessions Now Available to Watch on SVG PLAY Tackling the latest in college sports video: NIL, live production, virtual productio...
25/06/2025
ESPN Is Set To Bring AR Graphics to Wimbledon, Revamps Bunker and Studio 18 VO B...
24/06/2025
2025 NBA Draft: ABC/ESPN Prepares for Two-Day Draft at Barclays Center Partners Game Creek Video, CP Communications, NEP Specialty Capture will be on hand By M...