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
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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]
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Premiership Rugby Final 2025: TNT Sports gears up for Bath vs Leicester battle with huge uptick in season audience views By Heather McLean 
