Rugby Reality TV in Canada

I almost feel as if this recent post at Rugby Canada was directed at me. There's not too much new here, but it is interesting all the same.

TV IN CANADA - THE REAL TRUTH

May 28, 2007
Toronto, ON

Garth Gottfried is a television producer at Sportsworld, which is a daily international sports show hosted by James Sharman on the Score Television. Sportsworld airs weekdays at 5:30 pm and 7:00 pm (EST) across the country, regularly including rugby. Additionally, the Score has aired rugby games in the past year.

In November, 2006, Garth wrote an article on some of the problems facing the sport of rugby and general broadcast television in Canada.

Rugby Canada gets many inquiries about the 2007 Rugby World Cup and whether it will be on television.

Setanta owns the rights for North America. The Irish television company is currently trying to obtain approval from the Canadian Radio-Television Commission (CRTC) for a Canadian station licence.

If the CRTC does does not grant a licence in time, then watching the games on the closed-circuit at your local rugby club or pub may be the only option. However, online solutions such as Setanta's online division and companies like Mediazone on delay may be possible as well. Ultimately, if Setanta can find a broadcast partner in Canada willing to air the games, then the Rugby World Cup (or at least part of it) could still be on the air. But at this time, that is not the case.

For your own information purposes, we re-print Garth's article. [...]

Emphasis mine. Read Gottfried's entire commentary here.

I would say that Gottfried's point regarding the exhorbitant production costs of home tests is justified. But Rugby Canada isn't expected to cover costs of international test matches played on tour to other nations. Yet we didn't see Canada playing Wales at Cardiff last year, for instance. Hopefully in the future we may be able to negotiate deals with individual unions, like the Canada vs. New Zealand test match this coming weekend.

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