TalkSport snaps up radio rights to Lions' Australia tour

http://www.guardian.co.uk/media/2012/nov/07/talksport-lions-australia-tour

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TalkSport has beaten the BBC to snap up the exclusive live radio rights to the British and Irish Lions rugby union tour to Australia next year.

This is the first time the commercial station has had the exclusive rights to a Lions tour, which take place every four years and are traditionally broadcast by the BBC on Radio 5 Live as well as BBC Radio Wales, Scotland and Ulster.

The move marks a further blow to the BBC's live radio coverage of rugby union. TalkSport also had exclusive rights to last year's Rugby World Cup, breaking the BBC's monopoly of live coverage of the event since 1987.

UTV-owned TalkSport, which has just more than 3 million listeners a week, has been rapidly expanding its portfolio of sports rights in the last few years.

The station has chipped away at 5 Live's dominance of live Premier League football and now broadcasts 64 games a season (compared with the BBC's 128, down from 192 a couple of years ago). It also has the rights to broadcast live Premier League football worldwide outside of Europe.

TalkSport programme director Moz Dee said the Lions tour was "one of the biggest events in sport, and we're proud to be bringing this exclusively to our audience. We had a great rugby World Cup in New Zealand and we can't wait to follow the Lions in Australia".

The Lions tour is the first to Australia since 2001 and will take place in June and July 2013.

TalkSport will broadcast all three Test matches and the warm-up games, beginning with a match against the Barbarians in Hong Kong on 1 June and ending with the third test in Sydney on 6 July.

UTV will also broadcast the Tests on its south Wales station, Swansea Sound.

Lions chief executive John Feehan described TalkSport as a "major force in UK sports radio with proven experience in live rugby broadcasting. It's proper that the Lions tour in its 125th year looks for dynamic new partners that benefit both our sponsors and fans and we're extremely pleased to be working with TalkSport".

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