11. Plaid Cymru Debate: Coverage of the Six Nations

Part of the debate – in the Senedd at 6:05 pm on 11 March 2020.

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Photo of Rhun ap Iorwerth Rhun ap Iorwerth Plaid Cymru 6:05, 11 March 2020

(Translated)

Thank you very much. There’s not much else to say, in all truth, but thank you very much, everyone, for your comments, and thank you for the support that you will be giving today. I’m very grateful for the commitment by the Minister that he will send a copy of the Record of Proceedings of this meeting, and the unanimous vote, hopefully, to the UK Government, as well as to the WRU.

In terms of the point about the problem not going away, there is a solution here, namely to allow, for example, for more than one free-to-air tv company to do a joint bid, which would bring matched funding, possibly, in order to ensure that the source of funding would continue to flow. But I also welcome greatly the commitment to look more deeply at this issue within the Senedd.

We’ve had a test of what would happen, in truth, when the England home games went to Sky back in 2001-02. There were half a million people watching Wales against England at Twickenham and then, the next year, on free-to-air, Wales against England at the Millennium Stadium, 6 million people were watching. It would be detrimental to the game if we lost those figures.

I close with a quote from Alun Ffred Jones, as the culture Minister in 2009, who gave evidence to the review on which sports should be on free-to-air tv. This is what he said: