Wales v Ireland RWC warm-up will not be broadcast live to Irish viewers

Viewers in the Republic of Ireland will be unable to watch Saturday's World Cup warm-up game against Wales, with the match being broadcast exclusively live on BBC Wales.

While Irish rugby fans in the North will have access to live coverage of the game in Cardiff – BBC Wales is available across all platforms in Northern Ireland – viewers tuning into BBC south of the border will instead have to settle for Homes Under the Hammer (BBC 1) or or Alex Polizzi: Chefs on Trial (BBC 2).

BBC Northern Ireland will not broadcast the match, presumably because they do not hold the rights in the Republic of Ireland.

A BBC spokesperson told The Irish Times: "The game will be broadcast live on BBC One Wales, BBC Radio Wales and BBC Radio Cymru. Viewers in Northern Ireland can watch the match live on the BBC iPlayer, BBC Sport Online or BBC One Wales on satellite or cable."

Neither TV3, who hold the rights to all of Ireland's World Cup matches, nor RTÉ Sport bid for rights to show the game live. RTÉ will, however, broadcast a one-hour highlights package at 8pm on Saturday.

Sky Sports hold the live rights to Ireland’s three remaining warm-up fixtures, against Scotland, Wales again and England, with RTÉ Sport again carrying highlights of those games.

As for the state broadcaster’s decision not to bid for live rights for Saturday’s game at the Millennium Stadium, Head of RTÉ Sport Ryle Nugent explained: “With three of the four games definitively secured by Sky, we made the decision to look for consistency by having an hour’s highlights of every one of the games instead of showing only one (live).

“Particularly at this time of year with so much sport on, there weren’t definitive kick-off times nailed down at the time either, so we needed consistency.”

Some technically savvy viewers may be able pick up BBC Wales by manually tuning certain satellite devices to the required frequency, Polarisation, Symbol Rate and FEC.

Confused? Us too.

Following Saturday’s trip to Cardiff, Joe Schmidt’s side take on Scotland (Saturday, August 15th) and Wales (Saturday, August 29th) at the Aviva Stadium before finalising their preparations for the World Cup against England at Twickenham (September 5th).