The Rugby Channel was

New Zealand New Zealand ( mi, Aotearoa ) is an island country in the southwestern Pacific Ocean. It consists of two main landmasses—the North Island () and the South Island ()—and over 700 smaller islands. It is the sixth-largest island count ...

's only channel dedicated to the national sport of

rugby union Rugby union, commonly known simply as rugby, is a close-contact team sport that originated at Rugby School in the first half of the 19th century. One of the two codes of rugby football, it is based on running with the ball in hand. In its m ...

. When live matches were not on, the channel screened classic games and documentaries relating to the sport. It was the only channel committed to showing all major matches in the

widescreen Widescreen images are displayed within a set of aspect ratios (relationship of image width to height) used in film, television and computer screens. In film, a widescreen film is any film image with a width-to-height aspect ratio greater than t ...

16:9 ratio popular with newer television sets, but from August 2008 Sky Sport changed to widescreen as well after My Sky HDi was launched. However, Rugby Channel viewers could exclusively watch the press conferences following major rugby matches, and could watch most major European rugby games as well. It also screened live and exclusive college 1st XV matches then replayed on Sky Sport later in the week.

Closure

The Rugby Channel closed on 31 July 2019. From 1 August 2019, all of The Rugby Channel's programming was moved to Sky Sport 1, making Sky Sport 1 a 24/7 rugby channel. The final program aired on The Rugby Channel was a documentary, Greats of Super Rugby: Christian Cullen.

External links

*
The Rugby Channel at LyngSat AddressThe RugbyStream Channel at UK

References

Television channels in New Zealand Defunct television channels in New Zealand Sports television networks in New Zealand Television channels and stations established in 2002 English-language television stations in New Zealand 2002 establishments in New Zealand {{NewZealand-tv-stub