TNT Sports wins race for British and Irish Lions documentary
TNT Sports has bought the rights to an exclusive behind-the-scenes documentary of the British and Irish Lions’ Test series victory in Australia this summer.
The 90-minute documentary is currently in production and is scheduled to be screened on TNT at the end of October, to tie in with its coverage of the Autumn Internationals the following month.
Sky Sports had live rights for the British and Irish Lions tour but TNT is understood to have made a successful bid for the documentary on the grounds that more rugby content suits its autumn schedule, which also includes live coverage of every game when the rebranded Gallagher Prem resumes at the end of the month.
The TNT documentary is a joint effort with Lions Productions and will feature unseen footage from the dressing room, training ground and team hotel, with the commercial value of the documentary going some way to explaining the team’s approach to the tour.
The British and Irish Lions were extremely secretive during their time in Australia, with travelling journalists prevented from filming training sessions and Australians criticising a perceived lack of engagement with locals.
TNT wins British and Irish Lions doc race
In one incident at the third Test in Sydney, the British and Irish Lions’ performance manager, David Nucifora, was spotted putting a towel over a camera in their changing room during a 40-minute break in play caused by lightning in the area.
The forthcoming documentary is the latest in a long line of behind-the-scenes specials that have become celebrated by Lions fans, which began with the seminal 1999 film Living with Lions, a look back on the tourist’s dramatic series win in South Africa two years earlier.
That documentary was not televised but sold so well on video and DVD that a follow-up, Living with Lions 2, was commissioned which focused solely on the last week of the tour.
Retrospective British and Irish Lions documentaries have become a staple of their commercial operation ever since, and in recent years have led to competitive auctions.
ITV screened Two Sides, a three-part series on the 2021 Lions tour to South Africa, while Lions Uncovered on the historic 2017 drawn series in New Zealand was bought by Amazon Prime.