The BBC is in more danger of losing the Six Nations after TNT Sports confirmed it was actively exploring bidding for the tournament.

The Six Nations’ current TV deal, where live coverage is shared between ITV and the BBC, is in its final year, and Telegraph Sport understands the bidding process will commence after the 2025 edition.

The BBC holds the rights to Wales and Scotland home matches, while ITV broadcasts all those in England, Ireland, France and Italy.

Telegraph Sport has also been told by BBC insiders that staff among its Six Nations team are resigned to losing rights in the next TV deal. Sources added that they expected this year’s home fixtures for Wales and Scotland to be their last, with concerns raised over the level of interest shown in rugby coverage by recently appointed director of sport Alex Kay-Jelski. Kay-Jelski arrived last year as replacement for Barbara Slater, having overseen the UK rollout of online football website The Athletic.

It is understood that at the heart of the rights tussle will be the balance between reach and revenue. Free-to-air broadcasters will have every opportunity to buy the rights and it is not a case of simply awarding them to the highest bidder. The final decision will be made by the six unions together but there are fears the BBC will not have the financial muscle to compete with ITV and TNT.

Last year, Slater said that the corporation would no longer be able to afford to keep the Six Nations, with the Government declining to add the championship to a list of “crown jewels” which have to be offered to free-to-air channels. The Rugby World Cup final, the football World Cups, the Olympic Games and the Wimbledon final currently hold that status.

“We need a well-funded BBC if we are going to be able to continue to afford sports rights,” Slater said.

“Sports rights in the UK have more than doubled in the past decade. The BBC’s income in real terms has gone down 30 per cent. It is incredibly difficult for the BBC to maintain, across a range of sports, the expectations of those governing bodies.”

TNT Sports, which also broadcasts the Gallagher Premiership, last year expanded its rugby portfolio to include the autumn internationals, and last week one of the broadcaster’s chiefs said that it was exploring how a bid would work.

“We are definitely having a look at the Six Nations,” said Scott Young, group senior vice-president for WBD Sports Europe, while announcing the merging of Eurosport with TNT in the UK. “How that plays out, we don’t know. Again, how it fits into the ecosystem of what we’re doing, we don’t know. But international rugby definitely worked on our platform, but not just for the month of November, it also helped elevate Prem Rugby, which is also very important for us. And that’s part of the ecosystem of being a sports broadcaster.

“International rugby through November was mixed in with the final round of MotoGP. You had the team who were at Barcelona crossing live and back and forth into football. We actually started at Newcastle with Arsenal. We know that 20 per cent of those football fans hung around to watch England v New Zealand. So, when we’re talking about that ecosystem of content, how do people arrive at one sport and stay into another? How do people arrive into international rugby and during that match – I’m sure you watched every frame of it – how do they learn that the people who are actually playing for England are also playing for their local domestic club?

“It was the first time we had international rugby and domestic rugby on the same channel. So, that’s part of assessing the value of a right. It’s not just assessing the financial value of the right but how does it actually sit on the platform?

“We look at all sports rights when they become available. A good example is the Autumn Nations Series. We looked at that carefully and we realised that we had an opportunity not only in our schedule but also to help the domestic rugby portfolio that we have in men’s and women’s rugby. It’s not just a matter of ‘can we acquire the rights as soon as they become available?’ but about how they sit across our platform and what value they add.”

When asked whether losing the rights for the Champions Cup – which is now on Premier Sports – in favour of the autumn internationals was a trade worth making, Young added: “Absolutely, yeah.”

TNT has acknowledged sports broadcast legislation in certain countries would prevent it obtaining exclusive rights. A spokesperson for the broadcaster believes the Six Nations is “the best international rugby competition in the world” but that “its important partnership with free-to-air television, particularly in markets like Wales and Ireland, would make our involvement very challenging”.

The Six Nations has always held a terrestrial presence except for 1998-2001 when England’s matches were shown on Sky Sports with highlights on ITV.

Six Nations must remain on BBC to keep rugby relevant

In any debate about the greatest sporting TV theme tunes, there has always been a clear winner for me: Holy Mackerel by the Shadows’ drummer, Brian Bennett, better known as the BBC’s Rugby Special.

Even just catching the first few bars brings back wonderful mud-soaked memories of Sunday afternoons from a different time, when rugby and life in general was so much more simple.

OK, so Booker T & the MG’s classic Soul Limbo, the theme of BBC cricket, is right up there too, to use the sporting jargon. So, too, Doug Wood’s Drag Racer, which was used for the BBC’s snooker coverage, and the The Chain by Fleetwood Mac that was used for the BBC’s F1 coverage.

And yet the Rugby Special theme strikes a special chord, rekindling memories of golden commentaries by Bill McLaren and Eddie Butler and presenters Chris Rea, Nigel Starmer-Smith and John Inverdale.

Those were the days when the only way to consume rugby union was the BBC. It is staggering to think that on occasions the old Five Nations matches would be shown on BBC1 and BBC2 simultaneously.

And that is not forgetting the brilliant regional contributions. From 1986, BBC 2 Wales, BBC 2 Scotland and BBC 2 Northern Ireland produced regional versions, commanded by broadcasting heavyweights such as David Parry-Jones, Bill Johnstone and Jim Neilly.

It was this coverage that made the old Five and now Six Nations Championship one of Britain’s sporting crown jewels, a moment when millions with just a passing interest or less would join in the party and magnify by many times the sport’s actual size and reach.

Of course, the tale of the Beeb’s loss of sporting rights in the face of the rise of pay-TV broadcasters is decades old now, but Auntie’s retention of the Six Nations has felt like one of her last stands of defiance, particularly given that it is not protected by category A status in Ofcom’s code of sporting events.

For a sport that desperately needs to retain national prominence in the light of the precarious position of its finances and grass-roots participation numbers, the dark days of February and March are lit up by the dazzling lights of the greatest tournament in the world – and, critically, the BBC’s reach on free-to-air television has been a lifeline.

Yet the BBC’s involvement in that coverage has been on the wane. From a position of broadcasting all 15 matches, the national broadcaster had to enter into a joint deal with ITV because of financial pressures. The first deal was an eight/seven split rotating each year, but then the BBC was forced to hand over France’s home games to ITV, retaining just five matches a campaign (Wales and Scotland’s home games). That means England feature only once a campaign on the BBC, when they play away in Edinburgh or Cardiff, as they do this year.

Now, with the bold declaration by TNT Sports that it is intent in making a bid for the Six Nations rights, the lifeline appears to be in a critical condition, with the current deal due to expire at the end of this season.

With the Six Nations unions all desperate for cash, and with private equity firm CVC now also a shareholder, it is easy to see why those who wish to retain the championship’s presence on free-to-air television are fearing the worst.

The word from inside the Six Nations is that everything is being done to allow the terrestrial broadcasters to retain the rights, including understanding how tweaks to the scheduling of matches and greater flexibility would make the offering more attractive.

That is encouraging. This is the first time that, collectively, the UK rights for the Six Nations and the upcoming Nations Cup, which will include Tests in the summer and autumn, will be sold at the same time. From a commercial point of view, the bundling of the rights is finally in a position to strike gold.

And, yet, those administrators charged with making the big decision should reflect with care on the balance to be struck between reach and revenue.

To jettison the BBC is not only losing the prospect of bringing in new fans and keeping the sport’s profile at a national level. It affects the multi-folded reach of the broadcaster’s radio output, podcasts, BBC iPlayer, regional programming, website engagement, and not forgetting the modern-day version of Rugby Special on Sunday nights.

The BBC’s radio coverage alone of England’s match against New Zealand is thought to have attracted an audience of almost one million, which was in the same region as the peak audience for the same game on TNT.

It is true that radio rights can be sold separately, but when the BBC has the television rights to even just five of the 15 games, it is able to cross promote and show clips of matches and interviews on its websites. It will attract the interest of so many other arms of its vast organisation, such as News at Ten, the Today programme on Radio 4, the News Channel and BBC Five Live.

If you take the rights away, the BBC would still cover the championship, but it would no longer be that all-encompassing sporting event that brings the whole nation together the way the Six Nations does. Just look at autumn Tests for evidence.

No one can turn the clock back to the days when Holy Mackerel could be heard in millions of homes across the country on a Sunday evening. But make no mistake, the BBC remains critical for rugby. Other national sports would love to have such a high-profile position. To give it all up at a time when rugby is so fragile would be a mistake.