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London (pte060/03.02.2005/15:50) - The BBC will offer full live streaming video coverage of the upcoming Six Nations rugby tournament with broadband through its website. As the Media Guardian http://www.mediaguardian.co.uk reports, broadband subscribers and ordinary Internet users will be able to view the action from this weekend's opening Six Nations fixtures, including Wales v England and France v Scotland, either by logging on to the main BBC website http://www.bbc.co.uk or to the tournament's official website http://www.6nations.net . According to Andrew Thompson, BBC Sport's head of development, new media and sports news, the initiative was a response to the fact that there are now more than 5 million broadband subscribers in the UK.
According to Thompson, the Six Nations streaming video initiative is a one-off trial for this year's tournament, which runs until mid-March. He added that the BBC has not paid extra for the online rights. "We approached the tournament organisers in the run-up to this year's Six Nations to see if they wanted to work with us on the trial. We are finding increasingly that people want to have the option of watching sport via broadband and the BBC wants to be at the front of the curve," Thompson said. "Hopefully it will also be a way of increasing the exposure of the Six Nations. In addition to live coverage we will also be offering half-time highlights and full highlights within five minutes of a game finishing," he added.
The full video streaming coverage will only be available to UK Internet users. The BBC will use special technology to ensure that overseas rugby fans will only have access to highlights. According to Thompson, the BBC is already regularly getting 50,000 broadband users accessing its Score Interactive football scores and results service on a Saturday afternoon via their computers. "We are finding that a lot of people like to multi-task - watching broadband streaming of sports events on their PC while doing something else," he said. The Six Nations coverage on the BBC follows the corporation's successful video streaming service during the Athens Olympics last summer.
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