How is Planet Rugby's growth enabling better major tournament coverage?

As 2025's Six Nations kicks off, Adam Kyriacou, Editor of Planet Rugby, discusses the sustained growth of the world's most popular rugby site and how it enables the title to augment its coverage of the rapidly growing sport.

Adam, who oversees the 10+ million monthly page views title, talks about traversing the evolving landscape of challenges and changes in international rugby; how he's laser-focused on elevating Planet Rugby to the top rugby title globally; and forging stronger connections with fans.

How has rugby union evolved?

In terms of rugby union as a sport itself, it has undeniably been a tough time for some clubs, with the Premiership in particular losing three teams (Wasps, Worcester, and London Irish) to administration, reducing the overall number of teams to 10. The Rebels in Australia suffered a similar fate; there are some financial concerns regarding a lot of other teams as well. 

Overall, there has been a lot of change. Notably, South Africa switched hemispheres from in the club game, so they're now in the north playing in the United Rugby Championships (URC); that's been a great benefit to the northern hemisphere but a huge detriment to Super Rugby. 

Netflix opened its doors to the Six Nations for the last two seasons, which has been great. Unfortunately, that's coming to an end, and some say that's an opportunity missed. The World Cups and international tournaments continue to boom, with URC attendance numbers and viewership in particular flying. 

Planet Rugby's growth

Amidst the change, success, and struggle, Planet Rugby continues to grow, with the team expanding from three full-time staff to five along with additional freelancers, further adding to our repertoire and providing a huge boost to the site. We’ve created a really strong team who all have their own specialties in written stories, features, and video as well—these individuals can take credit for the last 18 months, with the traffic really skyrocketing. 

To name a few, Jared Wright has been a fantastic addition since joining us from Ultimate Rugby a couple of years back. Jared now works alongside a stellar lineup including Colin Newboult, David Skippers, and Louis Chapman-Combe. While Alex Spink, a well-respected journalist previously working for The Mirror, has really helped with getting us more exclusive interviews from some top names, strengthening our output alongside James While and Ross Heppenstall.

We're now averaging 5 million page views per month outside of international tournaments. During the 2023 World Cup, we achieved 14 million and 10 million in the following month.

For reference, in June 2023, we stood at 2.6 million page views with 770,000 users; then a year later, that same month, it was 5.5 million page views with 1.6 million users. Understandably, tournaments significantly boost the numbers.
 

Eddie Jones Feature Planet Rugby

Content strategy

Not to give away too much to our rivals, but our content strategy has really bolstered what we’re able to achieve. We prioritise using a good set of analytical tools at our disposal to see exactly what’s working and what isn’t. Users will notice we do a lot more features on certain subjects, as well as tweaking the actual news stories themselves, all to maximise everything we create. 

In pre-tournament stages, we create a lot of quirky features that are naturally more interesting for readers. During weeks building up to games, we create previews, ‘Winners and Losers’, and player ratings. Besides that, we're prompt with team announcements and reaction pieces to build the excitement around tournaments.

Our enhanced written content and coverage capabilities have really improved our readers' and viewers' overall experience, especially for major tournaments like the Six Nations. For instance, we’re able to provide expert opinions from chatting with former players, such as Eddie Jones, David Campese, Chris Robshaw, and Sergio Parisse, which is obviously a very nice draw card.

A major focus for the brand now is increasing our content variety. The video side of things with Planet Rugby presenter, Victoria Rush - her visiting different grounds and gathering fan opinions and thought pieces through vox pops - has been a really good addition. All our growth facilitates further reinvestment back into the brand, and as we bolt on further capability, it in turn promotes even more growth. 

Leveraging brand partnerships

Planet Rugby’s growth over the last 18 months can also be attributed to the success of our brand partnerships.

Since striking a deal with multi-asset investment brand, eToro, for 2023's Rugby World Cup, we've maintained a great relationship with them. We're currently activating content collaborations with the bullish brand throughout the Premiership: namely, through our ‘Teams of the Week’ and ‘Team of my Life’ series, with a stellar cast of former players.

We have also recently collaborated with premium ticket vendor, Seat Unique, to launch the Seat Unique Club, which advertises ticket sales for Murrayfield this Six Nations as part of hospitality packages. 

 

 

Who to watch this Six Nations

This Six Nations I'm particularly focusing on the players set to participate in The Lions Tour in 2025, which has received a lot of coverage on TV. There’s a hard push in places for plane tickets to get to Australia for the tournament. I’m sure there will be lots of worried faces if there's any injuries this Six Nations. 

Other than The Lions Tour players, I think the return of Antoine Dupont in this Six Nations will be one to watch. He missed last year playing Sevens Rugby in the Olympic Games, and given he’s the world’s best player returning to the Six Nations, it’ll definitely be an interesting watch.

Six Nations rebrand?!

Naturally, most fans are never in complete agreement. Recently, social media saw a usual barrage of criticism regarding the new Six Nations rebrand.

Some seem to think an intern was tasked with using Paint to create the logo. As with most social media outrage regarding any rebrand, things soon die down and are forgotten about, but truthfully, I think the branding could have been better. 

Side By Side Old Six Nations Logo vs New

Above: Old Six Nations Logo vs New (Source: Guto Evans)

I believe we've got the quality and the volume of content. We ensure a good mix of news, features, graphics, and now video, with increased fan interaction at games and social media presence.

All this, paired with the plan to improve the website via gamified features in the future, will make things both more exciting and engaging. These are all big steps we’re taking, proving we’ve got the calibre to achieve our goal in the near future.