Viewing figures show marked decline

Tickets to the matches themselves are still like gold-dust but there is more and more space on British sofas when it comes to watching the Six Nations on television.

Rugby diehards already have their Dublin and Edinburgh hotel rooms booked for next year - but TV viewing figures are showing a marked decline.

In the last five years, the armchair audience has halved.

In that time, the Five Nations have become Six but either newcomers Italy are simply bad box-office or the tournament has problems elsewhere.

The fall-off in viewers has more to do with the other significant change in that period, the RFU's go-it-alone deal with Sky which gave the satellite broadcaster England's home games and broke the BBC's monopoly.

An average of 5.7million viewers watched each game back in 1997, the last year that the BBC had the rights to the whole championship. By last year, when 12 games were on the Beeb and three on Sky, that figure had dropped to 2.8m.

Sky's viewing figures have never been anywhere near those of terrestrial broadcasters. They attracted 850,000 'home' viewers for the third and decisive Lions Test last summer, in addition to the pub audience, while Wales-England last season drew almost 6m for the BBC. But Sky's 'home' average is falling as well, from 690,000 a game in 2000 to 650,000 for last year's tournament.

The BBC is in no doubt as to where the Six Nations is going wrong. A fragmented tournament, in which games are split between itself and Sky, is bad news for the viewer and the game.