It’s absolutely baffling. But I can’t think of what could be sketchy that is not allowed. If you have a product to sell then you can get whatever you want for it. Let’s say sky can do something for them so they prevent joint bids so they can sell to sky and get that hidden benefit... well, why bother? Just make a deal with sky. You’re the seller so you don’t have to do an auction. There’s nothing illegal about selling it for a medium amount of money and some service instead of selling it for a large amount of money only.

So, again, the only thing that would be anti-competitive would be if this in some way helped the 6 nations in some other market than rugby. But I can’t see what that is.

Now there might be some non competition issues that are sketchy. Like bribes or personal benefits which show the board members were not operating in the interest of the company they are responsible for. Of course I am not throwing out those accusation, just saying that they are the only sketchy reasons I can think of; I don’t know what would be anti-competitive. It’s all very strange. I really hope we get to find out what their reasoning is, as this is still a very early story