As Super League returns this week for its 30th season, Manchester-based PDI Media will become the first-ever indie to provide live coverage of domestic rugby league for the BBC with 17 network games throughout the year across the Challenge Cup, Super League and the World Club Challenge.
Although this is a new role for this season, PDI Media is no stranger to rugby league. For 25 years it has been immersed in the sport, and a remarkable broadcast journey that began in the lower leagues will now take them to Wembley and Old Trafford for the game’s most glittering occasions.
Back in the 2000s PDI Media produced the cult series Rugby League Raw, a pioneering, multi-award winning, muddy and bloody access-all-areas show for ITV before the series was snapped up by the BBC. Production of the Super League Show followed across 14 seasons for the BBC, picking up multiple Royal Television Society awards and nominations.
Since 2014 it has also produced thousands of hours of live rugby league coverage on BBC Radio 5 Live, while also delivering hundred of podcasts, including most recently Rugby League Top 10 for BBC Sounds, which united presenter Mark Chapman with legends of the game Brian Noble, Jamie Peacock and Jon Wilkin.
The live coverage in 2026 begins for them on Thursday 19th February with the blockbuster World Club Challenge between treble-winning Hull KR and Australia’s NRL champions the Brisbane Broncos, quickly followed by the Super League clash between Warrington Wolves and Wakefield Trinity.
The on-screen presentation this season will be led by familiar faces such as Chappers, Tanya Arnold and JJ Chalmers, alongside a strong mix of established pundits and current Super League players and coaches, including new St Helens boss Paul Rowley, who will be providing expert analysis for the World Club Challenge opener in Hull.
Alongside the live Super League action, the BBC’s long-standing coverage of the game’s most prestigious and oldest competition, the Challenge Cup, continues. Following big weekends of double-headers for the quarter and semi-finals, once again both the men’s and women’s finals on the game’s big day out at Wembley in May will be exclusively live on the BBC.
PDI Media’s managing directors Craig South and Jonathan Sides have assembled a team that is steeped in rugby league knowledge, passion and expertise. The creative and editorial lead will come from former BBC rugby league editor Alastair McIntyre working closely with John Harrison, who has produced well over 300 Super League Shows at PDI.
In the director’s chair is Michael Burke, who has brought some of the sport’s biggest matches to life on screen, including the pulsating clash between Australia and New Zealand at the last World Cup.
The company’s MDs South and Sides said: “Rugby league is in our blood. We grew up watching the sport and we’ve lived and breathed the game for the last 25 years through our work. It’s a huge privilege and honour to be given this opportunity by the BBC who have backed a true Northern indie. We want the watching audience to share our love and passion for the game and that will be at the heart of everything we do.”
