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“We’ve been working very hard over the last year-and-a-half to acquire properties and sports that we think Canadians want to watch … and are perhaps having a hard time finding elsewhere,” DAZN’s Alex Rice said Wednesday.

“The 6 Nations is one where we’ve already been excited to bring to Canadians for a long time.”

The ability of Canadians to watch rugby has ebbed and flowed over the past two decades, but Rice said DAZN sees a big future for the sport.

“We (knew) we had a lot of fans when we started,” he said. “It was very heavily underserved.”

He said their research has revealed that rugby fans tend to just want to watch rugby, no matter who is playing. That’s often not the case in other sports, where fans tend to want to watch just their team.

“From our side it makes a key difference.”

And that makes for a much simpler message, he said. “Our message is we’ll always be live, we’ll ensure that you’ll get all the games.”

DAZN has been broadcasting Pro14 rugby, which features teams from Ireland, Wales, Scotland, Italy and South Africa, since last summer. DAZN hopes to find more rugby to show to Canadians.

“We want to build on this … it’s a sport that’s got a heritage in Canada.”

And the streaming problems many viewers encountered at the launch of DAZN’s NFL package last summer have been resolved. They don’t want to see a repeat.

“There’s been a lot of work to make sure there’s stability in place,” Rice said. “We’ve made the improvements.”

The current 6 Nations champions are from England, who won the 2017 tournament for the second successive year and 28th time in its history.