Crowd Network and Sage collaborate to deliver insights on the 2025 Guinness Men’s and Women’s Six Nations

Crowd Network (Crowd), one of Europe’s fastest growing independent podcast networks, has partnered with Sage, the leader in accounting, financial, HR, and payroll technology for small and medium-sized businesses, to deliver insights on the 2025 Guinness Men’s and Women’s Six Nations.

As part of the collaboration, Sage is providing Crowd’s chart-topping For The Love Of Rugby podcast with real-time data and insights around the 2025 Guinness Men’s and Women’s Six Nations Championships. Dan Cole and Ben Youngs (Ben is pictured above), England’s two most-capped rugby playersand the hosts of the podcast, will use Sage insights to share data-based analysis and predictions on the upcoming matches for their audience plus expert commentary on each game.

The new partnership, brokered with Wasserman and Dentsu, includes the hosts broadcasting from the ‘Rugbyverse’, an innovative and fresh approach to sports podcasting. Acting as a virtual podcast studio in Youngs’ house, the Rugbyverse provides fans with high-quality video and audio content. As well as a creative use of technology, it is flexible and enables the remote recording of the podcast when their playing schedules clash.

For The Love Of Rugby launched in January 2024 and has since grown its fanbase to become one of Crowd’s most popular podcasts, landing in the Top 10 for sports podcasts on Apple Podcasts and Spotify.

Through its partnership with Six Nations Rugby Limited, Sage sponsors the data insights from the Guinness Men’s and Women’s Six Nations Championships, including data from the innovative smart ball across all six unions, offering teams, players, and coaches insights that support performance, and which improves the viewing experience for fans. Crowd’s collaboration with Sage is the latest brand partnership that shifts from being purely audio focused into accompanying video content.

Recent brand successes have included working with Chelsea FC Women’s football team to create the We Are Chelsea podcast, supported by its YouTube and social media channels. Using content from the podcast, Chelsea FC’s TikTok received 50 million views in summer 2024 — more than any other women’s sports team globally.

Speaking about the partnership, Sally Moore, Senior Director Global Sponsorship at Sage, said: “In our role as Official Insights Partner of both the Men’s and Women’s Guinness Six Nations Championships, we aim to provide rugby fans with simple yet engaging insights and data to help enhance the viewing experience. Working with Ben and Dan through For The Love Of Rugby gives us the ideal platform to bring our analysis to fans in an exciting, digestible way. We look forward to fans gaining even more insight thanks to the podcast.”

Steve Jones, Content Director at Crowd Network, said: “Our partnership with Sage underscores the breadth of opportunities that podcasting offers brands, when you find the right show for the audience you’re trying to reach. We’re constantly working on innovative ways for brands to get involved with our shows, and the Rugbyverse is a perfect example of how we can push boundaries together. For The Love Of Rugby has achieved huge success in 2024, and I’m confident that our work with Sage will take it to the next level in 2025.”