How to watch Pacific Championships 2025: FREE live streams for rugby league

If the first round thrillers between the Kiwis and Toa Samoa in the Men’s Pacific Cup and the Kiwi Ferns and Fetū Sāmoa in the Women’s Pacific Cup are anything to go by, the gap between the Tier 1 and Tier 2 nations, once a yawning chasm, is shrinking ever closer. And the Pacific Championships themselves played a major role in this.

For so long, rugby has been a closed shop, with a power dynamic clearly skewed in favor of Australia and New Zealand, who had (and continue to have) the money and access to recruit the best talent from the Pacific Islands, while those nations were starved of opportunity. The Pacific Championships provide a real incentive for elite players to look beyond the Kangaroos and Kiwis and reconnect with their roots.