Sports Marketing has been following this story since the beginning. We also highlighted the introduction of ESPN. The good news, Setanta is regaining some good television deals, the bad news however, for premiership fans is that you will have to buy setanta, sky and espn pay per view deals to get all the English football you need.
Sports television network Setanta Ireland regained rights Wednesday to broadcast 33 English Premier League matches in its Irish homeland, a crucial business lifeline after losing all its contracts when its British operations collapsed in debt.
The financially powerful Premier League last month canceled deals with Setanta in both Britain and Ireland after Setanta’s British unit defaulted on its payments and filed for bankruptcy protection. Setanta disappeared from British televisions but has continued to broadcast on two Irish channels.
Setanta Ireland’s chief executive, Niall Cogley, conceded that his business could have faced the same fate as in Britain had it not won the bidding for those key 33 games.
“It would have been very difficult to continue in anything like our current shape,” Cogley said in an interview with The Associated Press. He said losing the English matches — the most watched and competitively bid sporting events in Ireland as well as Britain — would have triggered huge losses in subscribers.
Cogley said the deal followed competitive bidding with other broadcasters. Both Setanta and the Premier League declined to discuss terms.
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But the Setanta chief expressed gratitude to the Premier League for giving Setanta another chance to “keep the Irish dream alive.” The league did require Setanta to establish a new holding company that would ensure legal separation from its British bankruptcy proceedings.
The new corporate entity is believed to be called Setanta Hibernian and registered in Luxembourg.
Cogley declined to confirm this, but said the company expects to announce restructuring moves and potentially unveil new investors within days.
He conceded that Setanta, which has already laid off all of its 200 employees in Britain, also would trim its 200-member work force in Ireland in the face of new competition from American broadcaster ESPN.
Cogley noted that subscribers had already begun canceling because of last month’s loss of Premier League business. ESPN quickly swooped in to buy rights to show 46 Premier League games in both Ireland and Britain, all previously owned by Setanta, creating a new upstart competitor to long-dominant Sky Sports. ESPN, owned by The Walt Disney Co., is not believed to have bid for the latest package of matches in Ireland.
Setanta said last month’s business collapse in Britain cost it 1.2 million subscribers in a country of 55 million. The Irish operation has much greater market penetration in Ireland, a country of 4.2 million with Setanta in more than 500,000 households.
Setanta’s live-coverage package in Ireland includes Champions League, Irish and European league football, golf, rugby and Formula 1 racing.
The 33 English matches reclaimed Wednesday all start at 3 p.m. on Saturdays — the highest-rated slot on Setanta’s schedule.
Setanta, named after a mythical Gaelic warrior, began in 1990 as a specialist broadcaster providing live feeds overseas of Ireland’s domestic sports events. That international business continues today in the United States, Canada, Australia, Africa and the Caribbean but is reportedly loss-making.
But the company took a huge leap into the unknown five years ago when it began bidding against Rupert Murdoch’s Sky Sports for British rights to Premier League football. Analysts agree now that Setanta lacked the deep pockets to go head-to-head with Sky.