EPL Talk » Setanta Sports

Just How Much Trouble Are Setanta In?

Paul Bestall — Mon, 20 Apr 2009 23:24:28 +0000

More news seems to be filtering through over the continued rumours that Setanta Sports are in financial difficulty here in the UK and are desperately trying to find some finance to help them through after they only won one of the six Premier League Packages for the next deal that starts in 2010. A desperate attempt at going to the Premier League, OFCOM and the European Commission arguing that bidding less for the Monday night packages than Sky and therefore not winning them is unfair. No really.

Yet here in UK, you’ve got take these stories with a pinch of salt, due to the massive media influence that Sky have, sharing an owner with two of the UK’s biggest Newspapers, The Sun and The Times. It wouldn’t take much co-ordination to orchestrate a collective campaign to create worrying speculation over Sky’s rival, yet it’s a story that has dogged them for a while and not just from Sky’s media bedfellows.

With a major investment in British football, with deals for both the English and Scottish Premierships, England matches and the F.A. Cup, Setanta is a major investor in the sport but is now apparently trying to re-negotiate it’s deal with the Scottish Premiership down from £125 million to £100 million. It’s also said to be in talks with the PGA to do the same with its American golf coverage.

Personally, I think it’s done a pretty good job for a new player in the game, though its roster of analysts and presenters could do with an overhaul. Steve McManaman is an unusual choice as the main pundit, Craig Burley a poor commentator. Yes, I have to pay £13 a month more for football, but I love football and not just from England.It gives me German, French, Portuguese, Scottish and Dutch football every week, its preseason friendly coverage is fantastic in its depth and breadth but it is a distant third for quality behind Sky and the undisputed kings, the BBC. I like watching football from all over Europe and Setanta gives me a choice I never had previously apart from the awful Eurogoals on dreadfully inept Eurosport.

One memorial episode featured no commentary for 25 minutes until the noise of someone rushing through the door, slamming it shut and breathing heavily for two minutes before beginning to speak will live long in the mind. Every week the commentator clearly hadn’t seen the footage and was flying by the seat of their pants. It never started on time, it was either early or late but never at the advertised time.It was easily the most infuriating football show on television.

The argument that Setanta feels unfairly done to though just doesn’t hold water. It misread the market and believed that with the last deal, the TV rights market had peaked. They were wrong and under bid by 20% of the deal they went with in 2007, Sky bid more and won it. They didn’t want the Saturday evening game rights as they consistently get the lowest figures of all football shown here in the UK on digital TV. Setanta went for them and won.

They made a massive error of judgement and already under subscribed by the 500,000 viewers it needs to reach it’s break even figure of 1.9 million subscribers, now faces a real prospect of people leaving their service. If Setanta do fail, the Premier League would lose around £159 million in revenue over a 3 year period, which would see each Premier League club lose around 2.7 million per season. It would be doubtful that the BBC or even ITV wouldn’t find the money from somewhere to come up with a suitable replacement.The FA on the other hand have a fallback position with ITV who will have to pay an extra £20 million for the England games if Setanta can’t show them. The FA Cup coverage is another matter.

My only experience of Setanta abroad is when I holidayed in the States and watched Sky’s coverage with Setanta logo on. So would we really miss them that much apart from James Richardson, Rebecca Lowe and Special One TV?

How ESPN Could Get the Champions League Back — And Much More

Dave Warner — Thu, 09 Apr 2009 16:30:22 +0000

Earlier this morning, our friend The Gaffer lamented that ESPN’s loss of the UEFA Champions League TV rights would be bad for soccer in America. After all, ESPN remains the primary vehicle for sporting culture in this country, and if the “Worldwide Leader in Sports” suddenly doesn’t care enough to keep this planet’s biggest club football competition on its networks, then what hope does soccer have of becoming more than a niche sport here?

You’ll forgive me if I don’t believe the final chapter has been written in this story just yet. ESPN has not lost interest in soccer, nor has it forgotten the ratings success and critical praise it garnered from EURO 2008. What ESPN might be doing, though, is getting ready to acquire the broadcast rights to the Champions League, the Premier League, the Europa League and much, much more, by making only one move — buying out Setanta Sports.

This is not a new rumor, to be sure, but we should examine ESPN’s recent manuevers to get a better understanding of the bigger picture. First, let’s establish this: the notion that ESPN could not afford the rights to the Champions League because of the sagging economy is complete and utter bollocks…

According to this New York Times article by Richard Sandomir, ESPN earns a whopping $4.3 billion from cable and satellite subscribers every year. This not only insulates ESPN from economic hardship, but it gives the WWL a huge war chest that it can use to outbid any other network for any sports property it wants to air. ESPN recently outbid Fox for the much-maligned Bowl Championship Series by more than $100 million. If ESPN wanted to take the Olympics from NBC or the NCAA Basketball Championship from CBS, it could. No problem.

Setanta Sports, meanwhile, is not swimming in these Olympic-sized pools of cash. Last month, the Telegraph reported that Setanta was busy renegotiating all of its TV deals because it was struggling to make payments. This cash-poor position makes Setanta a prime takeover target for a monolith like ESPN.

Buying Setanta Sports also gives the WWL a huge inventory of broadcast rights — including the Champions League and the Premier League — which would have been far more expensive if bought separately. Plus, ESPN would get the infrastructure it needs to broadcast the games and, perhaps more importantly, all that on-air talent — Jon Champion, Paul Dempsey, Pat Dolan, James Richardson, and many, many more. This would be a huge boost for the WWL’s football coverage in the USA, and it would help it establish a stronger foothold overseas.

But where would ESPN put all these games, you ask? That’s where this article from Street & Smith’s Sports Business Journal comes in:

Executives in Bristol are set to allow cable and satellite distributors to swap ESPN’s classic sports channel for its college network, ESPNU, which they hope presents a newer, hipper alternative to Classic’s staid, dated programming…

An interesting wrinkle to ESPN’s proposal would allow operators to move ESPN Classic to a sports tier, where it would be ESPN’s first channel to reside on the traditionally low-penetrated mantle.

On the surface, this is a smart move for the WWL, as ESPN Classic’s ratings have dwindled in recent years, and having its own college sports network on standard cable and satellite tiers would allow it to compete with similar offerings from CBS and the Big Ten.

Meanwhile, about a year ago, Ives Galarcep let slip that ESPN was thinking of converting Classic into an international sports channel, with the Premier League as its top draw. (On a side note, I got Ives into a little bit of trouble with ESPN after I quoted his blog for that FanHouse piece, which proved to me that there was some truth to that rumor. I do hope he’s forgiven me since then.)

By purchasing Setanta, ESPN could have that international channel right away and, with minimal conversion, drop it into the spot currently occupied by Classic, thus putting it on the same sports tiers where Fox Soccer Channel and GOLTV currently reside.

The end result would give soccer fans all the matches they can handle on one tier, without having to shell out the extra $15 a month for Setanta. It would also bring the Champions League back to ESPN, who could very easily put those games back on ESPN2 to grab those casual viewers — complete with bumpers encouraging everyone to contact their cable and satellite companies right now to get the all-new ESPN International for even more soccer action.

So don’t lament the loss of the beautiful game on ESPN just yet. The WWL may have lost the Champions League final, but it hasn’t given up on soccer. It’s just setting us up for the perfect through ball.

Canadians Enjoy Chaos-Free Premiership, Champions League Broadcasts

Richard Whittall — Tue, 31 Mar 2009 15:49:43 +0000

Photo by deegs

Amid all the murmurings about ESPN losing Champions League rights in the US, Canadians, with some notable exceptions, have emerged relative winners in the last few years, even with the initially disruptive introduction of Setanta Sports in the latter part of 2007.

In a perfect world, all the football we’d ever want to watch would be split between three basic cable channels forever and ever, amen. But as long as the Premier League and the Champions League remain as popular, that will never be the case—although Canada comes pretty close.

As it stands now, Setanta gets the early and late matches on Saturdays and pick of the litter for the 10:00 AM EST slot. It also gets the early Sunday PL fixture. While annoyed Canadians have to pay a premium fee ($14.99 a month on Cable providers Bell and Rogers), the trade off is getting to watch weekday, holiday and repeated fixtures that used to go begging on Canadian television, in addition to live Champions League games, SPL matches, on and off Eredivisie and regular Sunday French Ligue 1, plus staple shows like Football Matters and the Friday Football Show (the less said about Rugby and GAA the better), no broadband, no fuss, no muss.

Meanwhile Rogers Sportsnet (basic cable) gets the second 10 AM Saturday pick, and the Score gets the marquee 11 am Sunday morning fixture, so drive-by supporters who don’t mind sifting through the dregs of Justin TV once in a while are okay. In addition to the Premier League, La Liga and Bundesliga fans can get their fix on GolTV (3 bucks a month and no carrier lawsuits!) and Serie A supporters can catch games (and Bobby McMahon) both on Fox Sports Canada (3 bucks a month) and Telelatino (basic cable). The main sports channel, TSN (basic cable) carries quarterfinal-final Champions League fixtures.

These prices vary of course if you decide to go with a premium package. It’s not ideal, but with one or two exceptions the quality of coverage is very good and the amount of football available without having to go beyond basic cable is substantial. Amid the turgid mess of rights’ acquisitions, it’s nice to enjoy a bit of stability.

Early Goals See Top Two Advance to FA Cup Semi-Finals

Johnathan Starling — Sat, 07 Mar 2009 19:44:38 +0000

Thanks to early first half goals from Didier Drogba and Carlos Tevez, Chelsea and Manchester United weakened the will of their opposition and saw out relatively elementary victories to advance to the FA Cup Semi-Finals. Yea, Coventry City then Fulham folded up cheaper than any cheap tent or umbrella.

If you woke up early Saturday morning hoping to see a Championship side make it to Wembley, you could have went back to bed before eight (eastern that is). From the opening kickoff, it was obvious the Sky Blues fans at the Ricoh Arena were going to be in for a long afternoon. The formation and tactics Chris Coleman deployed gave Chelsea all the time they wanted on the ball, and Jose Bosingwa free reign over the park.

Even more shocking was the defending of Ben Turner and Scott Dunn on Chelsea’s opener. A simple long ball that Turner should have defended quite easily wasn’t even touched. Any time the ball bounces like that, it’s advantage attacker. Give that bouncing ball to a motivated Didier Drogba and it’s over. Scott Dunn was never going to out muscle Drogba on the edge of the penalty area. About that only thing Coventry City did right in this sequence was Keiren Westwood pushing Drogba wide, just not wide enough. Fifteen minutes into the game, it was all over. The only thing of note in the second half was seeing Michael Essien return to first team action coming off the bench.

At least the first twenty minutes at Craven Cottage were pleasant on the eyes. Fulham went in search of a goal, and only have Vidic to thank they didn’t take the lead. However it was one moment of set piece stupidity that sent this game to an early conclusion.

If you’re the person responsible for a post off a corner kick, you don’t leave it. It’s the first thing said to you when the responsibility is assigned. Well for Paul Konchesky, he totally forgot his job when Wayne Rooney flicked on the corner from the near post. Carlos Tevez maybe short, but he sure as hell knows where to be and where to shoot. Mark Schwarzer wasn’t going to reach the ball, and Konchesky was caught between two minds as too what to do. Cue Carlos Tevez to shoot where Konchesky should have been. Paul stays on the post, it’s still 0-0 and a completely different match.

From there, Manchester United names their own scoreline. Tevez with a beautiful run and strike before halftime gives everyone an early afternoon in the states. The second half sees a third from Rooney before anyone can blink and Ji-Sung Park finishes it off in time for everyone to catch the early train home.

Could the 4-0 scoreline be an omen for things to come at Old Trafford? Only time will tell.

About the only positive for me this today was the fact ITV seems to not know how to block international IPs to their online broadcast of Fulham/Manchester United. Not getting to hear Clive Tyldesley that often, his presenting was a breath of fresh air. Getting to actually hear the full atmosphere, instead of the muted one on Setanta Sports was even better. And I even had my own ‘Everton/Liverpool’ moment when the second half wouldn’t load and missed Wayne Rooney’s third on ITV. That’s about the only time Setanta came in handy. The 4 second delay between seeing the picture and hearing what is being said on Setanta Sports (as has been the problem of late) is just getting old.

ESPN Loses Premier League UK TV Rights Battle

The Gaffer — Fri, 06 Feb 2009 16:16:30 +0000

Breaking news: The Premier League has announced that out of the six TV packages available for bidding in the UK for the 2010-2013 seasons, Sky Sports won five of those packages with Setanta getting the sixth and final one. That means that ESPN’s attempt to bid on the rights ended in failure — in the UK, at least.

This is a huge win for Sky Sports who have increased their number of packages from four (for the 2007-2010 seasons) to five. Setanta Sports will be showing less games because they’ll be moving from two packages (2007-2010 seasons) to one. But the biggest loser is ESPN who despite a lot of the chatter about the Disney-owned company making an aggressive raid on rights to the UK EPL TV market ended up empty handed.

Now that we know who will own the UK TV rights for the Premier League for 2010-2013, the next step for the Premier League is to allow broadcasters to begin bidding on the US TV rights to the Premiership. We should expect to hear who wins that battle in 1-2 months from now. Stay tuned to EPL Talk for all of the latest developments.