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?

Sky Pay-TV Freeview Plan Delayed

Jeff Hash — Wed, 14 May 2008 03:18:40 +0000

British media regulator Ofcom announced today that it was delaying a decision on a planned Sky pay-TV service for Freeview until a larger investigation into the entire pay-TV market can be completed later this summer. The announcement makes a full decision on the Sky service unlikely before 2009.

Sky announced its plans for the pay-TV offering, called Picnic, in February 2007. The plan calls for Sky to replace its three channels currently on Freeview with a subscriber-only service of six channels (four from Sky, two from third parties) sharing time on three streams. One of the six channels would be Sky Sports 1, meaning subscribers would have access to Sky’s lineup of 92 Premier League matches a season. Sky had hoped to launch Picnic before rival Setanta Sports, and their lineup of 46 Premier League matches per season, launched their channel on the Top Up TV pay Freeview service.

Freeview, launched in 2002, is a free digital TV service offered by a consortium of British broadcasters. It currently reaches 15 million households across Britain, 6 million more than Sky’s satellite offering.

Sky’s Picnic now finds itself becoming a part of the larger fight on pay-TV in Britain as a whole. In March of last year, cable provider Virgin Media accused Sky of unfair pricing practices and abusing its dominant position in the market. Setanta Sports, broadband television provider BT, and Top Up TV has since joined Virgin in its criticism of Sky. Today’s ruling means the two investigations into Picnic and Virgin’s complaints will now be combined.

What does today’s delay mean? It means Setanta, which is adding FA Cup and England national matches alongside the Premier League this fall, will have at least a two year headstart on Sky for Freeview customers. And while Sky maintains an advantage in terms of sports subscribers at present, Setanta can continue to try and make progress on a major platform not available to their rival. It also means that, for the moment, Virgin’s complaints has found some resonance with British regulators, which could mean future trouble for Sky and its plan to expand into more British households.

EPL Talk » Sky

Just How Much Trouble Are Setanta In?

Sky Pay-TV Freeview Plan Delayed