Setanta loses 09-10 Premier League matches as ESPN and Sky prepare bids
Setanta Sports is in serious trouble
The Premier League has terminated its license agreement with Setanta Sports for 09-10 Premier League matches after Setanta failed to meet the Friday deadline for making payments due to the Premier League.
This means that the 46 live matches Setanta had for the 2009/2010 Premier League season are now back on the market on auction, with offers needed by Monday.
The short deadline is primarily due to the limited time any broadcaster would have to effectively promote the next season, but it also suggests that potential bidders – mostly likely ESPN (who refused to bail out Setanta earlier in this saga) and Sky (who own rights to the remaining live matches) – have made contact with the Premier League and have already made arrangements to make bids should Setanta have failed to meet its financial obligations.
Setanta splitting up?
Losing the football rights – a major draw for a sports broadcaster which was already failing to meet subscriber targets – coupled with the last-minute backing out of a potential investor (Access) – means that Setanta Sports will have an almost impossible job of saving / reviving itself in the current economic climate.
As Chris points out, this only affects Setanta UK – Setanta Ireland and Setanta North America are still profitable and in case the sports broadcaster was to go into administration there’s a chance that those divisions could be sold.
Access backs out
Late last week, Access Industries, controlled by the US investor Len Blavatnik, tabled a £20m bid for a 51% share in Setanta. It had been hoped Access could lead a consortium of investors to provide fresh funding for Setanta.
However Access has now said it was unable to proceed with a deal with Setanta. It is understood that the deal faltered after it was revealed that Setanta owed a reported £50m to UK tax authorities. According to an official Access statement:
“Access believed that this proposal could potentially have secured the future of the broadcaster for its customers, employees and for football, provided certain conditions required to put the business on a long-term viable footing were met. Regrettably, despite intensive efforts on all sides over the past few days, and despite significant progress in a number of areas, there remain a number of issues which we have been unable to resolve within the time available.
We are disappointed not to have been able to make this deal happen. Access remains committed to sports programming and will continue to explore opportunities in this area.”
ESPN gets ready
ESPN lost out on Premier League rights the last time around and now has an opportunity to pick them up at a potentially lower price than before.
Although Setanta still shares the TV rights to the US coverage of the Premier League along with Fox Soccer Channel up until the 2009/2010 season, if ESPN were to get access to the lucrative UK market this season, they would be in an excellent position to capitalise on that by bidding for the 2010-2013 seasons to the US rights.
Additionally, Setanta also hold the rights for one package of 23 games for the 2010-13 seasons and now that they have defaulted on their payments those also look likely to be up for grabs in the near future.
And one broadcaster’s misfortune could very well be another broadcaster’s good fortune – ESPN had refused to ‘lease’ Setanta’s Premier League rights earlier calling it a ‘business’ decision, and that decision will be vindicated next week if they end up owning the rights to the Premier League live matches Setanta lost today.
Oh No! Not ESPN! We going to have to live with unbearable commentators and accents like Tommy Smyth.
If ESPN do manage to capture the rights, will Setanta NA still broadcast the matches for the 09-10 season? Ishaq, as much as I despise ESPN’s ability to broadcast the beautiful game, it would be nice being able to watch almost all of the premier league action in the U.S. without having to throw big money at Setanta to only watch a couple good games.
I just hope Sky gets ALL the games. CrouchyTime Im here in South Africa and as part of our digital satelite package we have a broadcaster called SuperSport.
They just pay Sky/Setanta a fixed amount so they have the right to show the feed, and we get about 7 matches live, every weekend. We miss the odd 2/3 games a weekend but those are the irrelevant games.
We pay as little as $60 a month, for the entire Digital Satelite Television(with all the other hundreds of stations).
Why do you guys have to deal with Setanta directly?
Tommy Smyth and the Premier LEague? And we thought Setanta was biased against Chelsea!
Here is to hoping Sky gets this deal.
How about giving them to the terrestrial channels instead of the moneymen at Sky? I do not have a subscription and I would like to watch PL games as well.
Hopefully this means we will get all the channels in the US without having to subscribe. And more so I hope its Sky because Fox seems to be the only one respecting football while ESPN is insulting the sport while showing it. I do believe though Setenta NA will still be able to broadcast the matches. But hopefully not. If soccer is ever going to become something in the US people need to be able to tune in randomly without even knowing its going to be on.
Hopefully this translates into Fox or ESPN getting it too. More so Fox as they respect the game while ESPN is showing it and insulting the game at the exact sametime. Random people must be able to randomly switch to a channel and find soccer if it is ever going to grow in the US.
Lets hope whoever gets it will do a decent job.
it seems a few of u dont understand how this works.
@ishaq . Supersport do not deal with setanta/sky. They deal with premier league directly. They only get rights to show it in their respective teritories. For supersport it would be most of english speaking africa just like gtv b4 it went belly up.
Also i wldnt worry if espn did get the rights.theres no way they’l let american tommy smith(even tho i love him for 1999 treble comentary.’this ones going to extra time jp’) commentate on the uk espn channels with so many former british players!
@Crouchytime espn is interested in bidding for rights to show the games in the uk. Not north america where a separate deal is in place between premier league fox and setanta na. So any hopes of it on mainstream without havin to pay extra aint gna happen.
@alex sky wont get the whole lot coz of european law.
@mt if the terestrials can stump up the money setanta cldnt then im sure premier league will give it to them tho i dont see it happening.
@jake it doesnt matter if sky gets it in the uk as it has no relevance with the north american rights holder. Separate deals dude.
Wow Sagar, lol, you got an insider working somewhere?
Oh well Im glad to know that Supersport deal with the Premier League directly. Does that mean we wont be affected by the outcome of who gets the deal?
Sagar just checks his facts (widely available from numerous sources on the web) before commenting. Every news broadcaster says Sky can’t get them all, and the PL annouce separate deals for overseas matches..
Sagar is right on the money with all those comments, but doesn’t need an ‘insider’!
Sadly, Setanta are the footie equivelant of a mid to lower league team competing with the big four (or one – Sky)
They threw the dice and went bust. The Leeds Utd of Sports rights – no offence LUFC.
So farewell then, Setanta
So farewell, setanta…
I know the facts because i travel the globe so i like to know what channels the games are on. I even book my hotels dependent on if they have the channels(most of them do apart from in the us)
also i am in the media business so i have to.
Btw ishaq, gary bailey and terry paine still presenting the premier league on supersport? Love their analysis.
I remember i ws in kenya when gtv went bellyup and they didnt show games for a week. It was one crazy week with everyone wondering where they’ll get their premier league fix b4 supersport came in and bought the rights.
I know the facts because i travel the globe so i like to know what channels the games are on. I even book my hotels dependent on if they have the channels(most of them do apart from in the us)
also i am in the media business so i have to.
Btw ishaq, gary bailey and terry paine still presenting the premier league on supersport? Love their analysis.
I remember i ws in kenya when gtv went bellyup and they didnt show games for a week. It was one crazy week with everyone wondering where they’ll get their premier league fix b4 supersport came in and bought the rights. Almost forgot to mention espn has bought uk rights for 46 games for next season and 23 games for the two seasons after.
Thank god espn also done a deal with sky so we dont have to worry about a separate subs like setanta if u got sky satellite.
And in other news a consortium of local broadcasters are planning to bid for rights to show the premier league in africa. At the moment we have a duopoly with multichoice(supersport) and canal plus broadcasting in anglophone and francophone africa respectively. If the bid does go through then local broadcasters will be able to show on their respective channels and target audiences with adverts relevant to their countries(creating a revenue stream to cover rights costs) unlike supersport which has a habit of showing south african adverts even though they are broadcasting across the continent.
How this will affect you ishaq i don’t yet know as no south african broadcaster is believed to be involved in the consortium as yet. More news as it comes through.
Yes Sagar, Gary Bailey, Eddie Lewis, Terry Paine all of them. Although Bailey comes on a lot less often now.
Yep, Setanta down the tubes
I hope football clubs don’t suffer from not getting paid, especially with less people going to games during these tough times.