Setanta Sports

[Daveyboy]

TV channel with major financial difficulties.

Could be the end of Magners League rugby on television (not to mention Scottish football) with big losses in revenue to the clubs concerned.

Unless Sky stage a takeover?

[dailywaffle]

It would also impact on the GP, as Setanta were due to show more GP rugby than Sky from the season after next.

Sky 'staging a takeover' would cause competition issues with Ofcom, monopoly broadcaster and all that. The hoped for outcome is probably a takeover from the likes of ESPN.

[big john]

Also i think the British and Irish cup was set to be on Setanta, I hope this wont harm the new Nat.1 set-up.

[G.K]

Overreached themselves it seems.

Can't see them being saved as it will be cheaper for others to buy the rights from the original holders.

Loosing the wendyball stuff is good news as there is already too much of it on TV.

However they have had some decent Rugby from time to time which I've watched over the Net. Will be a shame to loose that.

[Kinoulton]

How can there be "too much" football on TV? Or "too much" of anything?

Surely you don't feel obliged to watch it just because it's on?

[Northenlad]

Morning all, can someone please summarise:

Which Sports channels will I need to watch rugby for this season coming (09/10) and then beyond?

Many thanks!

[Chobbsy]

TV channel with major financial difficulties.

Could be the end of Magners League rugby on television (not to mention Scottish football) with big losses in revenue to the clubs concerned.

Unless Sky stage a takeover?

Not to mention English kissball

[Kinoulton]

Someone will buy the rights to Setanta's footie games, because they only picked plum games, like England qualifiers and interesting Premiership matches (not like the Blackburn v Wigan dross that Sky keep showing).

Rugby will be tougher to offload because the viewing figures are much lower, but I would hope that the BBC or ITV will pick it up at a knock-down price. Then everyone would be a winner. Except Setanta.

[zee]

This is probably a bad thing for Rugby. The premier league packages will be bought off easily due to the high viewer demand that comes with them. The Rugby GP will probably be sold, but at a lesser price to what Setanta paid and this would mean less money filtering down to within the game. I have no idea what the rules are with monopoly's with regards to sky showing everything. Other prime packages Setanta have are England games and FA Cup, which will be bought off, this would mean more football on mainstream tv/sky than before. your looking at a live game virtually every day, with multiple games on some days.

[Duckdee]

BBC 3/ITV 4 would be nice, but I doubt it.

[me2]

Also i think the British and Irish cup was set to be on Setanta, I hope this wont harm the new Nat.1 set-up.

The B&I Cup is part of Sky's package so that won't be affected by Sultana Spurt's imminent demise

[kingol22]

It would also impact on the GP, as Setanta were due to show more GP rugby than Sky from the season after next.

Sky 'staging a takeover' would cause competition issues with Ofcom, monopoly broadcaster and all that. The hoped for outcome is probably a takeover from the likes of ESPN.

if there definetly going to go bust ofcom might not be to bothered to let sky rescue them

[POSTIGER]

I have to say, this isn't entirely unexpected. When Setanta appeared from nowhere and started buying the rights for a plethora of major sporting events it seemed a little strange to me. They didn't have a substantial existing customer base that they knew they could sell too. Sky had been growing steadily for a good 10 years before the boom at the end of the last century and Setanta seemed to be taking a seriously high-risk shortcut! They were never going to attract enough subscribers to cover the massive outlay and so it has proved.

What really, really annoys me about this is that clubs from various sports have signed deals with Setanta in good faith and now they are going to go without the huge sums of money they have no doubt budgeted for. It could be argued that these clubs should have been more suspicious of Setanta but generally you sell to the highest bidder - they could have sold to Sky, ESPN, ITV or the BBC and been relatively safe.

[Outlander]

Well, this could be pretty bad for us Yanks. Setanta is the only provider of Rugby coverage over here.

I have seen speculation that ESPN might get involved. I imagine that primarily means ESPN in other nations than the US. Here, ESPN has never mentioned rugby to my knowledge.

But, it opens up possibilities, I suppose.

Setanta has been good for me and my son. There's way too much football I get bored by what we call soccer) and the Gaelic sports are weird. But right now I am able to follow the Lions and the Churchill Cup and of course we got (limited) GP coverage along with the playoffs and all of the HC. And the World Cup of course.

It's really sad to think we will lose our coverage. Hopefully an alternative will emerge.

[Oadbylad]

It started of as a cable company so come on Branson pull ya finger out