The end for Setanta Sports

With the news today that ESPN have won in ROI the two Premier League packages that they had in the UK, the death knell must sound for Setanta Ireland as a premium broadcaster. With ESPN entering the Irish market, there is no way that ROI customers are going to pay out for three pay-TV sports channels, even if the "nightmare scenario" emerges and Setanta keep the Saturday 3pm games.

The only option I can see for Setanta to continue is to negotiate a new deal with Sky as a basic channel - as they are on cable - or else leave Sky and go back to something like their initial 2004-2006 incarnation (before they launched in the UK) with Setanta Ireland only running at nights and weekends and broadcasting GAA, Magners League, and whatever other rights they have left. At least they will not have the overhead of running a customer support / subscriber management operation and their remaining rights deals cannot be that expensive (their GAA rights do not cover the main competitions, the Championship, for instance).

its off the epg and showing coloured testcard.

Setanta Sports started their live coverage of Barclays Premier League 3.00pm matches yesterday, with Paul Dempsey anchoring the coverage with Pat Dolan in the studio with him. Presumeably the studio they are using is in Dublin rather than their previous one in Chiswick? Is this the case does anyone know?

Yes, its coming from Setanta Ireland's studios in Dublin and they are using an Irish commentary team now (can't remember who though). Other than that, titles, music, and graphics are much the same as last season, the main difference I saw was when they went round the grounds at half time, generic Premier League graphics were used to display the scores (in the video window) rather than Setanta's graphics.