The end for Setanta Sports

They've merely given the rights to highest bidder it's hardly greed they're not asking for a specific amount it was what Setanta are prepared to offer them.

You're simply wrong to suggest Setanta has proved comipition for Sky. It's just twisted the big football fans arm into paying two subscriptions.

If they were offering the same games for viewing then it would be competition.

We'll disagree there.

More from The Times for publication in print tomorrow ... (this morning = Wed)

Setanta’s two founders were tonight racing against the clock for extra time in which to organise a £100 million rescue of the embattled sports broadcaster.

Leonard Ryan and Michael O’Rourke hope to find funding from new investors, as rumours swirled that the broadcaster would fall into the hands of the administrators sometime tomorrow.

Setanta was forced to deny talk that it go off the air at the end of Tuesday, but there remained intense speculation that staff could be told this morning that the broadcaster had fallen into administration.

The article goes on to dismiss
i) an ESPN rescue
ii) Sky support
or
iii) the Wholesale Business Model.

I agree - especially when they've had their fingers burnt before. Of course they'll blame the broadcasters yet again, but as soon as the next "Setanta" comes into the market and waves their cheque book, they'll snap their fingers off. What I don't get though is how these football clubs generally go into administration and remain their for months, while other big name brands, notably Woolworths, are wound up as soon as they enter administration. I thought the idea of administrator was to try and save the company from bankruptcy.

Are the likes of Celtic TV, Rangers TV and other channels in the Setanta package owned or part owned by Setanta, or just bundled in with it, so in theory if they can survive with a new carriage agreement, they could continue? And I'm sure it'll have a knock on effect for Top Up TV too.


Surely though now two pay-TV broadcasters have failed the issue of Sky Sports monopoly in the pay-TV sports field has to be addressed. Easy to say though - difficult to do.

The Herald (Scotland) is reporting that Deloitte will be appointed as adminstrators tomorrow morning.

still on air promoting next season's football!

Wisely, Setanta stopped new sign-ups from yesterday morning so potential customers are instead greeted by this appropriate message.

I Thhink The BBC Should Buy Setanta.
More Money For The BBC,Right?
Or merge with another 3rd party company
like ofcom wants Channel 4 to do

Latest News seems to infer that Administration is not likely until Next Week, According to several news sources monitored by Google News rescue attempts continue and staff have been told that their jobs are safe until the Weekend. Attempts to raise finance continues and some of these sources seem to indicate the amount still required has reduced significantly over the past day or so.

Looks like a couple of options now :

1. Setanta re-organise and go from being a separate Pay-TV operation to one aligned with Sky, so that Sky handle their customer services and Setanta channnels appear just like Discovery, Disney, Viacom, UKTV within a Sky subscription. This would allow Sky to have all the Premiereship matches on their platform as part of their mainstream subscription plans and part of a single subscription, but without breaching any monopoly rules (Sky can't show all the Premiership games on their own channels under European competition rules AIUI)

2. Setanta go bust - either in all three countries or just one or two (Setanta have operations in the UK, Ireland and the US)

What is less likely is an existing broadcaster buying them as a going concern. Any broadcaster wishing to pick up the sports rights that Setanta currently own is likely to want them to revert to the original rights holder, and then re-negotiate a new deal, rather than inheriting the current Setanta deals.

With the current credit crunch - it is likely that rights would be now sold at a lower rate than when Setanta bough them.

A significant proportion of Setanta's revenue originates via DTT, these customers have to be retained somehow. It also seems that BT Vision have suspended sales to their customers at present as well.

Though there aren't enough of them to remain financially viable - so maybe they don't...

What I'm suggesting is that if as part of a rescue some agreement is made on the Sky platform that effectively disenfranchises the DTT subset of their subscriber network the economies of any potential rescue are made even more difficult to achieve.