Setanta gets in on Premiership action
Friday, 5 May 2006Setanta has broken BSkyB's exclusive coverage of live premiership football matches.
England's Premier League today awarded two packages of live soccer TV rights to Setanta and one additional package to BSkyB, giving the satellite provider a total of four.
Irish pay-TV operator Setanta paid £392 for the two packages and Sky paid £1.314 billion. All six packages combined to generate £1.706 billion, the league said.
The winners will be able to show games for three years starting in 2007. BSkyB won three of the six packages on offer last month.
The sell-off comes after the European Commission decided that Sky's current exclusivity with the matches was anti-competitive and that at least one of the packages must go to another broadcaster.
'Setanta is going to be an alternative choice for subscribers,' Premier League CEO Richard Scudamore told a news conference.
Setanta, which is partly owned by private equity firm Benchmark Capital, is carried on Sky's pay-TV platform, as well on cable operator NTL, which had been expected by analysts to bid for some of the packages.
Setanta's Trevor East said that 'most people in the UK have not heard of us but that is now set to change with Sentanta now 'on the map'.
He said its Premier League matches would be carried on as many broadcast platforms as possible.
Sky won the "A" package of matches, which are played late on Sunday afternoons. It also has the rights for early afternoon Saturday and Sunday matches, as well as a group to be played midweek and on bank holidays. Setanta's 46 games are mostly scheduled for Saturday evenings and Monday nights.
