Setanta To Face Administration?
Irish based sports broadcaster Satanta Sports could be forced into administration this week after failing to make payments due on TV rights.
Setanta last week failed to make a payment of £3million to the Scottish Premier League in the final installment of this seasons TV deal. With the English Premier League chiefs expecting a payment of £35million for the rights to screen Premier League matches, Setanta isn’t looking in great shape at all.
If Setanta go into administration it will lead to a firesale or the rights to screen Premier League matches and England qualifiers with Sky Sports expected to sweep up and reclaim it’s dominance in the domestic and international football rights. Sky reportedly turned down a £50million lifeline plea from Setanta saying quite clearly “we’re a broadcaster, not a bank”.
The English FA is said to have rebuffed attempts by Setanta to reduce its £150m share of the £425m four-year deal meaning Setanta are in last ditrch attempts to raise finance.
I’m a Setanta subscriber and quite frankly I’m not overly surprised by this at all. Setanta came in with a very small subscriber base and offered a lot of money for big games in the hope that they would reclaim the outgoings by increasing it’s subscriber base. It’s a shaky business model at best and your always playing 50/50 odds in situations like these.
Setanta are well off their required subscriber base in order to break even and whats more they are likely to suffer further now as affiliates will undoubtedly abandon the programme given there’s no guarantee of them getting paid if the company goes into administration.
I hope Setanta pull through, but my gut instinct says other businesses would rather claim the TV rights Setanta owns at a cut price rather than help pull the struggling broadcaster through giving themselves more competition. Who else is going to step in to help?
I’ll shut up now…
June 10th, 2009 at 10:25 pm
Interesting news.
I wish the BBC would snap up the rights. It’s not if they fair they go to evil Sky, who already have a near monopoly.
The British public deserves to see more football on ‘free’ TV - not everybody can afford Sky Sports.
June 10th, 2009 at 10:26 pm
BTW, I just wanted to say your blog looks awesome. Fantastic design.
June 12th, 2009 at 2:41 pm
Thanks for the feedback Nadeem
Agree it would be great for BBC to pick up the rights, it’s just not that likely unfortunately
June 19th, 2009 at 8:36 pm
[...] so long ago I blogged about Setanta facing a financial crisis and today it would appear their fete has been sealed as they have failed to make latest payment on [...]