News

Setanta has until Friday to make a further £10 million payment to the Premier League, with a further £15 million by the end of the month. As a precaution against Setanta’s potential insolvency, the league tendered the 46 matches owned by Setanta for the 2009-10 season at the start of this week.

The India match last Saturday was watched by 1.472 million and an eight-per-cent audience share, beating the 1.435 million that tuned in for the Pakistan game a week earlier.

For more analysis see the next issue of TV Sports Markets.

The federation is offering three different packages, covering live Euro 2012 and World Cup 2014 qualification matches, live friendly matches, and highlights and magazine rights.

In Croatia, HRT extended its deal for a further three years from 2010-11 to 2011-12. The federation said that the deal tripled the value of the previous deal.

Ppv buys for Serie A have reached 560,000 and the broadcaster expects the final total to reach 635,000 by the end of the season, compared with 521,000 in 2008. Ppv buys for Serie B are expected to reach 130,000, up from 107,000 a year ago.

The Setanta board is understood to be meeting twice daily as it continues to pursue refinancing options. Even excluding rights fees, the broadcaster’s operating costs come to £400,000 daily. The company yesterday stopped taking pay-television subscriptions.

NOS retained the rights for the next three-year period, from 2009-10 to 2011-12, in a deal covering the first-pick matches on Tuesdays and Wednesdays, highlights on both nights and the magazine programme. Commercial broadcaster SBS also bid.

The four-year deal with the International Handball Federation, which starts next year, covers the biennial men’s and women’s World Championships in 2011 and 2013. The rights for the 2007 and 2009 championships were held by Sportfive in a deal worth about CHF30 million (€20 million/$28 million).

 

SIC show 14 group stage matches and four matches from the first knockout round, reportedly paying less than the €6.5 million it paid to sublicense 13 matches from the 2006 World Cup. Commercial rival TVI also bid for the rights.

The Champions League final, shown by Ten Sports, drew a 0.38 rating, equating to 353,000 viewers, the same number as for the most-watched English Premier League match of last season shown on rival sports channel ESPN, the Manchester United-Chelsea clash on January 11.

Concerns over Setanta’s future have escalated further in the last week, after the broadcaster’s private equity shareholders, Doughty Hanson, Balderton Capital and Goldman Sachs, were only willing to put up £50 million of the £100 million in funding needed to cover upcoming rights payments.

In the UK, BSkyB’s audiences remained broadly stable, while pay-television rival Setanta reported a 36-per-cent increase in live match audiences, reflecting the growth of its subscriber base.

The rights for the match – a World Cup qualifier against Sweden, this Saturday – were bought by pay-broadcaster Viasat and cable and IPTV companies YouSee, Stofa and TDC, after free-to-air broadcasters had balked at the reported €1 million price asked by the Kentaro agency.

TBS won the rights for three more years, from 2009 to 2011, but for the first time will share coverage with the Golf Network. It is thought TBS’s coverage will focus on the third and final rounds with the Golf Network covering the earlier rounds. The deals include coverage of the Senior PGA Championship.

The deal will be the second blow suffered by public-service broadcaster TVP, the incumbent rights-holder on both properties. TVP lost out in the Champions League auction last week after bidding went through three rounds. Polsat won the free-to-air rights for first-choice games on Wednesday and pay-operator ITI retained the pay-television rights for all matches.

The two broadcasters were the incumbent rights-holders for the latter stages of the Uefa Cup in deals worth about €4 million a season that expired this year.

Direct 8 fought off competition from pay-broadcaster Canal Plus, the incumbent broadcaster for Under-21 matches, France Télévisions-Eurosport and the Foot-National.com website.

Kirubi is leading a group of five investors keen to bid for the rights for English Premier League football and start a new Sub-Saharan operation using the existing GTV infrastructure, according to Kenyafootball.com.

GTV went bust in January this year after its owners opted against investing any further money into what was a heavily loss-making operation.