News

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.

Sony, which is the only major pay-platform in India currently without a dedicated sports channel, has been considering a sports channel for some time. In addition to the rights for Twenty20 cricket’s India Premier League, which it shows on its Set Max general entertainment channel, it has the rights for international cricket in New Zealand and English FA Cup football.

The moves come ahead of the next international rights cycle of English football’s Premier League – fees for which were expected to grow exponentially – and after three years of explosive growth, culminating in a deal last year for Uefa Champions League and Europa League rights in Nigeria worth over $100 million over thee years.