A deal with satellite pay-platform Sky Digital will probably now see ESPN and ESPN America offered together as part of an ESPN mini-package for the same price as proposed for ESPN’s initial single-channel offer – £12 a month for stand alone subscribers or £9 a month for existing Sky Sports subscribers.
This week ESPN picked up a range of content that was previously shown on Setanta, paying on average about half what Setanta had committed. The new ESPN channel will feature, in addition to its core English and Scottish Premier League content, matches from Germany’s Bundesliga, Dutch, Portuguese and Russian leagues, US football’s Major League Soccer, UFC, French top-tier domestic rugby union and Australian Rules Football, among others.
ESPN is also likely to announce further distribution deals in the coming days with BT’s ADSL service, BT Vision, and digital-terrestrial operator Top Up TV, after agreeing a deal with cable-operator Virgin.
The Virgin deal effectively replicates the agreement the cable operator had with bankrupted broadcaster Setanta and will see the ESPN channels – including ESPN Classic – bundled in for free as part of Virgin’s high-end basic-tier XL package. ESPN channels will be available to lower-tier Virgin subscribers for £8 a month in combination with the Sky Sports channels or £10 a month as a standalone option.