Setanta Sports Eurasia picks up Serie A and Ligue 1

Pan-regional pay-television broadcaster Setanta Sports Eurasia has acquired rights for the top domestic football divisions in Italy and France from the MP & Silva agency.

The deals for the Italian Serie A and French Ligue 1 will run for three years, from 2012-13 to 2014-15. They territories covered by the deals are: Armenia, Azerbaijan, Belarus, Georgia, Kazakhstan, Kyrgystan, Moldova, Uzbekistan, Tajikistan and Turkmenistan.

Setanta Sports Eurasia also has rights for the English Premier League, the Spanish Liga and the German Bundesliga, as well as ice hockey and tennis programming.

“The channel has proven immensely popular with viewers in the region already and we expect this to increase with the new content,” Setanta Sports chief executive Dwyer McCaughley said. “The channel is gaining rapid traction with distribution platforms such as cable, direct-to-home, IPTV and digital-terrestrial television across the region.”