Sports television channel, Setanta, will screen one-third of all English Premiership soccer matches shown in the Republic from 2007 following a €120 million carve up of TV rights, writes Barry O'Halloran
The independent Irish operator saw off a rival bid from State broadcaster, RTÉ, to win the rights to screen matches on Mondays and Saturdays for three years from August 2007.
The move follows a coup last month in which it won the rights to screen Monday and Saturday games in the UK for the same period. That contract will cost the channel €574 million or over €4 million for each of the 46 games it will screen in the UK.
It did not reveal yesterday what it will pay for the Irish rights. However, the deals cut by the English Premiership with Setanta and Sky, which won the remaining rights, came to a total of €120 million.
This values each of the 170 games screened by both channels at an average of just over €700,000.
Setanta will screen between 76 and 79 live games in each of the three seasons. It has rights for matches at 8pm on Monday nights and 3pm and 5.15pm on Saturdays.
In the UK, it has the rights to Monday nights and 5.15pm on Saturdays. EU regulation prevents the Premiership from offering rights to the 3pm games on Saturday in the United Kingdom.
Only Sky and Setanta have the rights to live games in Britain and Ireland. A spokeswoman for RTÉ confirmed last night that the national broadcaster had made a bid for the packages offered by the Premiership, but was not successful.
She said that the station was also in the running for highlights, which have to be offered to terrestrial TV channels. It will be a number of weeks before it finds out if it has been successful.
Under the current TV rights regime, RTÉ screens 15 live premiership matches a season and also has a highlights programme.
Setanta Ireland chief executive Niall Cogley said that winning the rights to screen games in both jurisdictions meant the channel was about to evolve from a "nice to have" option to a "must have".
"For football fans, we now have football every night of the week," he added. Setanta already has rights to the European Champions' League, the Eircom League and the Scottish Premier League.
The move will give Setanta a base to build subscriptions in Ireland and Britain and earn revenue from extra advertising and sponsorship. Mr Cogley would not say how much cash the company expects to generate from this. It already has more than 80,000 subscribers in Britain.
The company last year raised over €30 million when it sold a 32 per cent stake to venture capitalist, Benchmark Capital.
Mr Cogley indicated yesterday that it could have to embark on a further fund raising round in order to get the cash to pay for the resources needed to broadcast the games. Most of the expansion will take place in its UK operation.
