My article from the Media & Marketing section of the Sunday Business Post (4th June 2006):
The English FA Premiership packages won by Setanta in this week’s auction are not guaranteed to be broadcast on the basic Setanta Sports channel on NTL.
Setanta Ireland’s chief executive Niall Cogley told The Sunday Business Post that a decision had yet to be made on what games would be available at no additional cost to NTL basic viewers.
‘‘The matches from the C and D packages will be broadcast by our British stations Setanta 1 and 2, we now have to decide how many of those will be put on our basic sports channel carried by NTL.”
At present NTL customers receive Setanta Sports as part of the company’s basic digital and cable package. RTE and Setanta currently split the rights to a handful of matches, known as the live Saturday package, which cannot be broadcast in Britain under UEFA rules.
The current agreement comes to an end after the 2006/7 season and this week’s auction means that from 2007/2008 Setanta will hold all of the Saturday matches along with two other packages currently held by Sky Sports.
Should the broadcaster decide to limit the number of matches available on the basic NTL package, those wishing to see the matches would need to pay an additional €7.99 per month for the extra Setanta channels while the Sky Sports package costs another €23 per month.
Sky Digital subscribers already have to add €13 to their monthly bill to watch any Setanta programming, including the content available at no additional cost on NTL basic.
There is also no guarantee that these subscription costs will not rise before the beginning of the 2007/8 season.
It is expected that the live Saturday matches already available to Irish viewers will remain free – only the games set to be picked up from Setanta’s British broadcasts will need to be decided upon. The subscription-free status of the Setanta Sports channel will also remain unchanged for NTL subscribers for the foreseeable future.
‘‘The deal we have with NTL will last alongside our new rights packages. We are also in talks with UPC [the parent company of NTL/Chorus] about extending our deal across their entire organisation,” Cogley said.
Looking to the future of sports broadcasting, Cogley said Setanta was committed to the development of High Definition Television (HDTV).
But while Sky Digital plans on broadcasting its coverage of the upcoming FA Premiership in HD, Setanta viewers will have to wait.
‘‘We won’t be ready by the end of 2006 to generate content in HD,” said Cogley.
One detail that didn’t make the final edit of the piece was that Setanta plan to go widescreen in August of this year, in time for the upcoming Premiership season.
Personally speaking I think an additional fee for the Setanta matches is a certainty; across the seven packages around €120 million was paid, which means Setanta probably paid at least €50 million for their share; I’m not sure how much the deal between Setanta and NTL is worth or how much it improves the sports broadcasters ad revenue but I doubt it is good enough to turn a reasonable profit on that amount of money. If the live Saturday games stay on Setanta basic with the others on the premium channels it will be a win-win situation for most people involved. NTL will still be able to offer live football to their basic subscribers, in fact they’ll now have even more exclusive games than before as RTÉ aren’t a factor. Setanta will bring in revenue from basic broadcasts and be able to use them as a springboard to entice viewers onto their premium content and finally the NTL viewer who made the move because of the live football will still get what they came for in the first place. I do imagine that the sub costs for Setanta will rise, it is over a year away anyway but saying that I’m sure they’ll remain quite cost-effective when compared to Sky Sports or Sky Digital