SETANTA SPORTS’s backers must be more nervous right now than a goalkeeper preparing for a penalty shoot-out to decide who wins the World Cup.
On Tuesday, the English Premier League left Setanta to fret over its chances of retaining its rights to show 46 live games in Britain, for which it paid £392 million in 2006.
Sky, meanwhile, got the nod on the four packs of games that it won last time round for the princely sum of £1.7 billion.
Setanta’s two rights packages, which are shown on Saturday evenings and Monday nights, will go to a second, and possibly even a third, round of bidding, with Sky (which is allowed buy one more set of rights) and Disney-owned ESPN thought to be also in the mix.
Live English league football is the centrepiece of Setanta’s schedule and the main reason why the likes of Goldman Sachs, Balderton Capital, Doughty Hanson and Davy private clients have been willing to cough up many millions to support the thus-far loss-making and heavily indebted pay-TV venture.
Once the rights to Britain have been divided out, the Premier League will then look to sell its rights in Ireland and other markets.
Informed sources tell me that Sky paid about £18 million last time round to get “mirror” rights to show its 92 live matches to its subscribers in Ireland.
Setanta is believed to have paid more than £10 million for its 46 matches and another 33 Saturday afternoon matches that British audiences don’t get to see live but can be broadcast in the Republic.
Setanta could face competition from RTÉ for the Saturday afternoon games.
It’s a high-stakes game that has moved into extra time.
Failing to emerge as the winner is not an option for Setanta, especially if the broadcaster’s Irish founders, Leonard Ryan and Michael O’Rourke, are to cash in their remaining chips for significant sums, as they are widely expected to do in the next couple of years.
