FA Heads List Of Bodies Hit By Setanta Collapse
The Football Association, the Scottish Premier League, the US PGA Tour and Premier Rugby are among the governing bodies left with substantial gaps to fill in their revenue streams after pay-TV broadcaster Setanta finally succumbed to administration, unable to pay any further instalments on its rights fees.
Setanta’s entry into administration means that all the rights that it owned are returned to the rights holders who must now find new broadcast partners and will be looking to match the level of financing that Setanta had agreed to pay, despite many of the deals with the now defunct broadcaster having been signed prior to the economic recession.
The FA was 12 months into a four-year deal worth £150m with Setanta with the remaining rights valued at £100m. These include rights to show England’s home friendlies and the Community Shield, as well as some England Under-21 and FA Cup games over the next three years.
The agreement, in partnership with terrestrial channel ITV, also gave Setanta exclusive rights to England’s away World Cup qualifiers, the next of which is against Ukraine on 10th October.
If the FA fails to secure the same price for their broadcast rights, any reduction in income will represent a drop in profits rather than a loss.
However, the organisation’s National Game Strategy, which is due to deliver £200m of investment into the game’s grassroots until 2012, could suffer cuts from a loss of revenue.
The Premier League would have suffered a similar issue but moved swiftly to replace its lost revenue with Disney-owned ESPN already stepped in to buy the packages of Premier League matches previously owned by Setanta through to 2013 at a deal believed to be match the value of the previous rights agreement.
The Scottish Premier League is in negotiations with broadcasters interested in taking on Setanta’s four-year £125m deal which is due to start in 2010. It is thought that the SPL will have to accept significantly less than Setanta had promised from any successful rescue bid.
Setanta also has contracts to show cricket’s Indian Premier League, golf’s US PGA Tour, rugby union’s Guinness Premiership, Australian rugby league and Blue Square Premier football.
Liverpool’s official television station LFC TV, which was shown exclusively on Setanta, will continue to be broadcast online with the club ‘urgently investigating all possibilities available to us in returning to broadcasting in the British Isles’.
Setanta went off air just before 6pm on Tuesday, with the channel displaying a message that the firm had ‘ceased trading in Great Britain’. Over 200 redundancies were made as administrators Deloitte took over the handling of the company’s affairs.
