Setanta Shows Free England Highlights

Setanta Sports screened highlights of last night’s Croatia v England 2010 World Cup qualifier free to view after failing to agree a last minute deal to sub-licence the rights to a terrestrial broadcaster.

The move came after the pay-TV broadcaster refused to accept offers from BBC and ITV for the rights after neither network matched Setanta’s asking price believed to be in the region of £1m.

However, due to the lateness of the teatime announcement by the Irish pay-TV broadcaster, many fans are unlikely to have realised they could tune in to Setanta 1 to watch the home nation match highlights from 10.45pm.

The announcement is thought to have been deliberately delayed the move so as not to dissuade subscribers signing up for its paid-for package, giving viewers the ability to watch the game live.

The highlights were also streamed at the same time on Setanta’s website in exchange for registering your name and email address.

Setanta pulled in its best ever live audience last night as around 1.4m viewers tuned in to watch the World Cup qualifier between England and Croatia live, while around 240,000 watched its late night free highlights, according to unofficial overnight figures.

The coverage of England’s 4-1 win in Croatia, marked by a Theo Walcott hat trick, peaked at 1.5m viewers and a 6.8% share of the audience between 9.30pm and 9.45pm.

Setanta’s previous best audience was its coverage of last week’s match between England and Andorra, which peaked at 927,000.

Having paid £5m for the rights to the match, Setanta refused to cow to low offers from terrestrial broadcasters for the highlights package.

ITV doubled its bid at the eleventh hour to £500,000 without success, while the BBC is believed to have limited itself to a £200,000 bid.

Trevor East, director of sport at Setanta, said: ‘We always intended to make highlights available, and were disappointed that we were unable to reach agreement with any of the terrestrial broadcasters.

‘This was not due to any lack of willingness on our part. We have been able to strike highlights deals in Wales and Northern Ireland.

‘Unfortunately, none of the terrestrial broadcasters who expressed an interest in the England game offered us a fair market price.’

Setanta has the rights to all of England’s away matches in the World Cup qualifying campaign, and the next one is against Belarus on October 15.