Setanta Broadcasts Free-To-Air Highlights Itself!

According to Media Guardian, Setanta is broadcasting free-to-air highlights of Croatia v England later this evening on its own channel!

This is very odd. They're reported to have turned down an offer of £500,000 from ITV. And now, at the very last minute, they offer these free highlights.

The story on Media Guardian was published just before 6.00pm this evening, and I can't see many outlets* advertising that fact now. So basically aside from a few people reading various forums and websites, nobody will know.

And I think it's fair to assume that we'll be bombarded by ads for subscriptions. Still, something is better than nothing, although I can see that something being the goals on the respective Ten O'Clock newses.

[*UPDATE] Well my employer's mentioning it in the 7.00pm news in fact!

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

Hmmm.

[UPDATE 2] Roger Mosey talks about both the Setanta situation and Paralympics coverage over at the BBC Sport blog.