So Setanta’s finally died – or at least gone into administration. It’s as good as dead.
It won’t be missed by many. It did itself no good by having a reputation for truly awful customer service. In particular, cancelling it proved near impossible with, at times, people being asked to write a letter (no phone calls – no email). I never subscribed, but I heard enough other people talk about the dreadful customer service to mean that I never would.
Where does that leave premium TV sport in the UK?
Well ESPN has picked up all Setanta’s Premier League rights for next season and the three following seasons. But is that enough?
Rumour has it that they’ve paid essentially what Setanta paid for the rights going forward (allowing for the fact that Setanta had already paid some cash in advance for next season which is seemingly non-refundable).
Then there are all the other sports that had deals with Setanta.
So ITV will pick up some England games that they’ll no doubt be happy to show. The fact that England is going to quality for the World Cup in South Africa at a canter probably won’t help audience figures, but England games are always worthwhile. Will ITV also hold on to those FA Cup games that Setanta had? Or will they go to someone else like ESPN or Sky?
This season it felt that the free-to-air operator didn’t have the strong hand that the BBC had previously had on the FA Cup with big fixtures going on pay-TV. With ITV losing one of its two weekly Champions’ League games, they might want to make up some of that shortfall.
Scottish Football must be worried. Although Sky is rumoured to be coming in to make a bid, they’re effectively going to just take what they’re offered. ESPN – even if it has to build up a decent sports offering from scratch – can’t just replicate what Setanta had by picking up precisely the same rights. Well they can, but will they want to?
Likewise, my previous employer, STV, will be concerned as they had the contract to produce all that Scottish football. Will they hang on to those contracts?
Other sports will be less hurt although I can’t honestly say that I know the value of the Blue Square League fixtures.
So what does this all mean for Setanta. This morning on Five Live I heard some thoroughly misleading information regarding ESPN’s US service. They’ve just lost Champions’ League football on their US service; it’s now all on Fox Sports. This is a UK only deal.
From what’s being reported, it seems ESPN will launch a new UK only service and not use either ESPN America or ESPN Classics. They could certainly fill it up with other sport like French and German football, but it probably needs a more attractive pricing policy than Setanta had.
In the US, ESPN is considered a basic cable package, and you’ll almost certainly get it without playing a specific premium for the channel. They get their revenue by the vast majority of cable customers effectively paying $3-4 a month without choosing whether or not they specifically get ESPN. A low per user value, but it adds up.
In the UK, Sky packages channels differently with customers choosing packs. Eurosport, for example, gets a small amount of my sports subscription, while Sky One gets cash if I choose the Entertainment pack. Perhaps ESPN could be funded this way, but I doubt it. It’ll be a bolt-on of some description.
Previously Virgin Media offered Setanta as part of its XL package – giving them a decent level of viewers but at a very low price. I suspect that this is an offer that won’t be repeated.
The price creep to £12.99 per month for a number of channels, few of which people were interested in, was too steep – particularly as most subscribers already had Sky Sports. The additional games are in the “nice if you can” category. Unless you had an allegiance to a team they were showing, then you didn’t mind missing the games. As an Arsenal fan, I’d just go to the pub if I felt radio commentary wasn’t going to be enough for me.
With the number of games falling to just 23 from the 2010 season onwards, it seems that ESPN is going to have to swallow some costs and try to build an audience. They have to come up with a good deal to build an audience in these troubled economic times.
Setanta also offered a way of many of the club TV stations to be packaged. I never subscribed to Arsenal TV because it effectively would cost be £12.99 a month. How these are going to be funded going forward is another interesting question. The same was true of ESPN America – I quite like the odd baseball game, but I wasn’t prepared to deal with Setanta.
ESPN does have an interesting offering, but pricing is going to be key. And they don’t have long with just 8 weeks until the first games of the 2009/10 season. I look forward to hearing their proposition.