Those who were hoping to watch England’s October 10th clash with Ukraine from the comfort of their sofa or the local public house will now find themselves crouched over a computer instead.
The Ukrainian FA appointed the rights to the game to an agency named Kentaro, who in turn did a deal with Setanta. Since their collapse, only one broadcaster has put in a bid for the rights, and it was deemed ‘very low’. In light of this, the match is set to become the first England game to be shown exclusively over the interweb for a one-off fee.
Kentaro head honcho Philipp Grothe says:
“We have spoken to every traditional UK broadcaster and currently have no offer on the table. We therefore feel the internet delivers the most viable option to deliver an important England game directly to the fans.
“It will be the first time in history that an England game has had an exclusive web broadcast.”
The game will be broadcast by internet TV specialists Perform, who happen to be the handsome devils who provide the banner adverts on this site. Just look at those lovely banner adverts promoting goods and services that will make your life better. They just look so damn clickable, don’t they?
The European Commission’s decision to deny Sky Sports the right to broadcast every televised game will again hit fans in the wallet
The Spoiler hoped that the one good thing that could potentially stem from Setanta’s collapse would be Premier League football being made cheaper to watch - obviously we weren’t too optimistic but we kept our fingers crossed.
However, it has today been confirmed that ESPN’s new UK channel will launch on August 3 at a premium of £9 a month to Sky Sports customers and £12 to those who have Sky without the sports packages.
Whereas with Setanta, you were also getting FA Cup, Blue Square Premier, Bundesliga and international games thrown in for your money, ESPN’s 46
Irish network goes out with a mushy compilation tribute
Three weeks ago we suggested the England/ Kazakhstan game would be Setanta’s last, and yesterday our prophecy of doom finally came to pass*. As you know by now, the Irish broadcaster was the latest victim of the financial nuclear winter, as they failed to honour the payments on their hugely over-priced TV rights packages.
Setanta finished broadcasting in the UK at 6pm last night, but not before a gushing self-tribute from the nation’s second favourite 24-hour Sport news channel.
The farewell compilation they showed was a little anti-climactic (who could forget the Steve Claridge phone-in?), but we like the line about delivering sports news “regardless of the rights holder” - a clear reference to Sky Sports News’ tendency to pretend a sporting event doesn’t exist if a rival is showing it.
*Technically, Azerbaijan/ Wales was the last game as it was broadcast later in the day. Fortunately, it doesn’t matter as no one cares.
The resulting deadlink suggests the ailing broadcaster is about to collapse - an outcome that was feared last week.
New reports today, however, suggest that Setanta could possibly avoid oblivion by changing its focus from targeting retail customers to supplying content for other networks. Such an outcome may save some jobs, but it would also help Sky edge a little closer to holding the kind of monopoly they enjoyed a few years ago.
As the Tesco Value teabags and “one square of loo roll per visit rule” at Spoiler towers demonstrates, the nation remains in the grip of a financial apocalypse.
Throughout the crunchy credit crisis, the Premier League has tried its best to remain impervious to global economics, by continuing to spend big, charge extortionate amounts for tickets and encourage potentially destabilising foreign investment. This week, however, cracks are starting to show in the supposedly invulnerable entity, whose members seem to believe they can buck the trend of a recession.
On Tuesday, The Guardian revealed that the Premier League is cumulatively £3.1bn in debt. Just over £2bn of those outstanding bank overdrafts, loans and other borrowings are attributable to the Big Four alone.
We have also learned that wages have spiralled to over £1bn for the first time, suggesting one too many clubs are operating with an unstable business model. Such a unevenly balanced ratio of wages to turnover could become a club’s undoing, particularly in light of the fact that ‘guaranteed’ income from ailing broadcaster Setanta may be about to dry up.
Perhaps the most telling sign of the fool’s paradise that is the Premiership, however, is the news that reached us this morning concerning Liverpool’s financial crisis.
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