And are you ready for it to suck?
Irish publication The Sunday Business Post reported late last month that ESPN is considering acquiring Setanta Sports, the Irish satellite network that has the broadcast rights to all manner of football leagues and competitions, including the English Premier League, the Australian Football League, the Gaelic Athletic Association and a wide variety of rugby union and rugby league competitions, including the 2007 Rugby Union World Cup.
For ESPN, buying Setanta would be the easiest way for them to get those valuable TV rights to the Premier League and FA Cup, and if they closed out a deal this summer, they could grab in the Rugby World Cup as well. Setanta programming would also give ESPN yet a possible replacement for ESPN Classic, which starting closing up shop in January and has devolved into the poker-and-American Gladiators-rerun channel. ESPN could do far worse than to replace that with soccer, rugby, Aussie rules and Gaelic football.
But will they? ESPN has become such a running joke these days that some sports fans — including several commenters on this blog — are already asking, “Gee, how will Bristol ruin this for us?” I can already envision them turning Setanta Sports into nothing more than “ESPN Soccer Channel,” thus cutting off all the rugby, AFL and GAA fans from the football codes that made them want to subscribe to Setanta in the first place.
On the other hand, maybe they’ll keep the rugby. After all, ESPN is nothing if not shamelessly self-promotional. If ESPN bought Setanta and acquired those exclusive Rugby World Cup TV rights, it would be the perfect excuse for yet another typical all-out marketing blitz…
Watch exclusive live Rugby World Cup action on ESPN2 and ESPN World! What’s that? You don’t have ESPN World? Call your cable operator and scream in their ears until they submit to your will! Call them right now on your ESPN Mobile phone and say, “I want my ESPN World, dammit!”
Of course, that whole vision breaks down when you remember how big a failure ESPN Mobile was.
Really, though, the only question I have is this: if ESPN does bring Setanta’s programming into the Bristol family, will the resulting network continue showing AFL matches? Will that be a marketing tactic as well? (We’re even bringing back Aussie Rules!) I suppose we can only hope, but I’m pretty sure the boys at Bristol will find a way to ruin this for everyone but the soccer fans in the long run. But hey, at least it stops YouTube from making them irrelevant, right?
11 responses so far ↓
1 the butler // May 8, 2007 at 5:02 pm
I’d watch if they showed some hurling.
2 Simon // May 8, 2007 at 5:20 pm
Hey Dave,
Just though i let you know , I really enjoy reading your thoughts on
football .Especially the Gaelic since I’m from Dublin ,Ireland. Hopefully
Dublin can bring Sam ( http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Sam_Maguire_Cup) home this year . Anyway keep up the great work.
ps the All-Ireland starts this weekend
3 The Specialist // May 8, 2007 at 11:29 pm
Dave,
I’m not so sure ESPN buying Setanta would allow them to aquire the rights to broadcast Prem games in the US. I could be wrong, but my understanding is that Fox (and subsequently Fox Soccer Channel) are the exclusive US rights holders. They in-turn sub-license the US rights to Setanta (http://www.sportbusiness.com/news/160153/setanta-shares-premier-league-in-us) However, I’d find it hard to believe that they’d sub-license those same rights to a rival like ESPN. I would guess that it would mean either more games on Fox Soccer Channel, or a return to the pay-per-view style that Fox used to run.
That is of course unless ESPN stepped up and simply purchased the rights themselves if they do create a soccer channel.
Just some food for thought,
The Specialist
4 Dave // May 9, 2007 at 9:50 am
Good point, Specialist. If the WWL bought Setanta, it would probably have to pay Fox a king’s ransom to keep those EPL rights. I could also see Fox pulling the rights away entirely and running a PPV season pass for the EPL, and they could probably charge 2 or 3 times what MLS is charging and get plenty of customers. That would pretty much sink any ESPN-Setanta deal.
I wish they would do that for the FA Cup, too. $16 a game is too damn much for anything but the final.
5 Lates Links « Jackie Manuel’s Posse // May 9, 2007 at 10:02 am
[...] <>NOOOO! <> [...]
6 a different dave // May 10, 2007 at 7:37 am
I’m very much torn by this. On the one hand, ESPN has that ESPN Classic channel which is currently without original content, they could slide Setanta into that unused spot and instantly change Setanta from a DirecTV-only channel into a channel available on almost all cable and satellite networks. That’s a big improvement.
But what makes Setanta good are the people who run it, in Ireland; will ESPN be smart enough to keep them? If ESPN really wants to be a world network, they need non-Americans, especially European sports specialists, involved in running things. It would suck in the extreme if ESPN did to Setanta what they did to the classic sports network that they bought, turned into ESPN Classic, and eventually ruined.
In regards to rugby, ESPNU currently has the rights to show the USA rugby national team games, so there is an interest there on ESPN’s part for other international sports besides soccer. Too bad my cable carrier does not carry ESPNU. What with their success with carrying the FIFA World Cup, ABC/ESPN have got to be thinking about the IRB World Cup – it won’t draw anywhere near the ratings of the FIFA World Cup, but it is an area of future growth that ESPN has to be thinking about, especially since the American national rugby team usually qualifies for it (though never makes it out of the group stage).
As to EPL, yes the previous posters are correct, Fox currently owns the rights to this. They resold rights to half of the games to Setanta. But before that, all the games were available on Fox Soccer Channel, either live or on delay if games were played at the same time, IIRC (I may be wrong about this; I’ve only had FSC for a year), so I doubt that Fox would go back to pay per view. Fox has multiple sports channels of their own; they could show EPL games on other channels if conflicts in scheduling occurred, similar to how ESPN handles conflicts for instance with Champions League games by using ESPN2 and ESPN Classic.
Anyway, I’d love to see Setanta widely available via ESPN here in the USA. I just don’t trust the decision making abilities of the ESPN corporate bigwigs. I don’t believe they “get it” but I’d love it if they proved me wrong.
7 a different dave // May 10, 2007 at 12:44 pm
Oh yeah, one other thing; ESPN has been showing EPL games during the week. These are repeats, not live games, but I don’t think we should rule out of hand the possibility that Fox and ESPN might decide to share EPL coverage. After all FSC pissed off a lot of their subscribers last year when they sold half the EPL games to Setanta. EPL rights are expensive, and it might be worth their while for Fox and ESPN to share rather than try to go it alone.
8 a different dave // May 16, 2007 at 8:17 pm
Correction to my previous comment, I think I was watching rebroadcast EPL games on the regional Fox sports channel, not on one of the ESPN channels.
In which case, even if Fox and ESPN didn’t care to share with/sell rights to EPL games to each other, either ESPN or Fox have more than enough cable channels to broadcast all of the EPL games live, if they wanted to. They would not have to resort to pay per view, necessarily.
9 Theo // May 24, 2007 at 10:19 am
I’m scared as hell about the possibility of ESPN buying Setanta. Over the years I have come to hate ESPN and now they want to buy my favorite channel. It will only be a matter of time before they change the channel to ESPN Soccer, eliminate rugby from the programming, and replace it with The European Poker Tour or the European Domino Championships. This is not welcome news.
10 jeff // Jun 29, 2007 at 2:59 pm
if this does happen before the rwc, we may get coverage of it in HD , which wont happen under Setanta
11 Josh // Jul 20, 2007 at 3:33 am
I’m also torn as to ESPN doing this. While it would be very nice to not have to subscribe to a bigger package for the Rugby World Cup this fall, I feel that the producers @ ESPN would try to Americanize it, and thus change the purity of the channel. when it comes down to it, as long as they keep all the sports currently shown on Setanta, I’m for the buy-out. Cheers.