EPSN gets Premier League TV Rights in UK, La Liga Rights in US. Setanta Gets Administration.

By: Daryl | June 23rd, 2009

You’ve heard by now that ESPN has won the yardsale/auction of Setanta’s Premier League TV rights in the UK. For those in the dark, Setanta UK couldn’t afford to make the payments they’d promised to the Premier League (basically, they didn’t have enough subscribers) and so were stripped of the rights. ESPN snapped up Setanta’s 46 games (Saturday evening and Monday nights) for the 2009/10 season, and 23 games per season from 2010/11 to 2012/13. In short: Everything that Setanta has now belongs to ESPN.

Setanta UK is now in administration and will eventually cease broadcasting in the UK.

In some ways, this doesn’t really change anything for UK Premier League viewers. We can infer from the message on the ESPN.co.uk website…

…that ESPN’s Premier League coverage will work on a subscription model similar to Setanta’s.

So viewers will still be stuck paying for Sky Sports to watch the majority of games, and then having to pay a little more for the games on ESPN. The only difference is that ESPN UK is part of a massive conglomerate. Basically, if they don’t make money on this then Mickey Mouse can make up the difference.

Just so we’re clear. ESPN will not be broadcasting the Premier League in the United States. This deal is UK only.
UPDATE: Except that they probably are now.

If you’re in the US, Canada, Australia or Ireland then your Setanta is a different entity and (so far) unaffected. For example, Setanta US are at pains to make it clear that they will continue broadcasting. For now at least. It’s not clear exactly what’s going to happen in the not too distant future.

One final bit of Setanta fall-out: They held the UK TV rights to England internationals and the FA Cup, but obviously won’t be broadcasting those now. And so the English FA will soon be accepting bids for those TV rights. I’d personally love to see the BBC pick up the England games, making international football freely available to the general public again.

Meanwhile, ESPN has pulled off another coup in the USA. After losing the Champions League rights to Fox Soccer Channel, they’ve managed to purchase some La Liga rights from GolTV. The majority of games will be on ESPN Deportes, but apparently 20 games will be shown on ESPN2.

The majority of the La Liga games on the ESPN family of networks will be available on its broadband service, 360.com, which will carry 114 games. An additional 95 matches will be shown on ESPN’s Spanish-language channel, Deportes. The matches carried by ESPN Deportes will be simulcast in English on ESPN360.com. ESPN2 will carry about 20 games.

What a difference a Cristiano Ronaldo makes, eh?