Setanta Sports

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Setanta Sports
Setanta Sports logo
Launched 1990
Owned by Setanta Sport Holdings Ltd
Audience share 0.1% 2007 estimate (, )
Country Ireland
Broadcast area International
Website www.setanta.com
Availability
Terrestrial
Digital terrestrial(Ireland) Channel 17
Digital terrestrial(UK) Channel 34
Satellite
Sky Digital(UK & Ireland) Channel 429
Dish Network(USA) Channel 406
DirecTV (USA) Channel 615
Star Choice(Canada) Channel 239
Bell ExpressVu(Canada) Channel 420
Foxtel Digital(Australia) Channel 525
Austar Digital(Australia) Channel 510
UBI World TV(Australia) Channel 3
Cable
UPC Ireland(Ireland) Channel 105/401
Virgin Media(UK) Channel 518 (Setanta Sports News) Channel 538 (Setanta 1) Channel 539 (Setanta 2)
Foxtel Digital(Australia) Channel 525
Shaw Cable(Canada) Channel 154
Verizon FiOS(USA) Channel 1009 (starting 6/30)

Setanta Sports (pronounced [sɛˈtantə]) is an international sports broadcaster, operating 12 channels in 24 countries. The availability of these channels varies depending on the delivery platform and location. Setanta Sports was formed in 1990 to facilitate the broadcasting of Irish sporting events to Irish expatriates. More recently the network has expanded and it now broadcasts an extensive array of top live sporting events aimed at international English-speaking audiences.

Setanta Ireland's CEO is Niall Cogley, former Director of Sport at RTÉ. The company's headquarters is 4th Floor, Georges Quay House, 43 Townsend Street, Dublin 2, Ireland. Joint Group CEOs Michael O'Rourke and Leonard Ryan, COO Mark O'Meara and CFO Nigel Brennan are all based in that area. The channel takes its names from the legendary Irish warrior Setanta, who reputedly played the oldest known field sport, hurling, and who was later given the name 'Cúchulainn' as described in the ancient Irish texts of the 'Annals of Ulster'.

On May 5, 2006, [1] Setanta broke Sky Sports' three-year monopoly on showing Barclays Premier League football in the UK, successfully bidding £392 million for the rights to show 46 matches per season on its multi-platform subscription channel.

Contents

[edit] Availability

Setanta Sports offers commercial venues in several countries around the world programming of sports such as Football (Association Football), Gaelic Football, hurling, golf, cricket, Australian rules football, Basketball, rugby union and rugby league and boxing. Setanta Sports have paid an undisclosed sum to secure the UK rights to the Indian Premier League.

[edit] Ireland

In Ireland, Setanta Sports' Channels are available on a number of different platforms. Its flagship Channel Setanta Ireland is available for free on UPC Ireland's basic cable package and as a subscription service on Sky Digital. With Sky Digital subscribers receive the full array of Setanta Sports channels — Setanta Sports Ireland, Setanta Sports 1 & 2, Setanta Golf, Setanta Sports News, Liverpool FC TV, Celtic TV, Rangers TV, NASN, Racing UK and Racing World and more recently launched Arsenal TV.

Setanta also offers a commercial service for Business premises comprising of Setanta Ireland, Setanta Golf, Setanta Sports 1, Setanta Sports 2, Celtic TV, Rangers TV,Arsenal TV, Liverpool TV,Setanta News, and Racing World.

[edit] Channels

[edit] United Kingdom

Setanta's acquisition of rights to some matches of England's highest profile domestic sporting competition, the Premier League, with effect from the 2007-08 season, indicated its ambition to challenge Sky Sports, which has been the dominant pay-TV sports broadcaster in the UK since pay-TV was introduced in the UK in the 1980s.

[edit] Channels

In the United Kingdom the Setanta channels are:

Setanta are hoping to have a High-definition channel launched by August 2008, in time for the new Barclays Premiership season.[2]

[edit] Availability

Setanta Sports is available on cable and the following platforms in the UK:

[edit] Notes

[edit] Selected Rights

Three games and one replay per round in rounds 3-5
Two Quarter-finals and one Quarter-final replay (if any are required)
One semi-final
The Final (shared with ITV)
17 matches from the Group stage
6 matches from the last 32 and 16
2 quarter finals
1 semi final

[edit] Known costs

[edit] Security concerns

Concerns have been raised over the security and viability of Setanta's digital terrestrial channel provided by Top Up TV because the encryption system was switched from the MediaGuard encryption system (which was cracked in continental Europe in 2004) to the Nagravision encryption system according to the conditional access manufacturer Kudelski. Like Mediaguard, the different versions of Nagravision are insecure and have also been compromised according to media industry studies, external appraisals [1] and numerous discussion websites. The key-based encryption systems, like Nagravison, are fundamentally insecure because the keys and control words necessary to decrypt the television signal are themselves broadcast by the service provider. It is therefore very much easier for hackers to intercept the keys and reverse engineer the smartcards needed to hack the system. It also blacked out coverage during most of the 2006 Carling Cup.

In the United Kingdom, advanced conditional access modules for digital televisions and personal video recorders, such as the Dragon, T-Rex and Reality CAMs, that can easily decrypt Nagravision encryptions systems are freely on sale directly from suppliers and on the UK version of eBay. In addition, cloned smartcards for set top boxes that can decrypt Nagravision are now readily available and are already being traded on certain illicit websites within the UK. This has led to growing speculation that digital terrestrial pay-TV piracy is increasing within the United Kingdom during the 2007/2008 football season due to the much greater use of these public hack cloned cards and advanced conditional access modules.

Sky's own Sky Italia service suffered heavy losses due to piracy and more than 3 million Italian homes accessed pay-TV services through hacked decoder cards for conditional access set top boxes and conditional access modules for digital televisions and personal video recorders. Sky Italia had to switch from an insecure key-based system to the secure Videoguard cryptographic algorithm encryption system. This issue has been covered by the Guardian and Financial Times newspapers and the Datamonitor commercial analysis group.[10] [11] [12] [13]

[edit] Advertising

Former BBC and ITV Sport presenter Des Lynam, together with actress Thaila Zucchi starred in the advertising launch of Setanta's coverage of Premier League football from August 2007. The slogan used in this advert is "Setanta Sports - £9.99 a month, no annual contract."[14]

[edit] Newly Secured Contracts

On April 7, 2008, Setanta Sports announced they had signed an exclusive 3-year broadcast deal with Frank Warren's Sports Network to make Setanta Sports the new home of televised boxing with fights involving Joe Calzaghe, Enzo Maccarinelli, Kevin Mitchell, Gavin Rees, Alex Arthur and Matt Skelton exclusive to Setanta Sports subscribers.[15]

On April 19, 2008, Setanta Sports announced they had agreed a 2-and-a-half-year deal with Frank Warren to exclusively show Amir Khan fights from July 2008.

On May 21, 2008, Setanta Sports announced that they will be following up their Indian Premier League coverage with the Asia Cup featuring the international sides from the Sub-Continent going head-to-head from June 26, 2008 through to the Final on July 6, 2008.[16]

On May 22, 2008, Setanta Sports announced that they will be showing live coverage of the Vodacom Challenge Cup in South Africa, featuring Manchester United. They will be showing action from The Red Devil's games against Orlando Pirates and the Kaizer Chiefs. The tournament takes place between the 19th and 26th of July.

[edit] North America

Main article: Setanta Sports North America

Setanta Sports North America, currently available in the United States,[17] and Canada is split into four parts:

  • Setanta Sports Channel for domestic and commercial satellite customers. Formerly on IPTV with now defunct service provider ITVN.
  • Setanta Premium pay-per-view for commercial venues
  • Setanta Broadband, offering live and delayed streaming video to broadband computer users. Certain content is archived, including English Premier League football (soccer) and rugby matches. However, the EPL matches are often not archived until at least several days after matches are played, due to licensing and other issues.
  • Setanta Mobile offering real time live match scores

Setanta Sports is currently available on the DISH Network (Channel 406); Star Choice (Channel 239); DIRECTV (Channel 615 with an overflow channel called Setanta Xtra on 670); Bell ExpressVu (Channel 420) and GlobeCast WorldTV (Channel 752 - Residential only).

Top football features include live English Premiership, UEFA Champions League, Euro 2008 Qualifiers, Coca-Cola Championship, Dutch & French Leagues, Scottish Premier League, German FA Cup, Asian Cup Qualifiers, Asian Champions League and MUTV and ChelseaTV.

Setanta Sports North America carries most of the world's top rugby competitions, including the 2007 Rugby World Cup, Six Nations, Tri Nations, Super 14, British & Irish Lions matches, Currie Cup, Heineken Cup, Guinness Premiership, Magners League and EDF Energy Cup, all in union, plus live broadcasts of the Australian NRL and European Super League in league. The network also carries the Australian Football League, the principal competition in Australian rules football.

[edit] Australia

[edit] Channels

Setanta broadcasts three channels into Australia:

  • Setanta Sports
  • Setanta Broadband
  • Setanta Premium (Clubs and Pubs only)

[edit] Coverage

[edit] Football

Setanta's is one of the leading broadcasters of football in Australia, currently covering a variety of competitions from Europe & South America. Setanta Sports is the only channel in Australia who will broadcast coverage of every game of the UEFA Euro 2008 Finals in June 2008. Setanta current football rights are:

[edit] Leagues

[edit] Domestic Cups

Setanta have bought the rights to the world famous English FA Cup, and will begin showing them from the 2008/09 season. In June 2008 Setanta will also begin broadcasting the Masters Cup Football

[edit] International Club Competitions

Setanta also covers the UEFA Champions League through its club tv channel contracts.

[edit] Club Channel Coverage

[edit] International Matches

Setanta have the exclusive rights to home matches played by the English National team, from August 2008 including Under 21 Internationals.

[edit] Rugby Union

Setanta is the leading broadcaster of European Rugby in Australia including the World's biggest annual rugby tournament the Six Nations Championship. Setanta's full rugby line up is

From 2008/09 season Setanta will broadcast exclusive coverage of the European Challenge Cup.

[edit] GAA

Setanta honours its Irish origins with in depth coverage of the Gaelic Athletic Association football and hurling championships. This includes the

[edit] Cricket

Setanta has signed up with Nimbus Sports to show One Day International and Test match cricket taking place in India and Bangladesh's from November 2007. Coverage started with the Pakistani tour of India in November & December 2007 and continued with South African Tour of Bangladesh in February & March 2008 and South African Tour of India in March & April 2008

Setanta expects to confirm more top level cricket coverage in the very near future.

[edit] Boxing

From 2008 to 2010 Setanta will bring Australian fans premium LIVE boxing events as part of their monthly channel subscription. Setanta has signed a deal with Frank Warren's Sports Network to show all UK based fights from that stable of boxers including Joe Calzaghe, Alex Arthur and Enzo Maccarinelli. Setanta has also signed a deal to show the fights of David Haye as he moves up to the Heavyweight category in 2008.

[edit] Darts

In May 2008 Setanta will begin coverage of the latest darts sensation the League of Legends featuring all the darting heroes of yesteryear.

[edit] Canada

On August 10, 2007, a Canadian version of Setanta Sports was launched. Currently the service is available to Shaw digital cable customers on channel 154, Rogers digital cable customers on channel 429, EastLink digital cable customers on channel 500, Bell ExpressVu on channel 420, Star Choice on channel 239 and other carriers. Setanta offered a free viewing of the station from August 10, 2007 until

[edit] References

  1. ^ BBC NEWS | Business | Setanta joins Premiership action
  2. ^ http://www.digitalspy.co.uk/broadcasting/a81234/setanta-sky-spar-over-high-def-channel.html. Digital Spy, Thursday 6 December 2007.
  3. ^ Virgin Central
  4. ^ a b c d e ITV scores in FA Cup rights fight. BBC News, 30 March 2007.
  5. ^ Setanta Snaps Up Uefa Cup Rights. Setanta Sports, 5 June 2008.
  6. ^ a b Broadcaster is seeking £200m for TV soccer. The Sunday Times, 1 July 2006.
  7. ^ English Premier League TV Broadcast Rights - 2007-2010 Football Economy.
  8. ^ Record TV deal could result in Monday night matches for SPL. The Scotsman, 28 April, 2006].
  9. ^ ITV to pay £275m for FA Cup | Media | MediaGuardian. Media Guardian, 30 March, 2007].
  10. ^ Setanta sports channel faces piracy challenge - Brand Republic News - Brand Republic
  11. ^ Murdoch's Italian pay-TV venture is on course | Media | The Guardian
  12. ^ Italy - Sky Italia service facing serious piracy threat. | Europe Intelligence Wire (March , 2004)
  13. ^ http://www.kudelski.com/pressreleases/get_pdf.php?id=1113556992_64
  14. ^ "Lynam fronts Setanta campaign", The Guardian, 2007-07-27. Retrieved on 2007-07-27. 
  15. ^ Setanta Boxing
  16. ^ Setanta boosts Cricket coverage with Asia Cup - Setanta Sports
  17. ^ Setanta Sports North America FAQs, retrieved 19 February 2007.
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