Goodbye from Setanta and hello from ESPN.
- Details
- Created: Thursday, 09 July 2009 00:35
- Written by Darren Douglas
The penultimate confirmation of Setanta Sports death knell was rung on Monday June 22nd with the announcement that ESPN had bought the rights from the English Premier League for the 46 live games that Setanta originally had for next season. Today they also added the rights to show the same matches in the Republic of Ireland for 2009/10, these had also been under the prior ownership of Setanta before the Irish company went into administration on the 23rd of June.
The American company announced on Tuesday that they will be launching their own UK based sports channel on the 3rd of August. It is in this medium that they will broadcast the 46 matches that they have acquired from the Premier League, most of which will consist of the Saturday early evening kick-offs. As it stands the new channel will be available for subscription through Sky, but there are apparent negotiations ongoing in order to make it available through Virgin and BT service providers.
With his mouth now stretched beyond the bounds of human imagination, Mick McCarthy, as usual, started well in his new job.