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Setanta
Sports
Setanta Sports is an international sports broadcaster,
operating 12 channels in 24 countries. The availability
of these channels varies depending on the delivery
platform and location.
History
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. Paul Deegan one of the company's brightest
executive prospects left the company by mutual
consent in March 2006. Deegan had also retired
from the European athletic circuit at the same
time. The very name 'Setanta', comes from the
name of the ancient Irish Warrior 'Setanta' from
Ulster who frequently 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 5th 2006, 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 multiplatform subscription channel.
Availability
Setanta
Sports offers commercial venues in several countries
around the world programming of sports such as
football (soccer), Gaelic football, hurling, golf,
cricket, Australian rules football, rugby union
and rugby league and boxing
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 and Racing World.
Channels
* Setanta Sports 1
* Setanta Sports 2
* Setanta Golf
* Racing UK (owned by a consortium of racecourses,
but still sold as part of the "Setanta Sports
Pack")
* Racing World (owned by a consortium of racecourses,
but still sold as part of the "Setanta Sports
Pack")
* Rangers TV
* Celtic TV
* Liverpool FC TV
* Arsenal TV
* NASN (owned by ESPN since March 2007, but still
sold as part of the "Setanta Sports Pack")
* Setanta Sports News (a joint venture between
Setanta and Virgin Media Television and produced
by ITN)
United Kingdom
Channels
In
the United Kingdom the Setanta channels are:
* Setanta Sports 1
* Setanta Sports 2
* Setanta Golf
* Setanta Ireland
* Racing UK (owned by a consortium of racecourses,
but still sold as part of the "Setanta Sports
Pack")
* Racing World (owned by a consortium of racecourses,
but still sold as part of the "Setanta Sports
Pack")
* Rangers TV
* Celtic TV
* Liverpool FC TV
* Arsenal TV
* NASN (owned by ESPN since March 2007, but still
sold as part of the "Setanta Sports Pack")
* Setanta Sports News (a joint venture between
Setanta and Virgin Media Television and produced
by ITN)
Setanta
are hoping to have a High-definition channel launched
by August 2008, in time for the new Barclays Premiership
season.
Availability
Setanta
Sports is available on cable and the following
platforms in the UK:
* Freeview Digital Terrestrial Television
* BT Vision
* BSkyB
* Virgin Media
* Broadband
* Tiscali TV
Notes
* Only one channel (Setanta Sports 1) is available
via Digital Terrestrial Television and BT Vision.
* Only seven channels are available via Virgin
Media[2]
* Only three channels (Setanta Sports 1, Setanta
Sports 2 and Setanta Golf) are available via Setanta
by Broadband. Those same three channels are available
on Tiscali TV.
* The Setanta Ireland channel is only available
via Sky Digital and NTL cable. Some programming
is restricted for rights reasons.
Selected Rights
* 60 live Scottish Premier League matches (2004-2010)
* 46 live Barclays Premier League games, plus
additional matches for Ireland viewers (2007-2010)
* Community Shield (2008-2011)
* Live FA Cup football (2008-2011), comprising
of:
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)
* Live England home friendlies & away European
Championship and World Cup qualifiers (2008-2011)[3]
* Live international away football from Scotland,
Wales, Ireland and Northern Ireland.
* England under 21 and B games (2008-2011)[3]
* Blue Square Premier and Setanta Shield matches
(English Non-League)
* German Bundesliga
* French Ligue 1
* Dutch Eredivisie
* Portuguese Liga
* PGA Tour events (with the exception of the major
championships and the World Golf Championships),
Champions Tour and Nationwide Tour events (2007-2012)[4]
* Asian Tour golf
* Celtic League rugby union
* Australian National Rugby League (NRL)
* Australian Football League (AFL)
* IAAF Golden League athletics
* Gaelic Athletic Association - O'Byrne Cup,National
Football League
* ATP Tour tennis
* BTCC touring car racing
* UFC all live events (July 2008 onwards)
* Selected top boxing matches
Known costs
* English Premier League rights - £392m
over three years.
* Scottish Premier League rights - £13.625m
per year
* PGA Tour - £103m [4]
* FA Cup - £150m [7] over four years
Criticisms
The
broadcaster's Digital Terrestrial channel has
been criticised for its poor picture quality[citation
needed]. This is mainly due to the channel being
broadcast at a lower bitrate than the majority
of UK digital terrestrial broadcasts.
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
[2] 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.
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.[9] [10] [11] [12]
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."
North America
Main article: Setanta Sports North America
Setanta
Sports North America, currently available in the
United States, and Canada is split into four parts:
* Setanta Sports Channel for domestic and commercial
satellite customers, as well IPTV 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 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); StarChoice (Channel 239); DIRECTV
(Channel 615 with an overflow channel called Setanta
Xtra on 670); Bell ExpressVu (Channel 420); GlobeCast
WorldTV (Channel 752 - Residential only) and ITVN.com.
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.
Australia
Channels
Setanta
broadcasts three channels into Australia:
* Setanta Sports
* Setanta Broadband
* Setanta Premium (Clubs and Pubs only)
Availability
Setanta
Sports is available through Foxtel for a price
of $14.95 per month per set top unit. It is broadcast
in widescreen, on channnel 525.
Setanta
Sports is now available on Austar channel 510
as part of the 'Sports Extra' tier, which is priced
at $6 more than the standard sports tier.
It
is also possible to subscribe to Setanta Sports
with your own satellite dish on the Globecast
Australia platform, for a price of $14.95 a month.
Setanta
By Broadband is available to Australian residents
for $14.99 a month. Events are shown live and
on demand, however not all coverage is available
on Setanta By Broadband.
Setanta
Premium service is only available to pubs and
clubs.
Coverage
Soccer
Setanta's
is the leading broadcaster of soccer 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 soccer rights are:
Leagues
* Scottish Premier League
* Italian Serie A (certain teams home fixtures)
* German Bundesliga
* French Ligue 1
* Dutch League
* Portuguese League
* The English Conference
* League of Ireland
Domestic Cups
* Scottish Cup
* Scottish League Cup
* French League Cup
* French Cup
* Dutch Cup
* German Cup
* German League Cup
* Setanta Sports Cup
* Setanta Shield
International Club Competitions
* UEFA Cup
* Copa Libertadores
* Copa Sudamericana
Club Channel Coverage
* Chelsea TV, MUTV, Celtic TV, Rangers TV, Barca
TV
International Matches
* South American World Cup Qualifying (All games
live)
* European World Cup Qualifying
* UEFA Euro 2008 Finals
* Brazil national football team World Tour
* Argentina national football team World Tour
* International Friendlies (From Europe)
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
* Six Nations Championship
* Guinness Premiership
* EDF Energy Cup
* Magners League
* Home games of the England national rugby union
team.
GAA
Setanta
honours its Irish origins with in depth coverage
of the Gaelic Athletic Association football and
hurling championships. This includes the
* NFL
* NHL
* Provincial championships
* All-Ireland Senior Football Championship
* All-Ireland Senior Hurling Championship
* All Ireland Club Championships traditionally
played on St Patrick's Day.
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 recent Pakistani tour
of India in November & December 2007. Upcoming
serie being broadcast by Setanta are
* South African Tour of Bangladesh in February
& March 2008
* South African Tour of India in March & April
2008
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 September 10, 2007, after which it
became a stand-alone service at $14.99 per month.
News
Press
Release
30th
November 2007
Setanta
Sports News launches today
-New
channel offers a fresh approach to sports news
broadcasting-
LONDON,
November 29th, 2007: Setanta Sports News, the
new 24-hour rolling sports news channel, launches
today and marked the occasion with a sporting
bash at Urban Golf in Soho, attended by sporting
greats such as golfing legend, Darren Clarke,
WBO Champion Enzo Maccarinelli and Setanta Sports
pundits Tim Sherwood and Les Ferdinand.
Setanta
Sports News offers free-to-air sports news broadcasting
for millions of homes across the UK with a straightforward
and fresh approach to delivering the latest breaking
sports news and exciting new programming to sports
fans. Highlights include a weekly chat show with
Kelly Dalglish, a live phone in show with footballing
legend Steve Claridge, and ‘The Goal Rush’,
which will be the only programme on a free-to-air
sports news channel to show all the goals from
the Barclays Premier League and Clydesdale Bank
Premier League.
Bright
new personalities who want to stamp their mark
on sports broadcasting will give the channel a
young and vibrant on-air feel. Ex-Real Madrid
TV presenter, Ashley House, former BBC Sport reporter,
Roann Ghosh and ex-Commonwealth Games athlete,
Lisa Knights, are just a few of the presenters
confirmed to front up the channel. The on-air
team will also be focused on generating debate
and engaging with sports fans across the nation,
including the channels latest ‘fan-correspondents’
who will represent their teams and sports across
the UK.
Leonard
Ryan, joint Chief Executive, Setanta Sports, said:
“Setanta Sports News was created to offer
a straightforward and fresh way of delivering
sports news and quality content to fans across
the UK. I am delighted that Setanta has taken
this major step forward and created this cutting
edge sports news service that can be enjoyed in
millions of homes across the UK.”
Malcolm
Wall, CEO of Content, Virgin Media, said: “Setanta
Sports News will offer a real choice for sports
fans, by providing the very best in breaking sports
news and commentary. At Virgin Media, we always
look to offer consumers the very best in entertainment
and this channel is another way of doing just
that.”
Setanta
Sports News will be available free-to-air on the
Virgin Media platform, and also on satellite,
and it will cover, in detail, all relevant sports
stories from the UK and abroad, regardless of
whether the event is broadcast on a Setanta channel.
Simon
Green, Setanta Sports News, said: “Everyone
at Setanta is very excited that Setanta Sports
News launching today. When we set out to create
this channel we placed the fans at the heart of
our programming, which is something that will
really come across on screen.”
Setanta
Sports News is jointly owned by Setanta Sports
and Virgin Media, and produced by ITN. Its EPG
number on Virgin Media is 518. The satellite EPG
number is 435.
-ends-
For further information - please contact:
Richard Tompkins or Sally Payne at Braben on 020
7566 2990 or email richardt@braben.co.uk or sally@braben.co.uk
Verity Jukes at Virgin Media on 0207 909 2120
or email Verity.Jukes@virginmedia.co.uk
Editor
information:
Setanta
Sports
Setanta
Sports is a leading international pay-TV sports
broadcaster operating nine channels in the UK,
Ireland, North America and Australia. Founded
in 1992, its premium sports content is available
to more than 50 million digital homes worldwide.
Setanta operates more sports channels than any
other broadcaster in the UK and Ireland and has
recently started broadcasting the Barclays Premier
League in the UK for the first time.
Virgin Media
Virgin
Media is an innovative and pioneering UK entertainment
and communications business. For the first time
consumers can get everything they need from one
company - the UK's only quad play of TV, broadband,
phone and mobile plus the most advanced TV on
demand service available, the UK’s first
high definition TV service and V+, our high specification
personal video recorder. We're the UK’s
most popular residential broadband provider, the
largest virtual mobile network operator and the
second largest provider of pay TV and home phone.
Virgin
Media owns two content businesses - Virgin Media
Television (VMTV) and sit-up. VMTV owns seven
entertainment channels - Virgin 1, Living, Living
2, Bravo, Bravo 2, Challenge, Trouble - and is
a 50% partner in UKTV, which consists of ten channels
including UKTV Gold and UKTV History. sit-up runs
retail TV channels bid tv, price-drop tv and speed
auctiontv.
Virgin
Media is the largest Virgin company in the world
and has almost 10 million customers. To find out
more, visit www.virginmedia.com/presscentre
Articles
Setanta
Sports News launches today - 30th November 2007
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