The Latest on Live Football
We previously reported that Sky had won four of the six available live football packages; they also won one of the remaining two, leaving Setanta with only a sixth of what’s available – half their current amount.
This leaves the Irish network in serious trouble; it will be difficult for them to justify a static subscription rate with only half the live action. Why they didn’t realise this at the time, God only knows; but they are now trying to sub-license one of the packages from Sky.
Which means Sky make a tidy margin on 1/5th of the Premiership without even showing it.
Strangely, ESPN didn’t get heavily involved in the bidding as many (including us) thought they would; yet Setanta still managed to miss out.
We bemoaned the lack of financial clout amongst the terrestrial channels, precluding the provision of live Premiership football through free-to-air; but after ITV’s shambolic coverage of the Merseyside FA Cup derby replay, when they cut to a tic-tacs advert during the solitary 119th minute goal, plus the BBC’s inability to synch the audio with the video during last night’s Milan derby, perhaps it’s best for all involved if we just leave it all to Sky.
