Setanta Sports
| Setanta Sports | |
|---|---|
 |
|
| Launched | 1990 |
| Owned by |  Setanta Sports Group |
| Website | www.setanta.com |
| Availability | |
| Terrestrial | |
| Freeview Channel 34 | |
| Satellite | |
| Sky Digital | Channel 429 |
| Dish Network | Channel 406 |
| DirecTV | Channel 615 |
| StarChoice | Channel 239 |
| Bell ExpressVu | Channel 420 |
| Foxtel | Channel 525 |
| Austar | Channel 510 |
| Cable | |
| UPC Ireland | Channel 105/401 |
| NTL | Channel 555 |
| Virgin Media | Channel 538 (Setanta 1) Channel 539 (Setanta 2) |
| Foxtel | Channel 525 |
Setanta Sports (pronunciation: [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.
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. The very name 'Setanta', comes from the name of the ancient Irish Gaelic 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/Gaelic texts of the 'Annals of Ulster'.
On May 5th 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 multiplatform subscription channel.
Availability
Setanta Sports offers commercial venues in several countries around the world programming of sports such as football, Gaelic football, Hurling, golf, cricket, Australian Rules Football, rugby union and rugby league.
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, Setanta Sports 1 & 2, Celtic TV, Rangers TV, NASN, Racing UK and Racing World.
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.
United Kingdom
Channels
In the United Kingdom, the Setanta channels are:
- Setanta Sports 1
- Setanta Sports 2
- Setanta Ireland (although some events shown on this channel, for which Setanta only has the Irish rights - for example, The Open golf, Formula One motor racing, the UEFA Champions League and Saturday afternoon Premier League matches
- Setanta Golf
- Racing UK
- Racing World
- NASN (now owned by ESPN)
- Rangers TV
- Celtic TV
- Liverpool FC TV
- Arsenal TV - Launching In December 2007
- Setanta Sports News - TBC
Availability
Setanta Sports is available on the following platforms in the UK:
- Digital Terrestrial Television (Requires a DTT (Freeview) box with a CAM or card slot)
- BT Vision
- BSkyB (9.99 a month)
- Virgin Media (free with the 'XL' TV package [1])
- Broadband (Available via a stream across the internet)
- 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.
Selected Rights
- 46 live Barclays Premier League games (2007-2010)
- 60 live Scottish Premier League matches (2004-2010)
- Community Shield (2008-2011)
- Live FA Cup football (2008-2011)
Their coverage of the FA Cup will comprise:
Three games and one replay per round in the 3rd, 4th and 5th rounds of the FA Cup; Two Quarter-finals and one Quarter-final replay (if any are required); One semi-final; and the Final (shared with ITV). The remainder of the contract covers:
Three home England international friendlies in years 1 and 2 (and 2 in years 3 and 4) of the contract; the Community Shield; all England U21/B games.
- Live Uefa Cup. (ITV have exclusive rights from quater final)
- Live England home friendlies (2008-2011)
- England under 21 and B games (2008-2011)
- Blue Square Premier and Setanta Shield matches (English Non-League)
- PGA Tour events (with the exception of the major championships and the World Golf Championships), Champions Tour and Nationwide Tour events (2007-2012)[3]
- The German Bundesliga
- Live Asian Tour Golf
- The French Ligue 1
- The Dutch Eredivisie
- Portuguese Liga
- Magners League rugby football competition
- The Australian National Rugby League (NRL) football competition
- The Australian Football League (AFL) football competition
- Live major PPV championship Boxing events
- Live Ultimate Fighting Championship events held in the UK
- Selected live greyhound racing
- IAAF golden league athletics
- Gaelic athletic association
Known Costs
- English Premier League rights - £392m over three years.[4]
- Scottish Premier League rights - £13.625m per year [5]
- PGA Tour - £103m [3]
- FA Cup - £425m (shared with ITV) [6]
Online presence
Setantasports.com [2] is Setanta's sports news website
Setanta.com [3] is their company home page
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[7].
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 [4] 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.[8] [9] [10] [11]
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 motto used in this advert is "Setanta Sports - £9.99 a month, no annual contract."[12]
North America
Setanta Sports North America, currently available in the United States,[13] 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
- 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 upcoming 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, European Super League and Australian AFL.
Australia
Channels
Setanta broadcasts three channels into Australia:
- Setanta Sports
- Setanta Broadband
- Setanta Premium (Clubs and Pubs only)
Coverage
Football
Setanta's main focus is football, with coverage from around Europe and South America. Setanta Covers:
- The Scottish Premier League
- The Scottish Cup
- German Bundesliga
- French Ligue 1
- Dutch Eredivisie
- Portuguese Liga
- Italian Serie A (Shared with RAI International)
- The Eircom League
- The Setanta Cup
- Blue Square Premier League
- Euro 2008 Qualifiers (Some only on Setanta Premium)
- Various International Friendlies (Some only on Setanta Premium)
- 2010 World Cup Qualifiers from South America
- Copa Libertadores
- Copa Sudamericana
- Delayed Coverage from club channels: MUTV, Chelsea TV, Rangers TV, Celtic TV and Barca TV
Other
Setanta honours its Irish origins with in depth coverage of the Gaelic Athletic Association football and hurling championships.
Setanta also has large rugby union coverage (Guinness Premiership, EDF Energy Cup, Magners League and the Six Nations Championship).
Setanta has signed up with Nimbus Sports to show One Day International and Test match cricket for India and Bangladesh's home games all up in the deal they will show 13 test matches and 19 ODI's which will run from November 2007 - 2009 It will start off with a series involving Pakistan traveling to India [14]
Availability
Setanta Sports is available on Foxtel Satellite for a price of $15.95 per month per stb. It is broadcast in widescreen, on channnel 525.
Setanta Sports will be avalible on Austar from November 1, 2007 for the price of $6.95 a month. The subscriber will need to have the Sports package to be able to subscribe to the channel.
It is also possible to subscribe to Setanta Sports with your own satellite dish, for a price of $29.95 a month - although this option will likely grow less popular now the channel has launched on the Foxtel platform.
Setanta Broadband is available to Australian residents for $14.99 a month. Events are shown live and on demmand, however not all coverage is avaiable on Setanta Broadband.
Setanta Premium is only avaialbe to pubs and clubs.
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, and Star Choice on channel 239. 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.
References
- BBC Business "[http://news.bbc.co.uk/1/hi/business/4975632.stm
Setanta joins Premiership action]", BBC Business, 2006-05-05. Retrieved on October_17, 2007.
| Irish television channels |
|---|
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Music: Bubble Hits |
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Sport: Setanta Ireland |
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Local: DTV · P5TV · Cabletext Waterford |
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Future Channels: RTÉ International · DCTV · Cork Community Television Northern Ireland: |
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General Entertainment: BBC One Northern Ireland · BBC Two Northern Ireland · UTV |
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Local: C9TV · NvTv |
External links
- New channel goes big on Premier League
- Setanta Sports
- Official Setanta Sports Soccer Shop
- Official Setanta Sports Rugby Shop
- Setanta Sports News Information
This entry is from Wikipedia, the leading user-contributed encyclopedia. It may not have been reviewed by professional editors (see full disclaimer)
