Rangers & Celtic hit hard by the collapse of Setanta
Published: June 25, 2009
Rangers and Celtic have been hit hard by Setanta’s collapse, with the official channels of both clubs now off the air. Celtic TV and Rangers TV, which offered full coverage of each club’s matches on a delayed basis as well as a variety of other content, were operated by Setanta. The two clubs collected a sizeable royalty fee from the Irish broadcaster in addition to their share of the deal Setanta had with the Scottish Premier League.
The two clubs do hope to strike a similar deal with whichever broadcasting partner the SPL can now attract to replace Setanta.
“This is very disappointing news for the Celtic TV service and its staff,“ said a Celtic spokesman. “The channel has steadily built up a faithful subscription base and has become more and more popular with supporters. While clearly, we cannot make any guarantees, we hope that in the future there may be further opportunities to re-instate a club channel under any new rights holder and this is something which we will be investigating.“
Sky Sports and ESPN, who hold the rights to the English Premier League, are believed to be interested. Although they certainly won’t match the contract which had been negotiated last year by Setanta to the tune of £125 million. It is rumoured that Sky will only offer 60-70% of that contract, while ESPN are willing to go up to 80% in a bid to secure the rights ahead of Sky Sports.
Source: www.sportspromedia.com
Tagged with: Celtic, Rangers, setanta, tv
Sponsored Links
14 Comments on "Rangers & Celtic hit hard by the collapse of Setanta"
Scotzine Latest
- Oscar worthy drama of Division Two
- Celtic open up Contract talks with Artur Boruc – but should they sell him instead?
- St. Johnstone chairman Geoff Brown enters into referee war of words
- Old Dog and his Pups
- Scotland’s new Transport Copper vows to wipe out Sectarianism and hooligans from the railways
Laudrup the scourge of septc on Thu, 25th Jun 2009 10:07 am
Everyone knows that septc tv is a propaganda channel spewing lies and untruths generated by liewell, lemmon, Dr Death, and their cohorts. It should be banned.
Editor on Thu, 25th Jun 2009 10:10 am
and what about Rangers TV laudrup – by your reckoning that Rangers channel must be the propaganda channel spewing lies and untruths generated by Murray, Bain and their cohorts. And it should be banned also. Whats your view on that?
Chris on Thu, 25th Jun 2009 10:27 am
rangers should be banned full-stop, dort.
Editor on Thu, 25th Jun 2009 10:42 am
Why is that Chris?
tim on Thu, 25th Jun 2009 11:30 am
[deleted]
dr death and liewell have something seedy going on, you can smell the wrongness coming from the san giro. empty this year btw.
lowest season ticket sales in last 10 years ha ha
Oirlands Shame – Smeltic FC
I do feel really sorry for the Oirish people who want nothing to do with your club.
Get your OWN identity selik.
Editor on Thu, 25th Jun 2009 12:00 pm
Tim, wheres the stats to back up your claim that Celtic have the lowest season ticket sales in the last 10 years? Also given the comments I guess you are a Rangers fan. Answer me this – how many season ticket holders do Rangers have? and what is the gap between the number of season tickets sold at Celtic and sold at Rangers?
danny murray on Thu, 25th Jun 2009 1:05 pm
dont think it will hit both clubs that hard they should be able to set up both stations again when new tv deal is underway,Celtic fans can still watch the games through channel67
Editor on Thu, 25th Jun 2009 1:17 pm
they should – but its no guaranteed Danny that both will. Rangers and Celtic can still get the games on audio/video on channel 67 – but UK subscribers can’t get the video access they can only get audio.
danny murray on Thu, 25th Jun 2009 2:45 pm
Think UK/Ireland subcribers can get video access for games that are not being shown live.Overseas Celtic fans will be able to view games live on Channel67 no problem been doing it long before setanta were on the scene & have watched games live which were not been screened by setanta no problem there, only games could not get live on channel 67 were champions league games.
Editor on Thu, 25th Jun 2009 2:59 pm
Games not shown live can be viewed by all C67 subscriber aye – but no live games – they are viewed only by overseas celtic subscribers. It is still a huge hit for both clubs Celtic/Rangers TV reached more folk in the UK than they would have with just their respective web channels.
danny murray on Thu, 25th Jun 2009 3:07 pm
I take your last point although both clubs should be able to set something up if they really want to with some outher network. 1 point if both clubs were not to keen on setanta to begin with why set up there tv stations with them surely they could have explored outher options?
Editor on Thu, 25th Jun 2009 3:12 pm
The clubs did not want to renew the contract with Setanta they wanted to switch the Sky when the current one had ended. However they were out voted. Rangers/Celtic TV I think were part of the deal with Setanta that they would provide a platform for both sides and they would receive extra money on top of the setanta money for it.
Both clubs have enough money to fund their own channels and outsource the production to another company – however its far easier and cheaper doing it through the likes of Setanta etc or was far easier/cheaper because they had all the equipment/expertise in place.
danny murray on Thu, 25th Jun 2009 3:49 pm
I agree with your last point but i am looking @ things from the point of an employee with regard to job security if both the clubs were of the opinion that setanta was a unsafe option to use i hope they had the decency to inform anybody they employed for there stations of the possible future dangers ahead?
Editor on Thu, 25th Jun 2009 4:24 pm
I don’t think either club had the opinion that setanta were unsafe – they had the opinion that they would have been better going down the route of Sky Sports – with regards to greater exposure across the world and arguably better coverage also. There was less money going with Sky, but the money men at Celtic, Rangers and Aberdeen knew it was the best deal all round – however the other nine clubs went with their wallets and went for the most money – which is not always the best course of action, which has been proven this week with the demise of Setanta.