the City-United match is still there live with Arsenal-Bolton delayed. Hopefully that gets fixed soon.
I emailed the guy who manages the sports aspect of the local Irish pub just to let him know about this. He told me he called Setanta this morning and they said that while there may be a name change, we should not be worried about a loss of Prem coverage.
Hopefully it goes from the horrible subscription price to a traditional model of subscriber based, like FSC and other FOx properties
http://www.setanta.com/us/Our-Sports/Soccer/ No EPL or UEFA Champions League listed on that page. We know the following: 1. Setanta Sports North America Limited owes FSI at least $2 million in sublicensing fee for U.S. video rights to EPL matches in January-May 2010. 2. Setanta owes FSI a sublicensing fee for "2nd pick" Round of 16 and Quarterfinal matches in the 2009-2010 UEFA Champions League. 3. Setanta Sports USA doesn't have enough residential subscribers (believed to be around 65000) to generate enough revenue to cover the sublicense fees owed to FSI. The "day of reckoning" for Setanta Sports USA the channel has arrived. == The notion that FSI may "acquire" Setanta Sports USA the channel to keep it operating at least through May 2010 makes no sense to me, especially now that FSI has appeared to have repossessed the sublicensed EPL and UEFA CL matches from Setanta presumably for nonpayment of sublicensing fees.
Like I said, I don't think the EPL or the Champions league are going to end up somewhere, it is everything else.
I know this forum is primarily for the total addicts, or followers of lesser leagues (no disrespect.) A normal person is going to be satisfied with the Prem matches available on ESPN2 and FSC, plus the Italian League. There are only so many hours in a weekend a guy can devote to soccer and stay married/a father. I don't think those Other Leagues gain FSC anything if they just plop them in the gaps in their current weekend schedule. Is the value in the bandwidth? I'm not an addict by bigsoccer standards, but by normal standards I sure as hell am. The only things I'd like to see added are Rangers matches and Aris Thessalonika. (I've got GolTV now so I can get Moenchengladbach.) I guess what I'm getting at is, from my perspective there's almost no value in the content. But you guys are more up on these things, so maybe you can point out how I'm wrong about that.
You and I finally agree something. After FSI has repossessed EPL and UEFA CL from Setanta, the remaining soccer content on Setanta Sports USA has little to no value to FSI with the probable exception of the sublicensed English FA Cup/English national team matches. Scottish, French, and Russian football are ultra-niche products that won't fit on FSC.
I could see value in a 2nd (or 3rd in DirecTV's case) channel slot on a good number of Cable MSOs and DBS providers. Rather than open new negoiations for a new slot and new bandwidth, they FSI can take the existing contracts and roll them into traditional cable TV channel. Get $0.01/sub, move it into the carriers sports pack along with the FSC channel, call it FSC+ (similar to what they do with FSN). Unless they are going to keep all the Setanta content, just use it for overflow. If they keep enough content for a 24/7 channel, charge $0.04/sub and show everything they can. If they are not going to do any of that, then I agree that buying the channel is crazy
Would the couple extra EPL games be enough to sustain a 2nd channel with Ligue 1, extra Serie A and maybe RPL as filler? You could show the early Serie A games, when FSC is usually showing EPL matches. The extra 10am EPL match, and then fill the end of the day with 2 or 3 pm Ligue 1 games. The extra Serie A and EPL matches (such as Setanta Xtra) would fill in as delayed games. Not sure that is enough, but it is fun to speculate.
Why do you say that?!?! Seems oftly short sighted to make a sweeping statement before you know any of the details of a possible purchase/merger/takeover. I see many ways this could be very positive for the US football fan.
In the fall you could fill it up with Carling Cup and FA Cup matches, maybe find other Cup matches later in the year, Coppa Italia or whatever the German one is. This is of course to find midweek programming that is cheap and available.
You said it right there "cheap..." Gotta find programming that FSI can use to draw advertisers and viewers, while still making money.
I agree with you, with the exception of FSC's CL coverage, which I think has been an improvement upon ESPN's. I am really worried about my Ligue1 coverage. I guess my watching is "ultra niche" because I love the Ligue1, SPL, Carling Cup, CCC, and RPL matches. I was laughing at the post about how you could watch all of those matches and stay married/have kids. I must have a very understanding girlfriend who has come to terms with my obsessive viewing for over 2 years now.
Goodbye crappy customer service and constant error messages on setanta-i. Setanta has not bettered the exposure of the sport over here. They got greedy and preyed on the fact that a good chunk of soccer fans will pay alot of money(even if its overpriced compared to the rest of the market) to watch the sport they love to watch. It sucks paying $15 a month to essentially follow Ligue 1 on broadband, but they had my balls because I love to watch soccer, and hopefully now I will get them back.
Charging $15 a month rather than getting income from advertising, for less content than FSC airs, which happens to cost alot less money for subscribers is greedy. Not being business savvy enough to have your business model succeed, rather than fail on two continents is stupidity.
Setanta couldn't get carriage without a monthly subscription plan. I don't think they would have broke even going with the standard model.
Why couldn't they get carriage without a monthly subscription plan?? FSC and GOLTV have lots of carriage without charging a monthly fee.
Setanta had a different business model and it failed I don't think you can call it greed. Setanta could of gone a few ways about it but they choose to try a tried a commercial free purely funded by subscribers and it failed.