Apparently they are going to try to cut £25 million off their sponsorship deal with the SPL. It would be much better if they could cancel it altogether, that would be them half way there. It will be really bad for boxing if Setanta go under. Go back to the 3 or 4 years before Setanta took on boxing and coverage was really poor. Setanta have covered some great fights since they got started. Ps. this may explain the lack of coverage for the Froch v Taylor fight!
To be honest, I got Setanta because of my interest in Scottish Football. I had always been a casual boxing fan but the emergence of Setanta as the "home of boxing" has piqued my interest in the sport to a new level. I will never be as knowledgable as most folk on here about the sport but I have setanta to thank for providing fights (and fighters) I would never previously have considered watching. I am not coming on here to trash "your" sport, so please take this point in the spirit in which it is intended. Putting on fights at the level of JMM Vs Diaz to the UK and Irish market probably does not garner Setanta as many subscribers as Celtic Vs Hamilton Academicals does. If there are others like me who have found themselves becoming boxing fans as a result of having an interest in another sport, then retaining that support if Setanta sever ties with (in my case) Scottish football might find them being further behind in their sums rather than half way there.
If Setanta are so strapped for cash, why have they just splashed out on a fancy new broadband service website? I wouldn't mind, but they seem to have deleted all the archived stuff. I had been looking forward to catching up with UFC 95 and 96, but it's all gone. Worst of all, they never even told us we would be losing all the archived stuff. **** poor, Setanta.
this from the independent today "Setanta, the troubled sports broadcasting group, is understood to be nearing a £100m deal with Doughty Hanson, the private equity group that holds a 20 per cent stake in the business. The Dublin-based broadcaster and Close Brothers, its adviser, have been in talks with shareholders to raise cash after the loss of a lucrative Premier League football package. In a competitive process, it won only one of the six broadcasting packages that the Premier League was offering beyond 2010, having previously held two. A source close to the negotiations said: Hopefully, the business will get funded within four-to-six weeks and Doughty Hanson is probably the favourite to provide the money. Most likely, funding will come from an existing investor. Doughty Hanson and Goldman Sachs, which holds a 5 per cent stake, now value their shareholdings at zero. The former paid £108m for its stake in 2006, valuing Setanta at around £540m. The source added that a new funding arrangement is likely to result in the business adding a chairman to its board. At present, no one holds this post, but the source said that there is a recognition in the company that having a chairman would be a good idea. This follows a recent board shake-up that saw the corporate development director, Richard Brooke, leave after four years at Setanta."
I'm not so sure, I'm not being a tight-arse but I only get the boxing and UFC out of Setanta. Some months there none of either and I'm paying 13 quid to watch Bunce and Kerr for an hour a week.
in ireland since january they upped the price from 19.99 to 21.99 euro per month did this not happen in england??
there was a rumour that ESPN were looking to pick setanta up pretty cheap after they lost one of their 2 premiership matches and that Sky would rather give setanta back the football package than let that happen as setanta would have serious power backing it. i say push that deal through, we would see way more fights with espn behind them