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Setanta Sports
From Wikipedia, the free encyclopedia
| Setanta Sports | |
|---|---|
 |
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| 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 (pronounced [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.
Contents |
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 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 texts of the 'Annals of Ulster'.
On May 5th 2006 [5], 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.
Setanta Sports offers commercial venues in several countries around the world programming of sports such as football (soccer), Gaelic football, hurling, golf, cricket, Australian rules football, rugby union and rugby league and boxing
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, Liverpool FC TV, 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.
In the United Kingdom, the Setanta channels are:
- Setanta Sports 1
- Setanta Sports 2
- Setanta Golf
- Racing UK
- Racing World
- Rangers TV
- Celtic TV
- Liverpool FC TV
- Arsenal TV - Scheduled to launch on January 14th 2008
- NASN (owned by ESPN since March 2007, but still sold as part of the "Setanta Sports Pack")
- Setanta Sports News (a joint venture between Setanta and Virgin Media Television and produced by ITN)
Setanta are hoping to have a High-definition channel launched by August 2008, in time for the new Barclays Premiership season.[6]
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
- 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.
- 60 live Scottish Premier League matches (2004-2010)
- 46 live Barclays Premier League games (2007-2010)
- Community Shield (2008-2011)
- Live FA Cup football (2008-2011), comprising[3] of:
- Three games and one replay per round in rounds 3-5
- Two Quarter-finals and one Quarter-final replay (if any are required)
- One semi-final
- The Final (shared with ITV)
- Live England home friendlies & away european championship and world cup qualifiers (2008-2011)[3]
- England under 21 and B games (2008-2011)[3]
- Blue Square Premier and Setanta Shield matches (English Non-League)
- German Bundesliga
- French Ligue 1
- Dutch Eredivisie
- Portuguese Liga
- PGA Tour events (with the exception of the major championships and the World Golf Championships), Champions Tour and Nationwide Tour events (2007-2012)[4]
- Asian Tour golf
- Celtic League rugby union
- French Top 14 rugby union (rights shared with Eurosport)
- Australian National Rugby League (NRL)
- Australian Football League (AFL)
- IAAF Golden League athletics
- Gaelic Athletic Association
- ATP Tour tennis
- BTCC touring car racing
- Selected top boxing matches
- English Premier League rights - £392m over three years.[5]
- Scottish Premier League rights - £13.625m per year [6]
- PGA Tour - £103m [4]
- FA Cup - £150m [7] over four years[3]
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[8].
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 [7] 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.[9] [10] [11] [12]
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."[13]
Setanta Sports North America, currently available in the United States,[14] 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 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.
Setanta broadcasts three channels into Australia:
- Setanta Sports
- Setanta Broadband
- Setanta Premium (Clubs and Pubs only)
Setanta Sports is available through Foxtel for a price of $14.95 per month per set top unit. It is broadcast in widescreen, on channnel 525.
Setanta Sports is now available on Austar channel 510 as part of the 'Sports Extra' tier, which is priced at $6 more than the standard sports tier.
It is also possible to subscribe to Setanta Sports with your own satellite dish on the Globecast Australia platform, for a price of $14.95 a month.
Setanta By Broadband is available to Australian residents for $14.99 a month. Events are shown live and on demand, however not all coverage is available on Setanta By Broadband.
Setanta Premium service is only available to pubs and clubs.
Setanta's is the leading broadcaster of football in Australia currently covering a variety of competitions form Europe & South America. Setanta Sports is the only channel in Australia who will broadcast coverage of every game of the UEFA Euro 2008 Finals in June 2008. Setanta Covers:
- Scottish Premier League
- Italian Serie A (certain teams home fixtures)
- German Bundesliga
- French Ligue 1
- Dutch League
- Portuguese League
- The English Conference
- League of Ireland
- Scottish Cup
- Scottish League Cup
- French League Cup
- French Cup
- Dutch Cup
- German Cup
- German League Cup
- Setanta Sports Cup
- Setanta Shield
- South American World Cup Qualifying (All games live)
- European World Cup Qualifying
- UEFA Euro 2008 Finals
- Brazil national football team World Tour
- Argentina national football team World Tour
- International Friendlies (From Europe)
Setanta is the leading broadcaster of European Rugby in Australia including the World's biggest annual rugby tournament the Six Nations Championship. Setanta's full rugby line up is
- Six Nations Championship
- Guinness Premiership
- EDF Energy Cup
- Magners League
- Home games of the England national rugby union team.
Setanta honours its Irish origins with in depth coverage of the Gaelic Athletic Association football and hurling championships. This includes the
- NFL
- NHL
- Provincial championships
- All-Ireland Senior Football Championship
- All-Ireland Senior Hurling Championship
- All Ireland Club Championships traditionally played on St Patrick's Day.
Setanta has signed up with Nimbus Sports to show One Day International and Test match cricket taking place in India and Bangladesh's from November 2007. Coverage started with the recent Pakistani tour of India in November & December 2007. Upcoming serie being broadcast by Setanta are
- South African Tour of Bangladesh in February 2008
- 2007-08 Triangular Series in Bangladesh (Bangladesh vs India vs South Africa).
- Indian Tour of Bangladesh in March 2008
- South African Tour of India in March & April 2008
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, Star Choice on channel 239 and other carriers. 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.
- ^ Virgin adds free Setanta to top TV pack. Digital Spy, Friday 20 July 2007.
- ^ Virgin Central
- ^ a b c d ITV scores in FA Cup rights fight. BBC News, 30 March 2007.
- ^ a b Broadcaster is seeking £200m for TV soccer. The Sunday Times, 1 July 2006.
- ^ English Premier League TV Broadcast Rights - 2007-2010 Football Economy.
- ^ Record TV deal could result in Monday night matches for SPL. The Scotsman, 28 April, 2006].
- ^ ITV to pay £275m for FA Cup | Media | MediaGuardian. Media Guardian, 30 March, 2007].
- ^ SimonBlackham DTT page SimonBlackham DTT page.
- ^ [1]
- ^ [2]
- ^ [3]
- ^ [4]
- ^ "Lynam fronts Setanta campaign", The Guardian, 2007-07-27. Retrieved on 2007-07-27.
- ^ Setanta Sports North America FAQs, retrieved 19 February 2007.
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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 |
- New channel goes big on Premier League
- Setanta Sports
- Official Setanta Sports Soccer Shop
- Official Setanta Sports Rugby Shop
- Setanta Sports News Information
- Setanta Sports Desktop
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| Setanta Sports 1 · Setanta Sports 2 · Setanta Golf · Racing UK · Racing World · Rangers TV · Celtic TV · LFC TV · Arsenal TV · NASN · Setanta Sports News · Setanta Sports North America · Setanta Sports Canada |