English and Scottish football clubs are set to miss out on millions of pounds in income due to the failings of digital broadcaster, Setanta. Setanta have lost all television rights to show top-flight matches in England and Scotland next season as the ailing company could not find a buyer to come in with a last minute rescue attempt.

Setanta were set a deadline on which they had to pay the Premier League £10 million. The failure of the company to do so means that the Premier League and other governing bodies have been forced to cancel contracts, which has put Setanta on the brink of completely collapsing.

It is currently unknown who is likely to receive the contracts that Setanta held, which include the rights to show 46 Premier League games next season as well as some FA Cup matches, SPL matches and England home friendlies. The games will most likely go to the highest bidder, which could mean that Sky Sports end up with all rights to show live football next season.

This is something that rival broadcasters had not wanted as they feared it would encourage even more monopolisation on the part of Bskyb and would take a lot of games away from an audience that could not access them. However, there may be a chance for an English domestic channel to get in on the act. ITV or the BBC could prepare a package to try and buy some rights but the financial leverage that they have probably won’t be any where near the power that Sky can hold.




FA Chief Executive, Ian Whatmore, said: “We are very disappointed with the news. We await developments, but remain confident of the attractiveness of our broadcast rights going forward.”

However the problem is that there is currently a limit on the number of extra games that Sky is allowed to show and given the financial inadequcies of some domestic channels, it could mean that an alien foreign broadcaster picks up the rights. This will cause outrage in the same way that Setanta did because a lot of fans cannot understand how a channel that hardly anyone subscribes to can be allowed to show such important and mainstream sport.

Television income is one of the main inflows of money for a lot of football clubs. They base a lot of their players’ contracts around this money as well as taking gambles in the transfer market based on the money that they are likely to receive. It is doubtful that the collpase of Setanta will have a monumental effect on clubs but it will mean that the transfer market remains a little quieter than it normally would do at this time of year.

Furthermore, given the money that some top clubs are spending at the moment it means a double blow in the respect that clubs relying on TV cash will now be even further behind these financial giants and the ground will only be covered after the horse has well and truly bolted.