No England terrestrial coverage tonight as Setanta holds out

by Nikki Sandison, Brand Republic 10-Sep-08, 12:00

LONDON - There will be no terrestrial coverage of England's grudge match against Croatia tonight due to the continuing impasse between rights holder Setanta and the BBC and ITV over the value of the highlights.

st1\:*{behavior:url(#ieooui) }

England will be hoping to avenge home and away defeats by Croatia in the qualifying campaign for Euro 2008. The defeats ended England's hopes of qualifying for the tournament.

Setanta, which paid £5m for the exclusive rights to cover the match, is understood to have asked terrestrial channels to pay £1m for the rights to show highlights.

It is thought that the best offer for the highlights was £250,000 from ITV, while the BBC is understood to have offered £200,000.

A spokesperson for Setanta said that to date it hasn't received a proposal that makes commercial sense.

However, fans will be able to listen to the match on Radio 5 Live from 8pm tonight.

Setanta's coverage of England's 2-0 victory over Andorra on Saturday evening was watched by less than 1m people in the UK, one of the lowest audiences for a competitive England match.

Last year, Setanta won the live rights to around 90 qualifying matches ahead of the 2010 World Cup in South Africa. They include most of the away games for England, Scotland, Wales, Northern Ireland and the Republic of Ireland.

ITV holds the rights to show England's home international matches and a number of friendlies, including England's away match against Germany in November.

Comments

Gordon Macmillan - 10/09/2008

Blessing in disguise.

Kelly Farrell - 10/09/2008

So the BBC are happy to bid to take programmes from ITV \(e.g. Harry Hill, Grand Prix), which will not help viewers in any way, as we can all watch whether they are on BBC or ITV, so really there is no point, but will not put up the money for England Football games, ensuring that only those who can either afford/want to subscribe to Setanta or who can go down the pub can watch our National side. That makes sense! I'm sure Setanta is probably being incredibly greedy too really should never have got the rights for the National games anyway. What a mess. P.S maybe the BBC could have afforded to bid for Setanta if they hadnt spend so much on business class flights last year!!