February 17, 2011
By Staff Reporter
This followed news in Irish media outlets that the Disney-owned sports channel ESPN had secured the two Premier League football packages that the Irish-owned company had held.
Setanta’s financial troubles cast some doubt over the broadcast of GAA games to fans in the United States as the company has long held the international rights for the football and hurling championship schedule.
“We’re still in the dark until we know what the new Setanta model is going to be,” the GAA’s commercial and marketing manager Dermot Power told the Irish Times before the latest announcement.
“We’ve been in contact with them all the time. At stake are our international rights and domestic league rights. We do want to get the games to our people all over the world and as originally, pubs and clubs are still the major distribution channels for us overseas.”
Yesterday’s statement, however, said that only half of the 420 workers in Setanta’s British operation, which has a slightly different ownership structure, would lose their jobs, while most of the 200 jobs in the Irish-based operation were safe for now.
The Irish-based wing of the company was marginally profitable last year.
Setanta, which was founded by Michael O’Rourke and Leonard Ryan in 1992, could not come up late last week with the