Setanta board to meet again over rescue package

THE board of Setanta Sports is expected to meet again next week to consider fresh rescue packages for the ailing broadcaster, which surfaced on Tuesday night.

Going into Tuesday evening’s near three-hour emergency board meeting (which was only adjourned and not formally concluded), the company – which is thought to be losing approximately £100 million (€115m) per year and which recently lost half of its British football transmission rights to rival Sky Sports – looked headed for administration in Britain.

The possibility also exists that its Irish and international arms will be spun off and sold as standalone assets.

However, the company said that the meeting had unearthed some “live options” for the future of the overall business.

These are understood to include a number of potential rescue/takeover bids for the group from a variety of sources – including one from Setanta’s two Irish founders Leonard Ryan and Michael O’Rourke, which could be backed by another of the group’s shareholders, investment bank Goldman Sachs.

Private equity house, Doughty Hanson – the owner of TV3 and another existing significant shareholder of Setanta – has also been mentioned in dispatches as has US sports broadcaster, ESPN.

A successful bid by the Ryan/O’Rourke/Goldman Sachs consortium could cost up to £40m, if speculation is to be believed, and some reports have suggested that the camp only fell short of such a figure by between £5m and £10m at the beginning of this week.

The loss of Setanta’s British transmission rights for English Premiership football (which will take effect for the three seasons from the autumn of 2010 onwards) threw its chances of reaching the 1.9 million subscribers deemed necessary to break even off-course and prompted management to begin looking at ways of refocusing the company’s business model.

Just yesterday, BT in Britain ceased to include Setanta’s sports channels on its pay-TV service.

Setanta is still in debt to both the English and Scottish Premier Leagues for significant amounts of money (£35m in the case of the FA) owed for transmission rights.