ESPN not interested in making a bid for Setanta

TWO potential avenues towards a rescue of ailing sports broadcaster, Setanta seemed to have closed yesterday – with one of its main rumoured suitors stating it wasn’t interested.

The American sports broadcaster, ESPN – which is owned by the Disney corporation – had been talked about as a potential bidder for Setanta’s assets.

However, ESPN’s director of communications Damion Potter was quoted yesterday as saying the company is not in the running.

“We currently have no plans to buy Setanta. There are a lot of stories out there linking ESPN with a possible purchase.

“We wanted to set the record straight,” he said, before adding that talk of any possibility of the US company buying any of the transmission rights currently held by Setanta was “hypothetical”.

Elsewhere, it was reported in the British media, yesterday, that Irish billionaire entrepreneur Denis O’Brien was being targeted as a potential funding source for Setanta.

Mr O’Brien was unavailable for comment yesterday, but industry sources strongly suggested that he would not be interested in making an investment in the company.

Setanta – which recently lost effectively half of its transmission rights to English Premier League football matches to its direct rival Sky, from 2010 onwards – is thought to be losing around £100m (€115m) per year and spiralling further away from any chance of breaking even, with subscribers set to dwindle.

While it seemed that the bulk of the business was heading for administration, earlier this week, a series of emergency board meetings have unearthed what the company has referred to as “some live options.”

One of these is thought to be a rescue takeover bid fronted by the company’s Irish founders Michael O’Rourke and Leonard Ryan, with the help of current shareholder, Goldman Sachs.

It is thought a successful bid by that consortium would need to amount to £40m (€46.9m) and it has been speculated that they were within £5m (€5.8m) and £10m (€11.8m) of reaching that figure earlier this week.

The Setanta board adjourned its last board meeting on Tuesday night and is expected to re-open the meeting early next week to look at any possible rescue packages on offer.