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SPORTS BROADCASTER SETANTA Sports Ireland is being sold to Eir, it’s been announced this morning.
The telecoms company, which rebranded from Eircom earlier this year, said the deal was being made for an undisclosed sum.
The transaction includes BT Sport’s Irish rights for sporting events.
“The transaction allows eir to significantly expand its TV offering and further enhance the range of propositions on offer to customers,” a statement said.
Setanta Sports Ireland offers Live Barclays Premier League Games, UEFA Champions League games, FA Cup and European Rugby Champions Cup games among its content.
“This is an extremely exciting and very important first step for us in television content ownership,” Eir CEO Ricard Moat said.
We will now offer our customers the widest range and highest calibre of sports content in Ireland. Buying Setanta Sports Ireland is a game changer for Eir and is our largest acquisition since we purchased Meteor in 2005.”
Michael O’Rourke, CEO of the broadcaster, said it was “a significant milestone for Setanta Sports Ireland”.
I’m delighted for the team at Setanta and the investors who have shown so much commitment over the years. I have no doubt the business will grow even further in the future.”
The deal still needs the approval of the Competition and Consumer Protection Commission and sign-off by of the Minister for Communications. Both are expected in the coming weeks.
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Subscription or is it free to Eir?
I still can’t get over their ridiculous rebranding.. Some ‘brightspark’ was paid millions for something their four year old probably came up with..
I still don’t understand how eircom are doing quite so badly, they are in such a strong position relative to their competitors in terms of access to houses that I just don’t get it, most of the other broadband companies have to piggy back on their lines even to access properties
BILLS RISE! on EIR!!
How can Eir buy anything? Thought they were in debt of €3billion or something.
Huge investment recently!.. Hope they do well from this!.. Nice to have some competition.
Eir don’t have any money to buy it… Why is this being allowed to continue?
Never made a profit in the last 15 years. Losses from 80 million to 300million plus
Allowed to buy meteor for 400million in 2005 despite being 2 billion in debt
Launched emobile in 2013 spending another 100million plus on marketing/stores and branding, spectacular market failure.
16 million euro rebrand for Eir… wasted
eVison and setanta (I’m assuming) as part of another 1.5billion strategic investment plant turn the company around.
3 massive debt re-structing and write down, a failed attempt to issue shares to raise capital.
God knows what their pension liabilities are.
This is just going to go bust spectacularly, and they’ll be hands out looking for a bail out. THIS COMPANY IS A ZOMBIE, Money pit…
Why do you care?
I forgot the best one, corporate debt being issued out of a holding company in Luxembourg, transferring liabilities and debt to a new corporate structure with a holding company in Jersey and Operating company in Ireland.
To ‘better issue dividends to shareholders’ Just what a company that hasn’t made a profit in 15 years is doing issuing dividends and payouts to shareholders for?!?!
This has Enron or Worldcom type scenario written all over it.
Hope they don’t make a balls of it
What does this mean for existing setanta/bt sports customers? Hopefully no price increase anyway.
Hopefully they don’t make a balls of it. Not subscribed to Sky Sports so I can’t really compare the two but I’ve found BT/Setanta pretty great since I’ve got it, early kick off on Saturdays with a 3pm game as well. All the European football, and all the UFC as well. Not a bad lineup!
3pm kick offs on a Saturday are gone to Sky for next season
I’ve both. BT coverage & content is miles ahead of Sly.
I hope you’re not including Michael Owen in that statement, Joe?
Early sat kick offs gone to sky next season aswell
Thank god for match of the day on BBC. No premiership on RTE now same I’d imagine for setanta Saturday evening either. Saturation coverage of GAA however on RTE / TG4.
I hope Eir will continue to highlight motor sport on Setanta, They are the only channel along with TG4 to do this as far as RTE think everyone should follow GAA and nothing else. And may I add the licence fee should be scrapped as the Gaa have taken over the sports department of RTE. Let them fund the supposed public channel that is meant to cater for all sport.
Rte don’t have the money anymore, the a already planning to sub licence sporting events next year like euro 2016 to tv3 to lighten the load
Lets see anyone know how much it would cost to read out motor sport results Rte don’t go this far yet they can do endless vids of football players and Gaa talking nothing more than BS . This is not fair to the fans of other sports.
Oh God no. An awful sports channel sold to an awful telecoms company.
How can Eir be an awful telecoms company, they’ve only been in distance for a few months now, not enough time to mess anything up yet, sniff
*existence :)
It’s just eircom rebranded,so I’m sure it still has the same old issues
As Seamus said. Same Eircom just with a slap of paint. Same awful customer service reps. Same awful engineers. More so horrible to deal with the awful at their job.
In fact I think they spent a lot of money to let us know that they are not a new company
Eircom or eir .. Whatever.. are a disaster of a company where is the advertising or buying anything money coming from,, their services are awful
Anyone got the eir TV package, any good?
I have the Eir system..same as Sky as regards picture quality etc but a lot less channels.
Just after they jacked the price up. Sky have a few 3pm Saturday games from next season
So do we need evision to subscribe to bt now???
Think you’ve hit the eventual nail on the head there Paul
Well to have e vision you need fibre broadband which I don’t have… But I’ve BT now
Corrupt— big Brown Envelopes. I bet at least 10 top guys will clean up overnight and Eircwill keep losing money. It’s the Irish way.
Tragic. Seriously worried now about my beloved Setanta and BT Sports. If this shower can eff it up, they will.
To Eir is human.
Muppets!
Eir realise like sky did 20 + years ago that sport is vital if u wish to attract customers.
By setanta sports Eir have access champions league football for the next 3 years and to Champions Cup rugby.
In future Eir may seek challenge sky for GAA championship games as well. Setanta already coverage national league games.
I don’t subscribe to EIR TV but i suspect Setanta won’t be part of the basic package it will be extra. Just like sky sports is to sky subscribers
eir, Vodafone, Virgin, Sky. Millions of customers andbut just go ahead and pontificate based on your one-off interaction and the problem the brother in law had with his modem.
have your say