Setanta Sports, the Irish based subscription television broadcaster who exclusively offer UFC coverage in the UK and Ireland, is considering scaling down its business to concentration on its core football coverage.

Speculation is rife that the satellite broadcaster could collapse in a situation that shows signs of mirroring the failure of ITV Digital several years ago.

And one scenario currently being looked at is cutting back on the number of channels currently offered to subscribed in a move that could potentially cause the UFC problems.

Football is by far Setanta’s biggest draw, but it is only the most costly. It is understood that Setanta has already deferred one payment of around £10million to the English Football Assocation as it seeks to renegotiate its four-year contract worth around £150m.

Other rights deals are also being looked at. As well as the FA contract, Setanta currently has big money contracts with the English Premier League and the Scottish Premier League in football, cricket’s Indian Premier League, golf’s US PGA Tour in golf, and Premier Rugby.

And while those deals may be the ones that stand out in the company accounts, the likes of the UFC and an exclusive 3-year deal with Frank Warren’s Sports Network to give a new home to boxers such as Joe Calzaghe and Enzo Maccarinelli could also be hit by the cash-strapped company.

One option is for the company as part of a cutback would be to focus on a smaller number of channels. Currently, Setanta offers customers up to twelve subscription channels. Restructuring and cost-cutting could reduce that number down to as few as two channels, with the focus being on offering as much top quality football as possible.

Obviously if that is the route Setanta choose to go down, other sports will likely be affected to some degree and in some cases, dropped completely.

Setanta is likely to present several scenarios, with a restructuring of its payment schedules and a reduction of its expenditure being just two.

Its also possible that should the broadcaster be unable to reach agreements that it could threaten to cancel its agreements and hand back television rights.

Setanta Sports and the UFC signed a two-year agreement at the start of 2008 which saw Setanta Sports 1 become the exclusive home for all UFC programming. It was a major deal which came off the back of the UFC’s success in the UK in 2007 and saw UFC PPVs available live to fans in the UK and Ireland for the first time after previously being available on a tape delay basis via Bravo (who currently air TNA Impact and TNA PPVs on a delayed basis).

Obviously to UFC fans this side of the pond, UFC PPVs being available live and for free (providing you have a Setanta Sports subscription) for the first time was a major reason to subscribe to Setanta, especially given that the cost of a monthly subscription to the entire Setanta Sports package is around half the amount you’d pay to watch a UFC PPV in the U.S.

Setanta have thus far refused to comment on reports regarding contractual negotiations and there’s nothing to suggest that UFC programming is at immediate risk.

But with Setanta considering their options, it raises questions over the UFC’s future in the UK.

Should Setanta see out the existing deal, as things stand there’s at least a decent chance of them choosing to not renew. That brings up the question of who would be interested in giving UFC similar levels of coverage to that of the UFC over the past 15 months or so.

Bravo would almost certainly be interested in having UFC back on their channels, but there’s no chance that British and Irish UFC fans would get the same amount of programming each week, and its unlikely that Bravo would be willing to air every (or even any) PPV live.

Sky Sports would no doubt be mentioned by many – especially if there was an option to show UFC PPVs in HD – but Sky never showed a huge interest in pushing Cage Rage as a major deal. Plus there’s also the WWE contract to consider as that is up at the end of this year.

The likes of ESPN and Eurosport could be contenders, while there would possibly be interest from Five, the UK’s fifth national terrestrial channel. Late-night sports programming has been a feature of the channel since its original launch in 1997, with U.S sports shown live or on a short delay. Five launched Five USA in 2006 which although has not had a focus on sports content does give the network another option should they be interested in UFC (and obviously should the deal with Setanta either break down or expire).

Five have never shown MMA but did show WCW Worldwide from 1999-2001.

Phil Lowe
phil@ifight365.com