From the Independent:
'While Manchester United and Chelsea are eyeing the top spot on the pitch, two less well-matched adversaries, the giants of BSkyB and the relative minnows Setanta, will be battling for an altogether bigger prize: domination of a pay-TV sports market in Britain potentially worth £4bn or more a year.
'Sky has bankrolled the Premier League since it started in 1992 and can claim to have been the driving force in making it the world's richest, most popular league. Top-flight football was the battering ram that opened up a nation's homes to pay-TV. Sky has grown to have 8.5m subscribers, more than 5m of them paying for sports content. The broadcaster earns more than £2.5bn from sport, mostly Premier League fans, per year. It is an eye-popping figure for a sector that was virtually non-existent 15 years ago. That is why spending £433m per year on keeping the majority of live Premier League rights was a no-brainer for Sky.
'Sky will still have more games for now, 92 per season, but for Setanta the forthcoming campaign is only the start. "This season is massively important for us," Setanta's director of sport, Trevor East, said yesterday. "The Premier League is one of the main building blocks going forward."
'Setanta also plan to go head-to-head with Sky by screening a live Saturday results show, and starting a 24-hour sports news channel. Setanta's co-chief executive, Michael O'Rourke, insisted that Setanta are "not out to get Sky" and added "we believe there's a large constituency of disenfranchised viewers who want premium live sport and have been priced out by current providers."
'In other words, there are people who cannot or do not want to pay £34 a month or more for Sky's sport, but do want pay-TV sport, now including live Premier League games, for the £9.99 Setanta charge.
'A recent deal with Virgin Media means that 1.4m subscribers to Virgin's top-tier cable package will get Setanta free. Another 1.1m subscribers have also already signed up to Setanta Sports, either via Freeview, BT Vision, broadband, Sky or existing Setanta packages. "All the signs are very positive," said East.'