Serie A, and some B rate World Cup qualifiers including such powerhouses as Moldova and Ukraine!
That's about it. I'm contemplating cancelling it, saves me $2.50 a month.

The occasional Canada game (who has the Canada-Brazil game on Saturday BTW?)

SETANTA SPORTS ANNOUNCE NEW EXCLUSIVE FA CUP RIGHTS DEAL FOR CANADA

WITH ENGLAND’S FOOTBALL ASSOCIATION

Broadcast Rights Include Coverage of The FA Cup, The FA Community Shield and England’s Senior and Under-21 National Teams from 2008/09 Through 20011/12

TORONTO (May 29, 2008) – A new exclusive broadcast deal with England’s Football Association includes broadcast rights for The FA Cup which begins in August.

Under the new agreement, which runs from the 2008/09 through 2011/12 seasons, Setanta Sports will have exclusive broadcast rights to broadcast all matches from The FA Cup, the world’s oldest knockout club competition. Setanta will also broadcast the famous FA Cup Final played each year in May at Wembley Stadium.

“The deal with The FA solidifies Setanta as the number one daily destination for soccer fans in Canada,” commented Roger Hall, Managing Director, Setanta Sports International. “As a domestic rights partner of the FA back in the UK we will be producing our own coverage of live games to beam into homes in Canada.”

The new deal for the Canadian market starts in August this year with the traditional English season curtain-raiser, The FA Community Shield, the annual match between the FA Cup holders (this season Portsmouth) and The Barclays Premier League title holders (Manchester United). In addition, the agreement includes a selection of live and exclusive home matches involving the England team as they seek qualification to the 2010 FIFA World Cup under coach Fabio Capello.

In addition to live matches, Setanta will have rights in Canada to ancillary FA programming, including preview and review shows, archive matches and magazine programmes.

SETANTA SPORTS ANNOUNCE NEW EXCLUSIVE FA CUP RIGHTS DEAL FOR CANADA

WITH ENGLAND’S FOOTBALL ASSOCIATION

Broadcast Rights Include Coverage of The FA Cup, The FA Community Shield and England’s Senior and Under-21 National Teams from 2008/09 Through 20011/12

TORONTO (May 29, 2008) – A new exclusive broadcast deal with England’s Football Association includes broadcast rights for The FA Cup which begins in August.

Under the new agreement, which runs from the 2008/09 through 2011/12 seasons, Setanta Sports will have exclusive broadcast rights to broadcast all matches from The FA Cup, the world’s oldest knockout club competition. Setanta will also broadcast the famous FA Cup Final played each year in May at Wembley Stadium.

“The deal with The FA solidifies Setanta as the number one daily destination for soccer fans in Canada,” commented Roger Hall, Managing Director, Setanta Sports International. “As a domestic rights partner of the FA back in the UK we will be producing our own coverage of live games to beam into homes in Canada.”

The new deal for the Canadian market starts in August this year with the traditional English season curtain-raiser, The FA Community Shield, the annual match between the FA Cup holders (this season Portsmouth) and The Barclays Premier League title holders (Manchester United). In addition, the agreement includes a selection of live and exclusive home matches involving the England team as they seek qualification to the 2010 FIFA World Cup under coach Fabio Capello.

In addition to live matches, Setanta will have rights in Canada to ancillary FA programming, including preview and review shows, archive matches and magazine programmes.

Read the last paragraph carefully. It states "ancillary FA programming". That appears to be something quite different from "ancilliary Premier League programming". Let's hope they get the rights to that as well and save us from that interminable musical interlude.

High definition Setanta! Please.

SETANTA SPORTS ANNOUNCE NEW EXCLUSIVE FA CUP RIGHTS DEAL FOR CANADA

WITH ENGLAND’S FOOTBALL ASSOCIATION

Broadcast Rights Include Coverage of The FA Cup, The FA Community Shield and England’s Senior and Under-21 National Teams from 2008/09 Through 20011/12

TORONTO (May 29, 2008) – A new exclusive broadcast deal with England’s Football Association includes broadcast rights for The FA Cup which begins in August.

Under the new agreement, which runs from the 2008/09 through 2011/12 seasons, Setanta Sports will have exclusive broadcast rights to broadcast all matches from The FA Cup, the world’s oldest knockout club competition. Setanta will also broadcast the famous FA Cup Final played each year in May at Wembley Stadium.

“The deal with The FA solidifies Setanta as the number one daily destination for soccer fans in Canada,” commented Roger Hall, Managing Director, Setanta Sports International. “As a domestic rights partner of the FA back in the UK we will be producing our own coverage of live games to beam into homes in Canada.”

The new deal for the Canadian market starts in August this year with the traditional English season curtain-raiser, The FA Community Shield, the annual match between the FA Cup holders (this season Portsmouth) and The Barclays Premier League title holders (Manchester United). In addition, the agreement includes a selection of live and exclusive home matches involving the England team as they seek qualification to the 2010 FIFA World Cup under coach Fabio Capello.

In addition to live matches, Setanta will have rights in Canada to ancillary FA programming, including preview and review shows, archive matches and magazine programmes.
Looks like the days of forking out $20 + for a PPV game played by England are over. It also spells the death of FSWC for most viewers (unless you like Serie A and John Moore/John Oakley talk shows).

Don't count on it. Big England matches will still be PPV. The key words are "a selection of live and exclusive home matches", i.e. Belarus, Kazakhstan, Andorra, etc.

Yeah, most England qualifiers will still be on PPV I imagine.

The general rule is that Cable will always make you pay more for things, not less.:cool:

High definition Setanta! Please.
I can't wait for this. After the great HD coverage of Euro 2008 it would be so nice to be able to watch an entire Premiership season in HD.

Maybe 2009?

Live socccer will be back on Setanta very soon:

Wednesday, July 16- Luzern v Liverpool, 1:35 PM ET (live)

Saturday, July 19- Odense Boldklub v Aston Villa (UEFA Intertoto Cup), 2PM ET (live); Wizla Krakow v Liverpool, 8PM ET (same day delay)

Tuesday, July 22- Hertha Berlin v Liverpool, 1:45 PM ET (live)

Saturday, July 26- Aston Villa v Odense Boldklub (UEFA Intertoto Cup), 11:45 AM ET (live)

Monday, July 28- Cobh Ramblers v Sunderland, 2:30 PM ET (live)

Wednesday, July 30- Nottingham Forest v Sunderland, 2:45 PM ET (live)

There will also be a few Chelsea friendlies from their pre-season tour of Asia and a tournament in Moscow.

The Premier League season kicks off Saturday, August 16 with Arsenal v West Bromwich Albion.

Yes, but still no word of Setanta becoming Sportsnet 2. I e-mailed both and Rogers said no immediate plans for a Sportsnet 2 and Setanta said they are still negotiating with CRTC but that CRTC are painfully slow.
Robin
p.s. As I see it Setanta will be offering at least the same number of EPL games as last year and adding also FA Cup, Community Shield and away World Cup ties of England and Scotland.

I continue to call B.S. on Setanta's excuse for not launching as a channel instead of continuing as a PPV service. The CRTC issued a license for the channel many months ago. There is nothing to negotiate with the CRTC.

I didn't know they'll have Scotland's WC qualifiers. That will be excellent. Do they put their top games on PPV like they do with England's?

I jumped on the Scotland bandwagon during their EURO qualifying campaign and think they have a good chance to qualify for their first major tournament since 1998. Their first match is Sept. 6 in Macedonia.

Sports Fan, I'm confused by what you mean by "PPV" service. Setanta is like any premium channel...you pay a monthly subscription fee, and you get anything they offer.

Technically the are operating as a PPV service, much in the way adult channels do. This is not supposed to be how they operate, though. They are supposed to become a 'regular' channel like FOX Sports or Gol TV.

I suppose it could be that the possible sale or takeover of Setanta might have changed, or at least delayed their plans. Then agian, they just might not give a crap. I believe I read somewhere that subscriptions increased by 80% during the last EPL season, which sounds great. But it's a meaningless statistic with actual numbers, which they refuse to release.

Just tell me it's not another season of "DOI-NAMITE, ABSOLUTE DOI-NAMITE".

There is no "possible sale or takeover". Setanta Sports abandoned plans to sell itself after potential buyers balked at the £1 billion asking price. They gave up looking for a buyer in April.

Their Canadian operation is tiny, compared with their UK channels which have over 3 million subscribers.

The CRTC just approved Sportsnet 2 (Sentata Canada) yesterday.
See CRTC site.
The hold up since last year was because of a Canadian company has to have majority interest in the channel.
Very hard to explain butread the decision posted yesterday Jul 15 on the CRTC site on the internet

This is an excerpt of the original conditions which have now been approved
by the CRTC


Conditions of licence
1. The licence will be subject to the conditionsset out in Introductory statement – Licensing of new digital pay and specialty services – Corrected Appendix 2, Public Notice CRTC 2000-171-1, 6 March 2001.

2. The licensee shall provide a national, English-language Category 2 specialty service devoted primarily to the coverage of soccer, cricket and rugby. Programming will include exclusive international soccer matches from professional leagues and tournaments. The service will also provide coverage of national Canadian teams, including junior programs, sports news, in-depth analysis or instructional programs.

3. The programming shall be drawn exclusively from the following categories set out in item 6 of Schedule I to the Specialty Services Regulations, 1990, as amended from time to time:

1 News
2 (a) Analysis and interpretation
(b) Long-form documentary
3 Reporting and actualities
5 (b) Informal education/Recreation and leisure
6 (a) Professional sports
(b) Amateur sports
10 Game shows
11 General entertainment and human interest
12 Interstitials
13 Public service announcements
14 Infomercials, promotional and corporate videos

4. No more than 10% of all programming broadcast during the broadcast year shall be devoted to sports other than soccer, cricket and rugby.

5. With the exception of soccer, cricket and rugby, no more than 5% of the broadcast year shall be devoted to live coverage of any one particular sport.

6. The licensee shall not dedicate any coverage to the following men’s sports: ice hockey, basketball, baseball and North American-style football.

7. The licensee is authorized to make available for distribution, for a period of three years from the date of this decision, an upgraded version of its service in high definition (HD) format, provided that not less than 95% of the video and audio components of the upgraded and standard definition versions of the service are the same, exclusive of the commercial messages and of any part of the service carried on a subsidiary signal. The remainder of the programming making up the 5% allowance must be provided in HD format.

Thanks for posting bcornish. You must follow the CRTC pretty closley.

It's not really that complicated. The only change was to make Setanta part owner of the channel. Maybe now that they've got that approved they can focus on getting the channel running.

if the network can't air more than 10% of Rugby, Cricket, or Soccer, how will this affect Australian Rules Football? I hope they don't have to cut any coverage of it.