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Setanta Sport, a pay-tv sports network presently available on Sky and Freeview, are currently in discussions with Freesat. They are considering allowing access to their channels through Freesat, free of charge, with income coming from advertising only.
This would be a huge boost for Freesat as Setanta is seen as an important package for keen sports fans, with a proportion of english football and world golf, plus many other sports.
Whilst an interesting prospect, Setanta will have to put significant investiment into making their channels available FTA on Freesat, whilst continuing to supply to Sky customers by subscription only.
The discussions are in very early days, there’s no way Setanta would take such a move now, but the future would certainly look interesting if Freesat can place agreements with such channels.
Leave you comments below, lets help push Setanta into making this a reality.
May 11th, 2008 at 9:33 pm
This would get a lot of people onboard and give sky some real competition.
May 11th, 2008 at 10:43 pm
The only thing I would be interested in is Premiership football but there is no way Setanta could finance that from adverts alone.
I think the take up of Freesat will be fairly slow as most people have access to digital television by freeview, sky or FTA receivers. The big selling point of Freesat would be HD but with the BBC HD still being very much a preview service and ITV HD not even being a proper channel takeup will be very limited.
May 12th, 2008 at 7:29 am
i think setanta sports news will become fta ,but no chance for any live sports,maybe a highlights channel if we are lucky.no way will setanta lose its sky and terestial subscribers
May 12th, 2008 at 9:40 am
Just to let owners of the Humax Foxsat HD freesat box know that the clock resetting problem will be put right this Friday with a OTA software download.
May 12th, 2008 at 9:40 am
I believe the only option for Setanta sports is for one of the manufacturers to launch a Freesat box with an encryption card slot. While this could confuse viewers who expect Freesat to be “Free”, it is no different to Freeview boxes with a card slot for Setanta on DTT.
May 12th, 2008 at 10:03 am
I think this is related to their news programs, not live premiership football.
May 12th, 2008 at 10:42 am
They may be able to control the subscription to Setanta through a better mechanism that putting a card in the back of the box…
May 12th, 2008 at 11:18 am
Sentanta will NOT be on Freesat any time soon.
May 12th, 2008 at 4:18 pm
I detect some very worried Sky subcribers (?) here who’ve also been sceptical of Freesat in other posts.
Freesat is already a great service compared to Freeview and will only getter better over time.
The pressure is on Sky and about time too.
Freesat take up will I believe be great provided they finally kick a proper advertising campaign into gear later this year that makes a big play of the advantages over Freeview and emphasises the parallels with subscription channel offerings but empasises the fact its for free. The time for treading softly with advertising has gone.
Setanta would be a great addition to Freesat. Only Setanta know if they can make it commercially viable for free Ian, thats not something anyone else can judge.
I just hope they can as I’d love to see more sport on Freesat, especially football and especially in HD.
Welcome Setanta!
May 12th, 2008 at 6:14 pm
lets not forget sentanta is free to some virgin subscribers
May 12th, 2008 at 7:47 pm
Yes Setanta would be a great addition to Freesat and would encourage a lot of Sports fans to join up.
May 12th, 2008 at 9:40 pm
could we see the source of this info please
May 13th, 2008 at 10:29 am
Hope satanta can do a deal with free sat, it would get a lot more viewers.
May 27th, 2008 at 8:21 am
although it would be great if setanta sports was on freesat for free, can they not put it on freesat for The current price of £9.99 i for one will purchase freesat only if setanta is on it, so i can get all the services setanta offer not just a limited service through freeview.