Premiership rugby buoyed by lucrative ESPN contract

Published on Monday 14 December 2009 22:02

PREMIER Rugby has struck a new three-year broadcasting deal with ESPN and limited the potentially crippling financial impact of Setanta's collapse.

The new agreement comes into force at the start of next season and will see ESPN broadcast 43 matches exclusively live, including one semi-final and the Premiership final.

Sky Sports will show the other semi-final as part of its package of 26 live games, more than doubling the number of televised Premiership matches from this season's 33.

ESPN has effectively taken over the broadcasting arrangement Premier Rugby struck with Setanta before the Irish pay-tv channel folded in the summer.

The original joint agreement with Setanta and Sky Sports, announced last December, boosted the Premiership's domestic and international rights income to 54 million.

When Setanta folded, Premier Rugby was understood to be faced with the prospect of losing around 7million a season.

ESPN is understood to be paying less than Setanta for the Guinness Premiership rights, which will include online content for digital platforms such as ESPNScrum.com.

But Premier Rugby is confident of still hitting that 54m mark because the new deal is understood to give it a share of broadcasting sponsorship revenues.

Premier Rugby's commercial director Jon Varney admitted it was were somewhat fortunate that ESPN entered the market to plug the gap left by Setanta's demise and that the American-based broadcaster needed more content than just Premier League football.

"It was a natural conversation we had with ESPN because we knew they were acquisitive in the market. We knew they had Premier League football content and that they were looking for other premium sports content for the UK market," said Varney.

"They were concentrating on the launch of their channel but we picked up conversations with them in early December.

"There is a lot of synergy there. They are in a situation where they are going from two Premier League packs next season to one Premier League pack, so they have effectively lost 20 games.

"We are a content-rich product coming into the market with 43 live matches. There was going to be an appetite to take some of our rights. It was the right place and right time."

Premier Rugby opened negotiations with ESPN soon after the Disney-backed channel stepped into the British market to plug the gap left by Setanta's demise.

ESPN was initially awarded Setanta's forfeited Barclays Premier League football rights and last week it agreed a four-year deal to broadcast the FA Cup.

ESPN already broadcasts the French Top 14 and recently announced an agreement to show archive matches and footage from each of the six Rugby World Cup tournaments to date on ESPN Classic.