SPL desperately hoping Setanta numbers add up with deal all but finalised

THE numbers game is one which the Scottish Premierleague have been playing for years. The numbers of people missing from their games is one version, while another number is a seven figure one which was ripped out of the SPL’s finances with the ending of the Sky television deal two years ago.

Now the SPL have taken a leap into the unknown with the 12 clubs on the verge of finalising a four-year, 35m deal with Irish broadcaster Setanta - Scotland on Sunday understands only minor details need to be sorted out on the contract which replaces BBC Scotland’s present deal.

It is no understatement to say that the most important numbers which the SPL will count in the next few months will be those of viewers to the new Setanta service. But will the numbers add up to the 89,000 subscribers which is the break-even point?

Since it was learned that Setanta and their partners Wark Clements - since merged with Ideal World productions - were going to be the likely winners of the SPL contract, widespread fears have been expressed that a pay-per-view channel available only on satellite and cable would simply fail to earn the revenue promised to the SPL. Rangers’ honorary chairman David Murray castigated the deal in public, and he and many pundits expressed fears that the contract would end up in tatters, with disastrous consequences for clubs as happened with ITV Digital and the Nationwide League.

Setanta are also Dublin-based and though they already broadcast ten SPL games live per year, there was some suspicion of an "outsider" coming into the cosy world of Scottish football coverage. The fact that the BBC lost out to Setanta and a company partly owned by the corporation’s most prominent female broadcaster, Kirsty Wark, also caused annoyance along Queen Margaret Drive in Glasgow.

By comparison, there is considerable umbrage in Dublin that one of the Republic’s success stories has been portrayed as a fledgling operation with little or no background.

Setanta is a famous name in Irish history as it was the original moniker of the great Cuchulainn, Ireland’s mythological warrior champion. The little boy Setanta grew into a legend - the modern-day Setanta threatens to do the same.

Setanta was founded in 1992 by Michael O’Rourke and fellow Irishman Leonard Ryan, two years after they were angered that they couldn’t watch the Ireland v Holland game in the 1990 World Cup because the BBC was showing the England v Egypt game. They managed to get the game shown in one venue in Ealing and 1,000 people, mostly Irish expatriates, turned up to watch.

Setanta now has more than 70 employees in Dublin, San Francisco, Sydney, Glasgow and London. A large part of the business remains the broadcasting of sport to expatriate communities, with the channel holding the international rights to broadcast Ireland’s Gaelic football and hurling. Indeed, Setanta Sport now broadcasts to 1,500 commercial venues worldwide - the largest such network in the world.

Setanta Sport already operates two separate pay-per-view channels which are available on Sky Digital and NTL. The 38 SPL matches will be shown live on one or other channel at 3pm on Sunday.

Setanta is already planning a third channel which will show European sport to a mainly expatriate audience in the USA. The SPL may well figure on that channel, giving the exposure that the Old Firm in particular crave across the Pond.

SPL executive chairman Lex Gold likes the look of Setanta, but revealed that the deal between them and such a respected company as Wark Clements was crucial to acceptance of the offer - which, lest it be forgotten, was the best financial offer on the table.

"Setanta are a young thrusting company and we are looking forward to working with them," said Gold. "Then you have Wark Clements who bring a quality approach to broadcasting, and the marriage between them is good one.

"Now that we are moving forward, they will be conducting a marketing exercise and pushing their pay-per-view platform. For SPL TV the break even point was 200,000 (subscribers) but they need just 89,000. They already have 60,000-plus people tuning into their games and it’s not that big a step to reach the mark."

The regular Sunday kick-offs are another attraction for Gold after the years of juggling fixture times to accommodate Sky and the BBC.

"It will give us the opportunity to try and encourage more people to come to Saturday games," he said.

Though solid cash guarantees are in place involving the entire Setanta group - "effectively they have put their entire company on the line," said one insider - it will still come down to subscriber numbers, and if they add up, then the SPL and Setanta will presumably be partners for life.

At the very least, Setanta’s guaranteed payments to the SPL will allow club chairmen to tell managers exactly what their budgets will be, which in turn will allow the tracksuited brigade to start crunching the all-important numbers which will decide who features on the field in the new Setanta era.