Australian CSCs' discovered that TV rights to the 2004/2005 SPL season, previously held by Pay-TV Operator ESPN, are now held by Setanta. Setanta proposed to make games available through a limited number of direct-TV sites at which an admission fee would be charged.

ESPN coverage allowed many CSCs to host games at a wide variety of locations, as well as allowed supporters to see the games in their own homes, free of other charge.

Upon being aware of these change, and following the canassing of the issues on the sh-tims list, an IRC meeting was held in early July, at which Sydney City CSC member and television-industry employee Martin Sweeney was authorised to be the spokesperson on behalf of the SHFCSC in discussions to be held with Setanta's Australian representative.

(New Zealand CSC and Kiwi Celtic fans were able to pick up ESPN's coverage of SPL games through Sky Channel. Setanta seems not to have sought NZ rights. It is unclear whether ESPN retains them for NZ. In South Africa, game coverage was obtained through local satellite providers.)

The meeting also decided the broad direction of the SHCSC position, and allowed the drafting of a document comprising that position. The document subsequently obtained endorsement by the Federal Executive of the SHFCSC, and was presented to Setanta at the meeting in Sydney on 14 July.

The document (in .pdf format) is available here.

The Federal Executive of the SHFCSC will meet again shortly and a further IRC meeting for CSCs will be held to report back progress. In the meantime, Martin's summary of the discussion with Setanta is as follows:

I met with Conor from Setanta on the evening of 14 July. I gave him the SHFCSC document and he was quite positive about the idea and can see the benefits for all. He said Setanta would approach ESPN and see if a deal could be done. He wouldn't give the exact details of how they would approach ESPN or for how long such a deal would be for. He did say though that ESPN were one of the rival bidders for the Australia SPL rights and as Setanta won in the bidding perharps ESPN don't see the SPL as a major draw anymore or certainly one that is worth paying major money for. He could be right. It looks like ESPN now has Dutch, Spanish, American and Brazilian football to broadcast in Oz so the might have a full schedule and can't accomodate the SPL anyway.

So there you have it, Setanta will approach ESPN but if nothing happens then it is the DTV option for now and he would like to co-operate with the CSCs.

Please watch this page for further developments, and keep track of the discussion through the sh-tims lhist on topica.