Irish pay-TV broadcaster Setanta, which is in talks with sporting bodies to renegotiate rights terms, has missed a £3 million payment owed to the Scottish Premier League, according to media reports.
The Heraldnewspaper and other reports in Scotland cited soccer club bosses as saying Setanta had defaulted on the payment owed for broadcasting live matches. Setanta declined to comment on the report and no one at the SPL was immediately available to comment.
A source familiar with the situation told Reuters in May that the broadcaster was in talks with a range of sporting bodies in an effort to change their payments following a strategic review.
Setanta, which shows a range of sports from English and Scottish soccer to cricket and PGA Golf, conducted a review of its business after it failed in February to secure its desired two broadcast packages for English Premier League matches from 2010.
Setanta holds the rights to show two English Premier League packages, or 46 live matches, but it lost out in the auction for the next three-year deal to BSkyB and will only show 23 games to BSkyB's 115 in the future.
Premier League matches are among the most popular live TV programmes and a key draw for customers. The failure to secure the two packages prompted analysts to speculate whether the company had a viable future.
Analysts at Enders said in a report the broadcaster was fighting for its life and that the next four weeks would be critical to determining whether it survives or goes bust.
Enders said it understood the group's renegotiations would lower the current annual run rate of losses from about £100 million to £70 million, "leaving the sports broadcaster with still a large amount to prune".
Setanta has around 1.2 million customers and Enders said the group should consider becoming a wholesale provider to other TV broadcasters and their customers, which would slash marketing budgets, customer management and other operations.
Setanta is a privately backed company with shareholders including its management team and institutional investors such as Balderton Capital, Doughty Hanson and Goldman Sachs.
Reuters