Serie A on Setanta update

According to posts on Digitalspy, Setanta have secured home rights to the following teams:

Atalanta
Chievo
Palermo
Reggina
Sampdoria
Siena
Udinese

Due to the way rights are sold in Italy, each team sells their rights to an intermediate company, who in turn sell on the collective rights. All the "big teams" have sold their rights to one company, and the teams above have sold theirs to a different one. Although this will pretty much guarantee Setanta that the likes of AC Milan, Inter Milan or Juventus will be on most weekends against one of these teams, it's a shame that if this is true things like the Milan or Rome derbies won't be live in the UK. However, as these rights can probably be picked up quite quickly, and as Serie A has not proved to be a ratings winner in the past, you can't blame Setanta for hedging their bets.

However, this information was found on the Setanta Australia website, and as Setanta have yet to update their EPG with details of live matches for this weekend, it appears to be still in negoations.

Bet365 are showing a selection of live matches for this weekend, including the "big teams" home matches, so that could be a way to make up for matches not screened on Setanta.

Serie A finds it's UK home

Serie A has found a home for the 2008-9 season, on Setanta Sports, after an absence there for a season in it's failed daliance with Five. Much more excitingly, it brings the prospect with James Richardson already doing some work for Setanta of the possibility of "Gazetta Football Italia" being resumed.

It seems logical for Setanta to try and increase it's portfolio in this way - it gives them more football to use on Saturday evenings, a time currently when they have only French League action to show, and also gives them a better selection of matches for Sunday evenings, as well as more of a selection on Sunday afternoons to go against whatever Sky are offering.

I don't expect the rights will have cost that much, given the lateness of the deal, Serie A will just have been glad to get "someone" to show the league. It helps Setanta by increasing the number of live matches they will show, which now comfortably exceeds the number of live matches on Sky. However, I don't expect more than one or two live matches per weekend, given Setanta's strange insistence that they provide their own commentators for every match, which doesn't make sense given that the French, Italian and German leagues all come with centrally produced English commentary, meaning live matches could be screened easily and cheaply.

I hope that Setanta make better use of Serie A than they did last season - it would be criminal not to use James Richardson's knowledge and passion for the sport in a positive way. Serie A do produce a central highlights program, but it is dull and dry compared to Gazetta.

I'm delighted that Serie A is still going to be on UK screens next year. For all it's criticisms about defensive football, it has improved massively in the last few years.