Setanta UK To Offer Its Own Free-To-Air Highlight Program Of Croatia-England

The Guardian is reporting that Setanta Sports in the United Kingdom has reached a series of deals with several television providers to go unencrypted and offer its own highlight program for tonight’s match between Croatia and England.  The program starts at 10:45 PM British time, and will feature highlights of both the England match and Scotland’s World Cup qualifier with Iceland.

This comes after Setanta rejected several last-hour deals for the highlights, including a 500,000 pound offer from FA broadcast contract partner ITV.  Setanta said that none of the offers made by free-to-air broadcasters reflected the value of the network’s investment to obtain the rights.  Free-to-air broadcasters had previously accused Setanta of putting an overly high price tag (1 million pounds) on the highlights.  The impasse resulted in no highlights being made available free-to-air in the UK for this past Satuday’s match against Andorra.