June 24, 2009

Virgin, Setanta and ESPN update

Virgin will not reduce the price of its XL television pack despite the loss of six Setanta channels yesterday evening.
"Any customers paying for the Setanta Sports pack will no longer have any subscription fees to pay.

"As Setanta Sports was included at no extra cost in TV Size XL there will be no changes to pricing for this package.

"If you have size M or L TV and would like to continue to get ESPN America you just need to give us a call and we can add it to your TV pack for £10 per month. If you have XL TV and subscribed to it previously, you don’t need to do anything, the channel will still be available to you.

"We are working with Setanta and ESPN to understand where the content will be available. Due to licensing agreements, some content shown on Setanta may not be available elsewhere, but should it become available on other channels, we’ll be working hard to make sure the content is available to our customers."

Hmmm. No doubt more to follow as negotiations continue, but that £10 just for ESPN America is pretty steep and that last statement possibly suggests that some of ESPN content (HD?) may be platform-exclusive to Sky.
The Virgin Media Setanta Q&A has a few more details.
According to The Guardian, ESPN said yesterday that "the new ESPN channel, which will run alongside its existing UK channels, ESPN Classic and ESPN America, will be available on every platform, including cable, satellite and Freeview."

7 comments:

GJD said...

As far as I'm aware, when ESPN bought NASN (as it was) from Setanta, Virgin removed it from the Setanta bundle and began charging £10 per month just for that channel. I know this because it annoyed me at the time. Thankfully, I got on the phone to retentions and thrashed out a deal to give me XL TV plus a nominal sum for an NASN sub.

ESPN America is still my most-watched channel, though. Would be nice in HD.

GJD said...

It should be stressed that this was 18 months ago, and it looks like it has been brought back under the Setanta package since.

Unknown said...

how did u manage to convince them to includeESPN America in your package? Please tell me, i tried to haggle with them over the phone over this (m an XL TV customer) but they remained firm...

Unknown said...

ESPN America (nasn) will now be included in the news & events mix on sky, which is £1 per month and includes ESPN classics also. While VM still charge £10 per month ala carte? and was never included as part of the setanta package.

Unknown said...

Is it just me or is everything in the XL package seem to be included 'at no extra cost'??? For e.g. when I failed to receive their VOD services for a month, I demanded they reduce my monthly fee but they said they couldn’t do that because VOD was included in my XL pack at no extra cost... And now same story with Setanta...

Unknown said...
This comment has been removed by the author.
Unknown said...

How can you get ESPN American then as it has been taken off the list of channels you can add to your package. I really wanted it to get the college ball