ESPN UK - Developed in less than two months

ESPN buys Uefa Europa League rights

Rights to Uefa Europa League competition previously held by Setanta bought by ESPN in joint deal with Channel Five

ESPN has snapped up the rights previously held by Setanta for the new Uefa Europa League, which will replace the Uefa Cup from this season.

The Disney-owned sports broadcaster, which also acquired Setanta's live English Premiership matches when the company's English operations went into administration in June, will share rights to the Europa League competition with Channel Five.

more ....

These rights are the 3rd choice games and of little value really a nice little filler for a channel like ESPN though. Won't have cost very much as no one else would have really wanted them.

Remember there was an entire channel's worth of staff made redundant, who will have had bookings for space & facilities at all the matches covered by ESPN, and no longer need them. A lot of the crew on the ESPN matches will be the same people, working with the same equipment as Setanta was intending to use.

Not quite right there ...

ITV has second pick of seven games, five so-called third picks and three fourth picks throughout the tournament. From 2009, ITV’s games will be predominantly shown on digital channel ITV4 – with kick-offs scheduled for 6.05pm or 8.05pm as part of the new competition format.

ESPN will pick up a number of second picks to choose from.

ESPN in total has the rights for 32 live games per season, including 17 from the Uefa Cup group stages, six from the rounds 32 and 16, two quarter finals and one semi-final

Seems a reasonable package especially if British Sides fail to progress in the Champions League ending in third slot in the first round of that competition and their resulting drop into the Europa League,

Can I offer Jon Wells an apology? My comment above was based on a now known to be incorrect report that Setanta's rights were aquired by ESPN. This is in fact wrong ITV have indeed acquired more matches in UEFAs re-award announced formally today by them with ESPN picking up the balance,

UEFA's statement issued today ...

www.uefa.com

The actual channel itself is coming from Arqiva in Chalfont. Being an existing playout centre for other channels I suspect that wouldn't have taken long to set up an extra one, but they were advertising for transmission operators only a week or so before they came on air (and still are: http://www.grapevinejobs.com/mediajobs/27286,Transmission_Operators_Arqiva_ESPN.html along with other jobs relating to the channel). I suspect that they've been using operators from their other clients and freelancers until now

Apology excepted, but I always thought Setanta had the third choice selection anyway, so we've both been wrong in some respect.

Shame their Eurobasket 'exclusive' has been disrupted by the BBC buying secondary rights and showing the GB matches on the red button.

ESPN pick up more of Setanta's rights - the Aussie NRL - http://www.rugbyleague.com/rugby-league-news/151

Although just the playoffs and the Grand Final currently. Maybe to test the water to see if it's worth picking up the full season in 2010?

I've not seen it mentioned elsewhere in this thread, but it's worth noting on the Spurs/United game on ESPN tonight they've added a little red square underneath 'MAN U' on the scorebar to show a player (Scholes) has been sent off, not a bad idea, although not as nice if you're a Man United fan. (coughs)

That's clearly lifted from the rugby coverage where a yellow square denotes someone in the sinbin. Oh - and I suspect the TOT 1-3 MAN U may cheer up the Man Utd fans.

Thankfully they haven't extended the feature to include 'yellows', if they had the Old Firm games (whicj of course they don't) the graphic would fill significant areas of the screen (ok little exaggeration)