The Sport Thread

[News Engineer]

In many ways, as a pay-TV company, subscriber numbers are more important than audience share (although the latter is the only indication we have of the former when the former is not disclosed). But Premier and their predecessors Setanta are the proverbial cat with nine lives and have recovered from the brink more than once at this stage.

They really needed the LaLiga contract after losing all the ice hockey they had - especially the NHL - which was a big schedule filler.

Whilst neither of those is likely to lead to huge numbers of subscribers they were, especially for ice hockey, the place where fans of that sport would need to go to.

Perhaps there is enough interest in GAA (and income from Irish pubs) to keep the lights on?