Setanta ensures that Toronto FC’s CCL match will be seen live By Steven Sandor Posted on August 15, 2011 1 0 651 Share on Facebook Share on Twitter Setanta Sports, which is part of the Rogers’ family of channels, announced Monday that will air Toronto FC’s CONCACAF Champions League group stage match live at 8 p.m. ET on Thursday. There was a firestorm of comments on Twitter over the weekend when listings showed that the group-stage opener, against Panama’s Tauro FC, would only be shown on tape delay on Rogers Sportsnet One. A couple of weeks ago, Rogers had to deal with a PR storm when Sportsnet One’s airing of a Detroit Tigers-Texas Rangers’ baseball game — which was only on air because the scheduled Boston Red Sox home game was washed out by rain — forced the broadcast of TFC’s CCL qualifier in Nicaragua against Real Esteli to be moved to a tape delay. Of course, because many fans have access to pirated feeds of Fox Soccer Channel from the United States, a large number checked out and watched the game online. After a number of fans got onto Twitter to voice their displeasure of seeing a soccer match involving a Canadian team bumped in favour of a regular-season baseball game, Sportsnet’s official feed responded with “Thanks to everyone for the feedback, we will look into how we handle these issues in the future.” Setanta is on free preview until Sept. 13. Up until this season CONCACAF had been streaming CCL games for free on its website, but now does not step on any toes of any rightsholders when it comes to broadcasting the games. As a business decision, it’s sound. As democratic as free webcasts might sound, the CCL will only gain legitimacy when more matches move to broadcasters who are in the business of selling advertising and subscriptions. Being on TV places value on the games that they don’t have when they are being webcast as a freebie. Setanta will also have live broadcasts TFC’s home match against Tauro on Sept. 20 and its date with Mexican giants Pumas UNAM on Sept. 27.
