With the 2006 Fédération Internationale de Football Association World Cup drawing nigh, Setanta Sports will gear up for the world's biggest athletics competition with an extensive lineup of international friendlies, encores of qualifying matches and an array of programming from the soccer world's governing body.
The schedule kicks off May 1 and carries through the start of the tournament in Germany June 9. Setanta Sports -- available on DirecTV Inc. (channel 615) and GlobeCast World TV for $11.99 per month -- will air live and delayed presentations of warmup matches in preparation for the tourney, featuring the national sides hailing from Brazil, England, Italy, Portugal, Croatia, Poland, the Czech Republic and Switzerland.
Setanta will also show viewers how some of the 32 teams in the World Cup got there by rebroadcasting some of the qualifying matches involving the Brazilian, Italian, Dutch, English, Spanish and Argentinean teams, among others.
And the network will air The 2006 FIFA World Cup -- The Official Guide, a series of 16 half-hours, each of which previews two of the teams in the competition.
In addition, Setanta will showcase 13 one-hour specials from the FIFA World Cup Film Collection 1954-2002; 100 60-second vignettes from A-Z of FIFA World Cup Football; and The Top 20 FIFA World Cup Moments, which counts down in reverse order the best moment in the tournament's history.
The rights to FIFA archive programming were acquired through Swiss-based Infront Sports & Media, which handles the global sales of all broadcast rights for the 2006 FIFA World Cup worldwide.
Setanta Sports, which previously announced its acquisition of secondary-language TV rights in the United States to all 64 2006 World Cup games and its intention to sublicense them to other distributors, will air them in German on its air.
A total of 56 games will be presented live, with eight on delay, due to conflicts from simultaneous play. Those eight matches will air live in U.S. bars and pubs via the company's commercial business, Setanta Premium.
"We are very excited to be offering expats in the United States and all of America's soccer fans an unprecedented lineup of World Cup-related soccer programming," Setanta Sports North America CEO Simon Green said in a prepared statement.
