A bit of British TV news for you. Virgin Media have announced today that subscribers of the XL package will now get Setanta Sports for free. (The XL package costs £20.10 per month and includes 125+ basic channels) Unfortunately, according to the press release, this only includes Setanta Sports 1 and 2, Setanta Golf, Racing UK, Celtic TV, and Rangers TV. NASN is not part of the deal.
Setanta are heavily pushing their newly-acquired Premiership matches (understandably so), and there was some hope that the rising profile of the package would have a positive knock-on effect for NASN (and therefore bring more viewers into contact with MLB). Sadly, it looks like the opposite is going to happen, with Setanta taking the main channels and selling them in the most attractive way (although why Celtic and Rangers are part of it is beyond me) while leaving the rest behind. Still, if it means ESPN will push NASN away from Setanta and on to the same package as the ESPN Classics channel, it might work out for the best.
