Eir Sport 2 (stylised as eir Sport 2, formerly Setanta Sports 1) was an

Irish Irish may refer to: Common meanings * Someone or something of, from, or related to: ** Ireland, an island situated off the north-western coast of continental Europe ***Éire, Irish language name for the isle ** Northern Ireland, a constituent unit ...

pay television Pay television, also known as subscription television, premium television or, when referring to an individual service, a premium channel, refers to Subscription business model, subscription-based television services, usually provided by multichan ...

channel owned by Setanta Sports Channel Ireland.BCI approves ownership changes at Setanta and signs 2 new Content Contracts
Broadcasting Commission of Ireland, 28 July 2009 The channel carried coverage of

association football Association football, more commonly known as football or soccer, is a team sport played between two teams of 11 players who primarily use their feet to propel the ball around a rectangular field called a pitch. The objective of the game is ...

(including top-flight European leagues and

UEFA Europa League The UEFA Europa League (abbreviated as UEL, or sometimes, UEFA EL), formerly the UEFA Cup, is an annual football club competition organised since 1971 by the Union of European Football Associations (UEFA) for eligible European football clubs. It ...

), boxing, golf, motorsport, and coverage of the SSE Airtricity League. On 16 December 2013 Setanta Sports launched a high-definition of Setanta Sports 1. Setanta Sports 1 HD was first exclusively available through

Virgin Media Ireland Virgin Media Ireland is Liberty Global's telecommunications operation in Ireland. It is the largest digital cable television provider within the country. As of 31 December 2014, the company offers broadband internet, digital television and ...

, but later launched on Sky on 20 July 2015, along with Premier Sports HD. On 15 August 2019, Eir Sport and

Virgin Media Sport Virgin Media Sport (formerly TV3 Sport) is a sports production unit at Virgin Media Television in Ireland which produces specialist sports content for its television channels Virgin Media One, Virgin Media Two, and Virgin Media Three. The depa ...

contracted a deal to show

Eir Vision Eircom Limited, trading as Eir ( ; stylised eir), is a large fixed, mobile and broadband telecommunications company in Ireland. The now privatised company, which is currently incorporated in Jersey, traces its origins to the Ireland's former ...

and Eir Sport 1 on

. As per eir's announcement on 19 May 2021, Eir Sport 2 closed on 20 July 2021. Eir also announced that

Eir Sport 1 Eir Sport 1 (formerly Setanta Ireland) was an Irish pay television sports channel featuring local and international sporting events. The channel is available on some basic cable packages in Ireland, while it is available upon direct subscription t ...

will also close before the end of 2021.

Broadcast rights

Most of these aired on both

Setanta Ireland Eir Sport 1 (formerly Setanta Ireland) was an Irish pay television sports channel featuring local and international sporting events. The channel is available on some basic cable packages in Ireland, while it is available upon direct subscription t ...

and Setanta Sports 1 and were shared between the two channels. In some instances (largely

football Football is a family of team sports that involve, to varying degrees, kicking a ball to score a goal. Unqualified, the word ''football'' normally means the form of football that is the most popular where the word is used. Sports commonly c ...

coverage) Setanta only possessed

Republic of Ireland Ireland ( ga, Éire ), also known as the Republic of Ireland (), is a country in north-western Europe consisting of 26 of the 32 counties of the island of Ireland. The capital and largest city is Dublin, on the eastern side of the island. A ...

rights, during such programming the channel is unavailable in

Northern Ireland Northern Ireland ( ga, Tuaisceart Éireann ; sco, label= Ulster-Scots, Norlin Airlann) is a part of the United Kingdom, situated in the north-east of the island of Ireland, that is variously described as a country, province or region. Nort ...

. Conversely, live coverage of GAA Championship matches was available only in Northern Ireland and not the Republic.

Club football

UEFA Champions League The UEFA Champions League (abbreviated as UCL, or sometimes, UEFA CL) is an annual club football competition organised by the Union of European Football Associations (UEFA) and contested by top-division European clubs, deciding the competit ...

FA Cup The Football Association Challenge Cup, more commonly known as the FA Cup, is an annual knockout football competition in men's domestic English football. First played during the 1871–72 season, it is the oldest national football competi ...

(

only) *

League of Ireland The League of Ireland ( ga, Sraith na hÉireann), together with the Football Association of Ireland, is one of the two main governing bodies responsible for organising association football in the Republic of Ireland. The term was originally us ...

Setanta Sports Cup The Setanta Sports Cup was a club football competition featuring teams from both football associations on the island of Ireland. Inaugurated in 2005, it was a cross-border competition between clubs in the League of Ireland from the Republic of I ...

International football

Copa América The Copa América ( en, America Cup) or CONMEBOL Copa América, known until 1975 as the South American Football Championship (''Campeonato Sudamericano de Fútbol'' in Spanish and ''Campeonato Sul-Americano de Futebol'' in Portuguese), is the t ...

*Friendly matches, typically on a once-off basis

Gaelic Athletic Association

* GAA Football National League * GAA Hurling National League *

All-Ireland Senior Hurling Championship The GAA Hurling All-Ireland Senior Championship, known simply as the All-Ireland Championship, is an annual inter-county hurling competition organised by the Gaelic Athletic Association (GAA). It is the highest inter-county hurling competition i ...

(Live coverage in Northern Ireland, Deferred (not same day) in the Republic of Ireland) *

All-Ireland Senior Football Championship The All-Ireland Senior Football Championship (SFC) ( ga, Craobh Shinsir Peile na hÉireann) is the premier competition in Gaelic football. An annual tournament organised by the Gaelic Athletic Association (GAA), it is contested by the county ...

(Live coverage in Northern Ireland, Deferred (not same day) in the Republic of Ireland)

Rugby Union

* IRB

Rugby World Cup The Rugby World Cup is a men's rugby union tournament contested every four years between the top international teams. The tournament is administered by World Rugby, the sport's international governing body. The winners are awarded the Webb E ...

Pro14 The United Rugby Championship (URC) is an annual rugby union competition involving professional teams from Ireland, Italy, Scotland, South Africa, and Wales. The current name was adopted in 2021 when the league expanded to include four South Afr ...

(Deferred/highlights only from September 2010 onwards) * Exclusive rights to the highlights of the

RBS 6 Nations The Six Nations Championship (known as the Guinness Six Nations for sponsorship reasons) is an annual international men's rugby union competition between the teams of England, France, Ireland, Italy, Scotland and Wales. The current champions ar ...

* Certain international rugby union Test games on a one-off basis *

IRB Sevens The World Rugby Men's Sevens Series is an annual series of international rugby sevens tournaments run by World Rugby featuring national sevens teams. Organised for the first time in the 1999–2000 season as the IRB World Sevens Series, the com ...

Rugby League

Rugby League World Cup The Rugby League World Cup is an international rugby league tournament contested by the top national men's representative teams. The tournament is administered by the International Rugby League and was first held in France in 1954, which was ...

National Rugby League The National Rugby League (NRL) is an Australasian rugby league club competition which contains clubs from New South Wales, Queensland, Victoria, the Australian Capital Territory and New Zealand. The NRL formed in 1998 as a joint partnership ...

Other programming

Setanta's major in-house programme was ''The Sports Show'' (formerly ''The Hub'') which aired daily. It also simulcasted the radio show Off The Ball from

Newstalk Newstalk (formerly NewsTalk 106) is a national independent radio station in Ireland. It is operated by News 106 Limited, a subsidiary of Bauer Media Audio Ireland, and broadcasts under a sound broadcasting contract with the Broadcasting Autho ...

Setanta Sports Cup

Setanta was the sponsor of the

, an annual soccer tournament which featured teams from the

and

Irish Football League Irish may refer to: Common meanings * Someone or something of, from, or related to: ** Ireland, an island situated off the north-western coast of continental Europe ***Éire, Irish language name for the isle ** Northern Ireland, a constituent unit ...

Availability

As of July 2016 in the

, the Eir Sport Package was available for free to any Eir broadband customer. This included the

BT Sport BT Sport is a group of broadcasting of sports events, pay television sports channels in the United Kingdom and Republic of Ireland, Ireland. Owned by Warner Bros. Discovery Sports#Warner Bros. Discovery Sports Europe properties, Warner Bros. Dis ...

package. Additionally the Eir Sport Package was available on Eir TV,

Sky Ireland Sky Ireland Limited is a subsidiary of Comcast-owned Sky and supplies television, internet and telephony services in Ireland. Its corporate headquarters are in Dublin which were opened by Taoiseach Enda Kenny on 18 January 2013. Sky Ireland e ...

and

Vodafone TV Vodafone Group plc () is a British multinational telecommunications company. Its registered office and global headquarters are in Newbury, Berkshire, England. It predominantly operates services in Asia, Africa, Europe, and Oceania. , Vodafo ...

. Eir Sport offered commercial venues in Ireland programming of sports such as

(soccer),

Gaelic football Gaelic football ( ga, Peil Ghaelach; short name '), commonly known as simply Gaelic, GAA or Football is an Irish team sport. It is played between two teams of 15 players on a rectangular grass pitch. The objective of the sport is to score by kic ...

hurling Hurling ( ga, iománaíocht, ') is an outdoor team game of ancient Gaelic Irish origin, played by men. One of Ireland's native Gaelic games, it shares a number of features with Gaelic football, such as the field and goals, the number of p ...

golf Golf is a club-and-ball sport in which players use various clubs to hit balls into a series of holes on a course in as few strokes as possible. Golf, unlike most ball games, cannot and does not use a standardized playing area, and coping wi ...

cricket Cricket is a bat-and-ball game played between two teams of eleven players on a field at the centre of which is a pitch with a wicket at each end, each comprising two bails balanced on three stumps. The batting side scores runs by striki ...

rugby union Rugby union, commonly known simply as rugby, is a close-contact team sport that originated at Rugby School in the first half of the 19th century. One of the two codes of rugby football, it is based on running with the ball in hand. In its m ...

and

rugby league Rugby league football, commonly known as just rugby league and sometimes football, footy, rugby or league, is a full-contact sport played by two teams of thirteen players on a rectangular field measuring 68 metres (75 yards) wide and 112 ...

and

boxing Boxing (also known as "Western boxing" or "pugilism") is a combat sport in which two people, usually wearing protective gloves and other protective equipment such as hand wraps and mouthguards, throw punches at each other for a predetermined ...

. On 12 September 2019, Eir Sport 2 was removed from Sky in Ireland and was replaced by

. On 13 August 2020, Virgin Media Sport's feeds on

Eir In Norse mythology, Eir (Old Norse: , "protection, help, mercy"Orchard (1997:36).) is a goddess or valkyrie associated with medical skill. Eir is attested in the ''Poetic Edda'', compiled in the 13th century from earlier traditional sources; th ...

and

that were provided by Eir were replaced by Eir Sport 2 on those platforms, as Eir refused to pay the contracted distribution license fee.

References

External links

* {{Use dmy dates, date=August 2016 Sports television in Ireland Television channels and stations established in 2004 Television channels and stations disestablished in 2021 2004 establishments in Ireland 2021 disestablishments in Ireland Television stations in Ireland Association football on Irish television