On the stairwell of Premier Sports’ office building the life story of the company, its scattered siblings and its ancestors, is captured in a wall-hanging that stretches almost from floor to ceiling. Landmark events, launches, sales, deals, reinventions, the capture of new territories, are logged in chronological order, from 1990 to now. The illustration is designed with 19 horizontal lines to carry the text and 19 bends to guide the reader’s eye to the next line. The guts of the story is hidden behind the bends.
Though there are no names on the wall, Mickey O’Rourke is the only thread of continuity through every costume change: Setanta, Setanta UK, Setanta Eurasia, Setanta Africa, Setanta Australia, Setanta Ukraine, Setanta Asia, NASN, Freesports, W Sport, Premier Sports and others. The TV sports rights business is a rainbow that circumvents the globe. The pot of gold shimmers like a mirage.
O’Rourke has a small corner office at the top of the building. Behind his desk is a curved glass wall exposing a panoramic view of the Liffey and Dublin city centre. In his chair he fidgets with the arm rests and swivels, refusing to be still, or unable. O’Rourke was described once as a “restless entrepreneur”. Is there any other kind?
“I’m a typical entrepreneur,” he says. “I probably need to try and do less, but I am my own worst enemy. I mean, I’m exhausted most of the time. But I love all the bits, you know. I love broadcasting, I love sport, I love the teams. I love the business of it, but it is an incredibly hard business. From a financial perspective you couldn’t pick two worse industries: sport and TV.”
He loves the game too. When sports rights go out to tender the only rule is that the highest bidder wins. The ace card for the rights holders is the blind ignorance of the bidding parties. Nobody knows for sure who is alongside them on the start line, and nobody has sight of the finish line.
“There is a competition element, which everyone enjoys,” he says, “but it is a brutal sport. We somehow have to figure out how we can be the highest bidder and still make money. Every tender is different. Sometimes there are lots and lots of people tendering and sometimes there is only you. You might suspect that you’re the only bidder, but you will never know.”
This weekend Premier Sports will broadcast every match in rugby’s Champions Cup, for the first time. They already had the rights to the URC and France’s Top 14, but this is a new departure. In Ireland, RTÉ and TG4 have access to one game each, but in Britain the only place to watch the Champions Cup is on Premier Sports.
This is the essence of the business: gambling on audience demand. By teatime last night the number of new subscribers will have been like an exit poll on their judgment. Over the weekend the counting will continue.
From the beginning, Britain has been one of his stomping grounds. In 1990, O’Rourke and Leonard Ryan, his friend and long-time business partner, showed a World Cup match between Ireland and Holland on a big screen in an Irish club in London, essentially because BBC and ITV were both showing England’s match at the same time. To acquire the rights at such short notice, and navigate the technical maze, was a feat of ingenuity and brass neck.
[ Mickey O’Rourke made €24.7m on 2022 sale of Premier Sports UK and other assetsOpens in new window ]
O’Rourke and Ryan were graduate trainees in financial institutions at the time, but soon realised they had a different vocation. Within a couple of years, they were showing GAA matches and Irish international soccer matches in a closed-circuit network of pubs around the UK; and then Europe, the Middle East, Australia, the United States. The principle that underwrote those early enterprises became their business model.
“We’ve always tried to find our niche. When we brought the Premier League to America in 1994 I think Gaelic games was probably bigger in New York than the Premier League was. We learned that every market was different.
“We are always looking out for new things but it’s harder nowadays. The world has become smaller, and our competitors have got bigger. The smallest competitor we probably have is Warner Brothers [owners of TNT] and they’re worth 40 or 50 billion. The next one is Sky Comcast, or Netflix, who are only starting with sport, or Apple, or Amazon. DAZN have invested billions in sport. And Sky, who I think are the best broadcasters in the world.”
To survive in that jungle O’Rourke and his partners over the years needed the cunning of Mouse in The Gruffalo. Every business, though, is vulnerable to sudden changes in the weather. Twenty years ago, Setanta butted heads with Sky in the Premier League market in the UK. With heavyweight backers Benchmark Capital, Doughty Hanson and Goldman Sachs, they secured a package of 46 Premier League matches at a cost of £130 million a year.
People give a huge amount of lip service to women’s sport but when we actually turn to partners to ask them to contribute financially – so we can reinvest the money into women’s sports – people are very stingy
— Mickey O’Rourke
But when the financial crash hit in 2008 they couldn’t pay the final instalment of £30 million to the Premier League, and lost the rights. For Setanta and their backers, liquidity was the issue. By the time they came up with funding, it was too late. Financially, O’Rourke was floored.
“The financial crash was a very difficult time for a huge amount of people around the world. We weren’t unique. We were lucky in the sense that when our UK business went bust, we were so focused on the survival of our other businesses that we didn’t have time to wallow in our failure in the UK.
“We were very close to pulling it off [saving the business]. But, you know, it’s like sport, if the ball hits the post and goes into the goal, you’re a hero; if it hits the post and goes wide, you’re a failure. Business usually isn’t as binary as that, but during the financial crash it became very binary for lots of people.”
To pay back their debts Setanta offloaded their businesses around the world to big beasts such as Fox, Discovery, beIN and Rogers Communications. In Ireland, Setanta was sold to Eir for €25 million. From that income, they started again. Premier Sports UK and Setanta Sports Africa were both launched in 2009, while the economy was still on life support.
“Your resilience is always being tested [as an entrepreneur]. Loads of people came back from the crash. But the reality in this business is that you’re always juggling. You spend all your marketing up front, you pay most of your rights up front, and your subscriptions come in over a period. You never break even in your first, or even second year. If you don’t want to grow, you’ll be fine. But small players are always trying to grow.”
O’Rourke’s radar is always scanning the globe. In recent years, Setanta Sports Eurasia and Setanta Ukraine were both sold, and O’Rourke took a plunge in the Philippines. What did he see?
You don’t make money in the League of Ireland. Arguably you don’t make money in football, but you certainly don’t make money in the League of Ireland
— Mickey O'Rourke
“Well, the rights to the Premier League were really cheap and I googled the population, which was really large. I suspect I should have done a little bit more market research. It’s a challenging market. There’s a reason why the rights were cheap.”
Patience has no balance sheet valuation. O’Rourke is not afraid of long-term bets. A couple of years ago they started the world’s first women’s sport channel, W Sport. According to O’Rourke, it is being broadcast in more than 60 countries. In terms of new audiences women’s sport has grown exponentially in the last 20 years, but business is slow.
“It is super challenging. People give a huge amount of lip service to women’s sport, but when we actually turn to partners to ask them to contribute financially – so we can reinvest the money into women’s sports – people are very stingy. It’s growing, and I think it will continue to grow, but it will be a long journey.”
Outside of broadcasting, O’Rourke has a diverse portfolio of investments. Eighteen months ago, he acquired the Glasgow Clan ice hockey team, as well as the contract to operate the Braehead Arena, the team’s home rink. “I got involved because I wanted to learn,” he says. “I wanted to see if we could make them a success on the ice and off the ice.” Not there yet. Patience.
Shelbourne is a different story. League of Ireland is O’Rourke’s passion. UCD was his first love, and those feelings have never waned, but he has been going to Shels matches since the 1980s and six years ago he became a shareholder; a year ago, he became the majority shareholder. Acun Ilicali, a Turkish businessman, had promised to plough €3 million into the club, but he didn’t stay for long.
“I stepped away when the Turkish lad got involved and then suddenly I had to get involved at very short notice. You don’t make money in the League of Ireland. Arguably you don’t make money in football, but you certainly don’t make money in the League of Ireland.
“It wasn’t part of any plan that I had, but I felt an obligation. We took it on and certainly at that point we had no idea what kind of year we were going to have. Now, we’re after getting involved in League of Ireland TV. Look, League of Ireland clubs haven’t made any money on the TV side. To grow the game, we need to grow the TV revenue. So, we can either talk about it or try to do something to make it happen.”
In his life, how many times has he asked himself that question? The answer was always the same.
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