Setanta Sports - Closure

[99MWD99]

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What a crap day.

Having sent Setanta over 3,000 clicks over the past 2 months and after alot of hard work they run out of money. How unprofessional is that?

I have a full content site dedicated to them.

[Keith]

Yes its another Merry Christmas affiliates

We are sorry to announce that the Setanta programme will be suspended until the end of December as of 9.00am tomorrow morning (05.12.07).

The programme is being suspended due to budgetary issues and Setanta and buy.at sincerely apologies for the short notice and inconvenience that this may cause.

Please can you ensure that all links are removed and promotions halted by the above time.

The programme is scheduled to re-launch in the New Year and I will keep you posted to confirm this closer to the time.

Moving links on my dedicated setanta page to Amazon, will not be moving them back Amazon.co.uk: setanta - Electronics & Photo: Electronics & Photo

No disrespect to Buy.at but I can't buy into the whole budgetary issues thing, its a lets not pay the affiliate marketing channel during in the Christmas rush.

[KieronD]

I've been affected in a big way by this too, Setanta was a good earner for me.

One of the things that came out of the Buy.at panels at the Christmas Cracker last week was that there is still a lot of education needed in this sector. Merchants need to stop thinking of affiliate marketing as an advertising channel as it is in fact a sales channel.

It's only when this sort of thing happens that we realise how desperately this education is needed for merchants. Like the whole Toys R Us carry on I don't blame any of the networks involved, after all I'm sure they don't want to lose out on commission either.

[scifind]

No disrespect to Buy.at but I can't buy into the whole budgetary issues thing, its a lets not pay the affiliate marketing channel during in the Christmas rush.

Just opening a discussion point on my blog
Short but Important Advice To Merchants-- Affiliate Dogma
With recent experiences I think this is something rather apt.
To some extent I do respect budgetary issues for any form of sales based marketing BUT 24 hours notice, this is the real sticking point for me.
Merchants using affiliate channels should be contracted to 4 weeks notice period.
In exceptional circumstances where a high profile merchant is acquired and it is known that there is a fixed budget, projections should be made and there should be a set minimum duration agreed and publicised to all affiliates.

[affiliate_media_inc]

I just hope they honour commision from prior sales as they have not yet approved a single commission of mine since October. With it being "budget" issues you never know.

[ian-d]

Don't be surprised if Setanta aren't out of business within the next few months, they are running on a MASSIVE loss from the purchase of Premiership Games and not enough up take on the subscription side of things.

[Qui Gon Jinn]

Would Racing UK TV on CJ be a viable alternative who ofer Setanta Sports packages without a keyword restrictions on Setanta when I last looked?

When tracking works it coverts ok'ish, however there have been periods of non tracking & some for quite a lengthy period of time which neither CJ have addressed correctly nor Racing TV.

[Tyson Pearcey]

I know that we have tried very hard and all involved did their best, including Setanta/Quantum and buy.at to have funds reallocated from other channels but at this time we weren’t able to get the result for every one. We are in talks and have a good working relationship so we hope that we can only improve on this.

Again as mentioned by Kieron, this was one of our Panel topics a our Christmas Cracker, so we are doing every thing we can to have this view point understood at all levels in our clients organizations. Unfortunately in this instance it was not possible to achieve this based on other activity impacting their over all budget.

Just to let you know all parties on this side understand your frustrations and we'll do our best to make sure that we avoid this budget cut going forward. Its not the best of replies but I hope that those effected see that we did our best on this and will only try harder next time to ensue we keep programs going with out disruption to you.

Thanks again for your all work on this program to date.

Cheers
Tyson

[ian]

Don't be surprised if Setanta aren't out of business within the next few months, they are running on a MASSIVE loss from the purchase of Premiership Games and not enough up take on the subscription side of things.

they have just hit 1m premium package subscriptions so they can;'t be doing too badly

[purple]

Are they backed by ESPN or some other big broadcaster. I know they televise premiership in the states as well, and have a Aus operation. Of course a battle with a rupert murdoch company will be a hard fight. I notice sky put on championship games every time setanta show premiership.

The alternatiives via amazon and racing uk might be worth pursing

[99MWD99]

I have just signed up with Racing UK via CJ. (I would be interested in peoples thoughts who promote them).

In all honesty is just a real shame - The customer support is first class at Buy.at and the affiliate account interface is so smooth and fast as oppose to CJ.

I feel sorry for Sammy - he provides me with great communication and always answers my emails within minutes.

But if Racing UK converts for me at £30 per commission as oppose to £15 then I will stick with them.

[KieronD]

I noticed a few voucher code sites displaying unauthorised Setanta voucher codes that were taken from the tabloids this weekend. I wonder if this had a contributing effect to the budget depleting faster than it should have?

[ian-d]

They've been marketing £1 for two months offers recently, which might have caused less conversions for affiliates?

[drivetowin]

Tyson

Thanks for the update mate - any idea when Setanta will be validating the sales that have already gone through - as someone else said earlier in this thread they seem to be a long way behind on validations.

[Sammy Elazab]

Hi all,
Im just posting to let you know that we are working with Setanta currently to finalise the subscriptions made over November and October.

Once we have confirmation to approve all these subscriptions ill let you know. This should be done shortly hopefully by tomorrow at the latest. Ill keep you posted!

Also I would just like to apologise once again on behalf of buy.at, Setanta and Quantum - we would like to assure you that we are working on plans to make sure this does not happen again once the programme reopens.

If you have any questions please do not hesitate to contact me.

Thanks