Happy, yes the landscape of international sporting television has greatly improved with technology over the last decade. Alas before such inroads were made a small company in Ireland saw a chance to help the massive number that had newly emigrated in the 1980s, to London, New york etc. and made Irish sports available to them. I say alas because they hold the monopoly on broadcasting rights to Gaelic Games, and most Irish rugby and soccer internationals for the US market. So while most Irish sports fans follow soccer in England (and wherever else it exists), when it comes to the particularly Irish occasions, they tend not to see them because Setanta demands that pubs in KC pay as much for the rights as pubs in New York, Boston, Philadelphia, etc. They seem unaware that there really are only a handful of people in the entire metro area that constitute the market and have priced it beyond them. We’re talking thousands of dollars.

We got to see a World Cup play off game in O’Dowd’s once because some Turkish people footed the bill knowing they had nearly 100 turks coming in from Lawrence. And we persuaded O’Dowds to pay the big fees once for an All Ireland Gaelic Football final, but with only twelve people turning up, the pub lost money - and that was at a special once-off I think of $500. Why Setanta can’t price it appropriately for the size of this market I don’t know. In the past people in KC have flown to Chicago and to Atlanta, just to go to a pub and watch TV - because there they have the numbers of Irish people to warrant paying the big fees to Setanta. It’s not for nothing they are known as SATANta.