CUFC Chairman George Rolls has reassured supporters that the club has not budgeted for TV income from Setanta and will not be affected if the sports broadcaster is unable to meet its financial commitments.
Rolls was interviewed live by Jeff Randall on Sky News this evening about the speculation surrounding Setanta's future and the potential impact on Cambridge United and other non-league clubs.
With Setanta reportedly not accepting new subscriptions today and their staff called to a meeting at 9am tomorrow (Wednesday), Rolls told the interviewer, "I'm sure this will affect some clubs but fortunately for Cambridge United we got wind of this halfway through last season and we prudently decided that we wouldn't be budgeting for the Setanta money this season, so luckily for us it wont have an effect on us.
"Everyone at other clubs and chairmen were speaking about it. We run our football club as a business, solvently, and we made sure we didn't budget for the money coming to us."
Illustrating the value of the TV deal to United last season, he added, "It's a lot of money - we were live on television eleven times last season so it would have an impact of about £125,000 to us."
Asked about the impact on other non-league clubs, especially those who attract smaller crowds, he agreed, "It will be a lot more serious for some of the other clubs.
"Fortunately we average about 3,700 fans and we're one of the bigger sides in non-league football, but I'm sure that some of the other clubs that have budgeted for it will struggle to pay their bills.
"Luckily for us, we're not one of them so our fans can rest safe in the knowledge that Cambridge United FC will not be troubled by Setanta if they do go into administration."
Asked if the club has been contacted by Setanta about the speculation, Rolls replied, "We don't have a lot to do with Setanta. It's the Conference who do the deal with them and we haven't been told anything by them either, so we've just used our business acumen to know what's going on and we've made sure that we won't suffer as a result."
Setanta, which shows cricket, golf and rugby union in addition to English Premier League, Scottish Premier League and Blue Square football, has about 1.2 million subscribers, but is reported to be losing up to £100m a year.
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