[andy_m]

In the wake of the Setanta collapse Virgin were under tremendous pressure to continue to provide coverage of the Premier League for free on it's top tier. It doesn't appear that they'll be under the same sort of pressure this time around, which is interesting. I should have thought that far from freeing up a budget which Virgin can spend on new things, the scenario outlined by the op would actually give Virgin breathing space from what I understand was a pretty punishing deal. What I do know is that if ESPN withdraws, and Virgin do consider that they have some money to spend on new content then it should be sporting content.