[andy_m]

I'm clinging to the hope that there will be an opportunity for the likes of ESPN to pick up some cheap rights for things Sky have decided to "tighten their belts" on in order to pay for the rising cost of the Premier League rights.

I really don't think we can be too far away from several important announcements, 1st what are BT going to do with their rights; 2nd whether ESPN feel they have a future in the UK market; 3rd how Virgin Media plan to react to those two events.

I'm not expecting Virgin to necessarily continue to offer free Premier League on their XL package - and I certainly wouldn't pay for a new channel - and to be honest I can't say I'll miss what is roughly one live game a week often at a time when I'm travelling back from spending the money I save by not having Sky Sports on actually going to a match, but I very much want to be able to continue to watch as much FA Cup, Europa League and top European League football as I can currently in addition to whats available on the FTA channels.

Fingers crossed for some good news!