Setanta Sports may yet be sorry it didn't seal a deal to sell the company when a €1.3bn price tag was suggested and several potential bidders hovered early last year.

Now, as well as seeking a discount on the £125m it agreed to pay for exclusive Scottish Premier League (SPL) coverage, the Irish global sports broadcaster is trying to drum up £100m in fresh investment.

The SPL is unlikely to be the only part of its rights portfolio getting an urgent re-evaluation as it strives to cut costs. Having worked hard to dominate as a boxing broadcaster, Setanta was conspicuous by its absence from bidding for British boxer Carl Froch's WBC super heavyweight bout, which is taking place today.

Its 1.5 million-strong premium package subscriber base will be drastically eroded due to its losing out to Sky on its Premiership bid, just when it needs to boost that number by around 400,000 just to break even.

Setanta hoped to break even for the first time last year but didn't. Now all aspects of its business are believed to be under review, which inevitably affects on value for investors, subscribers and advertisers.

With substantial debt on its balance sheet, Setanta has little hope of securing a £100m investment in this climate, one venture capital source told the Sunday Tribune, unless it comes from current investors Balderton or private equity player Doughty Hanson.

It is in the interests of these two to top up their investment to protect their stake in the company, if they are able to. Along with shareholder Goldman Sachs they are believed to have written down their existing Setanta investments to zero. British newspapers said last week that Setanta was 'close to' an investment deal with Doughty Hanson, which already holds a 20% stake.

A broadcast industry source suggests that, if it's forced to retrench, Setanta might concentrate solely on the Irish market.

Last week Boxer withdrew its winning bid for Ireland's digital terrestrial television contract. Setanta is part of the runner-up consortium with TV3 (owned by Doughty Hanson) in a group called One Vision, which has been offered the contract instead. Whether either broadcaster can now afford to provide the DTT service in this recession remains to be seen.

One way or another, freewheeling TV revenue jackpot days are over for sporting bodies. They can expect far less generous rights deals from broadcasters in future as punters cut back on their premium sports packages and broadcasters cut their cloth to suit their measure.

The UK's Football Association in particular has been spoilt on this front in recent years, having enjoyed almost a doubling of its TV revenues in 2007 alone.

One of Setanta's biggest assets to date has been its ability to innovate, most recently launching Setanta-i, its online video offering where punters can see high-quality live and on-demand sports programming online. From the early days it was quick to exploit markets not dominated by the media monster that is Sky, such as boxing and English premier league cricket, and to broaden its availability across as many platforms as possible.

Setanta has been an audacious achiever, but it simply has yet to register a profit.

Boardroom disagreements about how aggressively rights bids should be pushed are not helping. Some forces within the boardroom have been urging a more robust approach while others do not want to "throw good money after bad", a source said.

"There was significant disappointment among shareholders when they didn't get the Premiership rights," said the source.

A broader threat may also be about to hit sports pay-TV. Both the Irish and British governments plan to extend their free-to-air sports lists. In Ireland the following events must be free to air: the Olympics, all-Ireland senior football and hurling finals, qualifying games in the European football championship, the rugby world cup finals, the Irish grand national and the Irish derby. But communications minister Eamon Ryan has said there is "scope for the extension of this list".

A new Doughty Hanson investment may result in a chairman being added to the Setanta board, the London Independent reported last week, which may in turn help more solid decision-making to emerge.

Investors may have to live with the pain for the next few years and hope the model eventually comes right. An early supporter of Ebay, which reaped it vast returns, Balderton Capital rarely backs a losing horse.