Irish satellite broadcaster Setanta could risk losing its rights to show live matches from England's FA Cup after it reportedly delayed making a 10 million pound ($14.1 million; e11.2 million) payment on its contract.

The Daily Telegraph newspaper said yesterday that Setanta was withholding a scheduled installment in an attempt to re-negotiate its 275 million pound ($386.6 million; e306.6 million) contract.

The Telegraph did not cite sources, but added that free-to-air commercial broadcaster ITV was seeking to reschedule payments for its rights agreement.

ITV is scheduled to announce its annual results today and is widely reported to be close to cutting its 4,500 employees to about 4,000. Faced with a decline in advertising revenue, ITV has already cut about 1,000 jobs in the past year.

The reported standoff comes shortly after Setanta was hit by the loss of live Premier League matches to BSkyB.

Setanta is rumored to be in trouble after BSkyB outbid it for the right to show an overwhelming majority of available Premier League matches.

Setanta had hoped to rival Sky - Britain's dominant satellite broadcaster - after a European Commission ruling that Premier League rights had to be split into six separate packages.

Setanta paid 392 million pounds for the two secondary packages in the 2007-10 deal, but bid 20 percent less for the same packages for the three years starting in 2010. It won one, leaving it with just 23 matches per season and reducing its appeal to subscribers.

Setanta subsequently failed to get Sky to sub-license one of its five packages.

Rupert Murdoch's News Corp. has used the Premier League since 1992 to attract subscribers to BSkyB, driving its expansion to become the dominant satellite broadcaster in Britain.