There were other constraints because the Government knew there would be a general election in 2002. It did not want to alienate the sporting organisations or Rupert Murdoch of Sky Sports because it became known in January 2002 that the Taoiseach had dinner with 20 executives from Sky Sports. When it was announced that Sky Sports had paid over €7 million to the FAI for television rights for four years, the two newspapers which enthusiastically greeted this announcement were the News of the World and The Times, both newspapers owned by the Murdoch organisation. Of course Sky Sports was enthusiastic about getting involved. Why would it not be? It already had 200,000 subscribers and the Ireland v. Spain match shown on RTE had over one million viewers.