Setanta paid £392 million for two of the six packages of live rights on offer for the period 2007 - 2010.
Their move breaks the monopoly perviously held by Sky Sports which paid £1.3 billion for the remaining four packages.
The total of £1.7 million is the world's highest for domestic soccer rights, exceeding last year's surprising french deal.
Critically, Sky's packages include the lucrative Sunday afternoon game.
Setanta's games will fall into a mixture of slots including Saturday afternoon ( 5.15pm) and weeknights.
Setanta is accessed on the Sky and NTL platforms in the UK and games will be available on a pay per view or season ticket basis. Observers say that, in many repsects, the switch merely replaces Sky's own Prem Plus PPV offering.
The breaking of Sky's monopoly was dictated by EU competition regulators who decreed that previous sales processes had been anti-competitve and ruled that no single broadcastr could acquire every 23 game package.
