Tiscali, the UK’s fourth-biggest broadband provider, is to tie up with Setanta, the Irish broadcaster, to add Premier League football coverage to its television service.

The Italian-owned group, which recently struck a deal with BSkyB to show the basic channels that have been pulled from Virgin Media after their public spat, is to add live football to its Tiscali TV service.

The tie-up will mark the latest escalation in a home entertainment war involving a battle for customers between big-name players including BT, Car-phone Warehouse, Virgin Media and Sky, which is 39.1 per cent owned by News Corporation, parent company of The Times.

It also marks a further coup for Setanta, which broke Sky’s monopoly of live Premier League rights for the first time when it won the rights to two sets of matches in an auction last summer. As well as furthering its reach, the Irish broadcaster will recover some of the £392 million that it paid for the rights.

Football is regarded as a key battle-ground for many of the operators in luring in and retaining broadband customers.

BT Vision has already done a deal with Setanta. Customers who sign up to its broadband service, at a minimum of £17.99 a month, can access 46 live games via Setanta and 242 “near-live” games.

Virgin Media offers free Setanta Sports to customers who subscribe to its £20.50 XL package and also pay for its fixed-line phone service.

The UK operations of Tiscali had long been regarded as a likely takeover target. It is the last sizeable independent broadband base.

However, the Italian group, whose largest shareholder is Renato Soru, the President of Sardinia, is determined to power ahead independently as a rival to the likes of BT. On Friday it announced plans for a potential flotation of the UK unit within the next three years.

Last year it merged with Home-Choice, the pioneering video-on-demand business controlled by Chris Larson, the former Microsoft executive. Mr Larson now has a share in the Tiscali UK business.

Last month Tiscali snapped up the consumer broadband base of Pipex, the UK’s other major independent broadband base.

The acquisition gave it an additional 500,000 customers.

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