It’s shaping up to be a busy fall of Rogers Media’s Sportsnet brand, which has announced the purchase of soccer and rugby channel Setanta.

The channel, which is home to popular soccer and rugby properties such as the Barclay’s Premier League and UEFA Champions League, will be rebranded as Sportsnet World under the new ownership, says Scott Moore, president of broadcasting at Rogers Media. Previously, Rogers held a smaller stake in the channel.

“Setanta is a successful niche premium sports channel. As we are putting all of our assets behind one brand it made sense to rename it,” he says. “As part of that, it made sense to buy out our partners so we would have a say in what the brand looked like and how it fit in to our overall strategy.”

Moore says the target market for the channel, which launches Oct. 3, is avid sports enthusiasts of non-traditional (for North Americans) sports like soccer, rugby and other “ex-pat” games.

Original and Canadian content on the channel will be lead by the soon-to-be-renamed sports news show Setanta Connected.

Other recent Sportsnet announcements include the launch of Sportsnet magazine and the rebranding of the FAN radio stations to the Sportsnet name.

The Setanta news on Tuesday was released alongside Rogers second quarter results. The media division reported a 13% for the quarter, which ended June 30, 2011, over the same period last year.