British racing could be set for a major revamp that would revolutionise the way the sport is broadcast on television and create an elite ‘premier league’ of racecourses.
Plans are being drafted for the media rights to high-profile events such as the Derby, the Grand National, the Cheltenham Festival and Royal Ascot to be bundled together and sold as a single package designed to maximise appeal to potential broadcasters, reports the Guardian.
The proposals are designed to mirror the revolutionary changes brought about by football's Premier League and could create a distinct elite of about a dozen racecourses which attract the bulk of the TV revenue, with the remainder of Britain's 60 tracks effectively relegated to ‘minor league’ status. The changes would be introduced in 2013 when broadcast rights come up for renewal.
"It is certainly one of the options, though only one of several," Simon Bazalgette, the chairman of Jockey Club Racecourses, which owns tracks including Epsom, Newmarket, Cheltenham and Aintree, said this week.
"Other possibilities would include separate packages for Flat and National Hunt racing, as well as something very similar to what is already in place, as we have two terrific television partners at the moment [in Channel 4 and the BBC] and it is an arrangement that has a lot of positives.
"2013 is still a very long way away, and we are not even close to making any decision on what will happen at that stage. But it is not rocket science to say that, as with any sport, what drives your media rights is the top level, as we see with the Premier League. In terms of bringing new people in and refreshing the racing audience, the premier end is where that is always going to be achieved."
A single package offering the rights to all the best racing would have the potential to attract new bidders to the table, including ITV and Sky, in an attempt to maximise the selling price.
"All our plans will be aimed towards getting the best possible value from our media rights," Bazalgette continued. "There are many, many different factors to be taken into consideration, not least the benefit that we enjoy from our commercial and financial relationship with betting. That means there is also a value to promoting our racing beyond the premier side.”
But he added: "Any deal like this will usually be finalised about nine to 12 months ahead of the expiry of the previous deal, so from that aspect we are looking at early 2012. In racing, it's not just one person's decision, as it would be, say, in Formula 1 where it's down to Bernie Ecclestone. The two key stakeholder groups are the racecourses on one side and the Horsemen's Group [including owners, trainers and jockeys] on the other. There has to be agreement to move things forward."
