Switching channels: Is the launch of Sky Sports Racing a game changer?

Horseracing is the UK’s second biggest spectator sport (after football) with nearly six million racegoers flocking to tracks up and down the country every year. Of course, though, many of these visitors are mainly there to simply enjoy a day out at the races, which is why TV coverage has an ever-important role to play in broadening interest in the sport beyond dyed-in-the-wool equine aficionados and inveterate gamblers to casual sports fans. So when it was announced that digital broadcaster Sky Sports is to replace At The Races (ATR) with Sky Sports Racing (SSR) – available to every Sky TV customer in the UK and Ireland at no extra cost – the news received an overall positive reception in racing circles.

As well as being broadcast in HD for the very first time from Sky’s state-of-the-art studios in west London after switching from ATR’s Milton Keynes base, SSR is the latest addition to Sky Sports’ portfolio of dedicated channels covering sports such as football, golf, Formula 1 and cricket. Mobile users will also be able to catch the action via the Sky Go app. The relaunch next January means racing coverage is sure to be given a substantial makeover and a bit more pizazz added to proceedings. While the move didn’t come as a complete surprise seeing as Sky became a majority shareholder in ATR last March by increasing its stake from 49.2 to 51%, ATR chief executive Matthew Imi said SSR will bring the sport into the mainstream and is “set to be a game changer for racing”.

Yet that may be over-egging the impact of the new channel a touch, according to Stephen Harris, a former senior racing trader and now racing editor for BettingExpert.com. “Game changing is overstating matters, but the relaunch certainly secures the future of ATR as a new company. It will certainly make racing a lot more accessible to a wider public with free-to-air broadcasting clearly reaching a much bigger audience.” This sentiment is echoed by Jason Brautigam, the former MD of the Totepool: “The more racing appears as part of the overall package, the higher profile the sport will have, with cross-promotional opportunities on the other Sky channels to bring a new audience into racing.

“Whether or not it’s a game changer remains to be seen, but it’s always good to have competition between rival broadcasters for media rights, which will also hopefully raise standards of racing coverage across the board.” He adds: “Hopefully the presentation of the sport will be taken onto the next level – and it could have the same positive impact that it has had on other sports, particularly football and cricket.”

Horses for courses

As part of the rebranding announcement, it was also revealed that Bangor-on-Dee and England’s oldest racecourse, Chester, are joining the channel on a 10-year deal, which means SSR will air over 650 live fixtures in the UK (around 45% of the UK fixture list based on 2018 fixtures) from 24 tracks, complimented by exclusive international race meetings. However, this came hard on the heels of news that Chelmsford and all Irish racing coverage, including the major festivals from the likes of Leopardstown, Punchestown and Fairyhouse, are heading over to subscription channel Racing UK (RUK) from next January. Indeed, the loss of action screened from the Emerald Isle’s 26 racecourses sparked anger among racing professionals and fans who voiced their displeasure on social media. With Irish racing sliding behind a paywall it’s bound to have a knock-on effect on betting turnover among UK punters.

“There could well be some impact on Irish racing turnover due to it sitting on the solitary premium rate pay-to-view channel versus free or being added to a current sports package,” concedes William Hill spokesman Rupert Adams. Meanwhile, Brautigam says it is “very disappointing” to lose Irish racing from free-to-air coverage, albeit on the Sky platform, and that it will be “detrimental to betting turnover levels”. The addition of Irish racing means RUK, which is owned by Racecourse Media Group and charges subscribers around £25 a month, will air almost 1,200 fixtures from 62 courses next year. In early May, RUK announced that 34 UK tracks had renewed their pay TV rights with the group, leaving Ascot as the only course up for grabs between RUK and SSR.

Ascot switched to RUK in 2014 but recently invited tenders from interested parties for its non-terrestrial rights from March next year. Snatching Ascot back would certainly be a coup for SSR and it will be interesting to see how this tug-of-war plays out. Even so, all this fragmented coverage is far from ideal. Brautigam says: “On the one hand you’ll have super-saturation of racing on a subscription channel [RUK] with a limited number of viewers, and on the other a channel [SSR] plenty of airtime to dedicate to the coverage and a larger potential audience, but not enough racing action daily. This level of fragmentation cannot be good for racing as a whole and I hope that the arrival of Sky Sports Racing will merely accelerate the re-emergence of a single, combined solution in the future, albeit potentially over multiple channels if also including Irish racing.”

Free to air

On top of this, UK racing’s terrestrial TV rights come up for renewal at the end of 2020 when ITV Racing’s four-year deal expires. The rumour around the campfire is that Sky Sports is considering bidding for this terrestrial coverage. ITV Racing has attracted criticism from some quarters, particularly around the fact lesser meetings are relegated from ITV1 to ITV4, while many viewers aren’t enamoured with the quality and time-slot (10am) of its racing preview programme, The Opening Show. Although Adams says he would offer “a very short price” on ITV renewing its contract (it’s worth noting William Hill sponsors ITV Racing), BettingExpert’s Harris, for one, isn’t so confident. “I would personally be surprised if ITV did renew their contract, particularly with the viewing figures continuing to disappoint,” he says.

“Their team and coverage has certainly improved and cannot be criticised for lack of effort, but the repeated mixing up of which channel the action is on has been patently ridiculous from day one. Often repeats of 30-year-old programmes are shown on ITV1 while the live action is booted onto ITV4, which hardly encourages viewer loyalty or familiarity.” In fact, Harris questions even the need for terrestrial TV coverage in this day and age. “Perhaps the days when racing expects or needs terrestrial coverage has passed, with live streaming of the action now available on almost all betting apps and younger punters and viewers not loyal to the established broadcasters.”

Although Irish racing jumping ship to RUK and disappearing behind a paywall is a blow for SSR – not to mention betting turnover in the UK and Irish racing as a product – a new shiny, dedicated HD channel in the shape of SSR has to be a step in the right direction. And with it being available to all UK and Irish Sky TV subscribers for free, it should certainly help to raise the sport’s profile and broaden its appeal.

“Sky Sports channels have – in recent times – been recognised as the place to see exciting sporting events and adding racing to their portfolio can only be good, especially in HD,” Adams remarks. “Perhaps they have realised where others haven’t, that to spread the excitement of racing, it needs to be accessible to as many people as possible and not sat as a standalone premium pay-to-view channel. I would expect minimal downside to the betting industry, if any.” One thing is for sure: January 2019 is set to kick off an eventful and interesting period in racing’s rich history.