The body that represents Ireland’s racecourses has said it hopes television coverage of Irish racing can continue alongside cross-channel action on the same specialist channel.
The fallout for racing from the new Gambling Regulation Bill that passed through the Oireachtas last week has focused primarily on a warning from the Racing TV subscription channel that its coverage is financially unviable here due to the ban on betting advertising between 5am and 9.30pm.
Racecourse Media Group (RMG) which owns Racing TV has said the new law isn’t expected to be implemented until 2026, but while it will work with Horse Racing Ireland (HRI) and the Association of Irish Racecourses (AIR) to find a solution, it insists its operation will be economically unviable because of the ban.
Home coverage of Irish racing is a relatively small part of the lucrative five-year media rights signed by RMG and Sports Information Services (SIS) with HRI and AIR in January.
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Any threat to Irish racing being covered on Racing TV in Ireland wouldn’t prevent pictures from being shown in Britain or internationally. However, the idea of a specialist Irish feed, something promised by RMG’s rival, Sky Sports Racing, in response to the legislation may not be desirable either.
“Putting forward a separate Irish channel may be a solution in some regard, but I don’t think it would be a good thing for us to be separate from good meetings in the UK. Any research we’ve done on betting turnover, it’s a benefit to be coming in on the heels of big races across the water and people will roll on the money. If you’re isolated, I don’t think that’s necessarily a good thing either,” said AIR chief executive Paul Hensey on Sunday.
Hensey said the prospect of Irish racing not being shown on Racing TV is a “backward step” for the sport here and worried about a “one size fits all” element to the Bill.
“I question how effective some of these measures will be. All the research has shown that issues with problem gambling come from scratch cards, lotteries, online casinos, that sort of stuff.
“I just wonder if there’s some one-size-fits-all rule to address this. But if you look at the research that’s there, it wouldn’t indicate that racing is one of the key contributors to problem gambling,” he said.
No change is anticipated on the back of the new legislation to the current media rights deal, worth in the region of €47 million a year to Irish racing.
The most remunerative element to the deal is pictures broadcast into betting shops in Britain and Ireland by SIS, with individual racetracks here receiving a percentage of the betting turnover generated on each race.
Hensey also warned that restrictions in the Bill could drive a lot of betting to the black market, something he said should be avoided, and which has obvious financial consequences for Ireland’s 26 tracks.
“The media rights deal stands as it is. We‘re hopeful it’s going to take some time for any new restrictions or whatever to be implemented. In the interim, we’ll see how those restrictions may affect us but certainly, at the moment, we don’t see any immediate change to what we’re doing or to what any of our partners are doing,” he said.
