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But in a few years they will lose the Irish rights and probably a few British tracks as well whilst having in the meantime shed many unsatisfied customers. SSR can have as many channels as it likes to accommodate the extra courses.
SSR can have as many channels as it likes on Sky but as us poor Virgin viewers are still living in SD with SSR and still can’t make out the numbers on the side of the horses it still shows that to both Virgin and Sky the expense of upgrading to HD for racing is not either channels priority.
Virgin are making no fast moves about getting SSR HD and Sky certainly are not pushing SSR HD on Virgin (apart from the embarrassing time when they named one of the races SSR in HD on virgin 435 when there is no HD on Virgin and it’s channel 535), so its easy to have a 2nd channel it’s not so easy to get all platforms to take it.
Some RMG courses will become hacked off if the profits returned to them from RTV are reduced and meanwhile ARC may lose tracks if trainers’ protests continue for months:
The top broadcasters missing from RTV for the second Saturday running.
Meanwhile, this courtesy of Espmadrid on another thread:
“Lingfield 4.10 – Must have been the most extensive build up to a walkover in the history of British racing, what the hell are SSR playing at?
Two other meetings to cover and the 4.15 at Chepstow (a class 2 race) gets about 30 seconds of attention before the race – pathetic.”
The ongoing issues with Rtv and Irish Racing continue even the HRI apparentyl had a word with Rtv over the missing Gowran race now there are fears Irish Racing rights will be worth significantly less when the next rights come back up for renewal in 2022.
I’m not sure why he thinks the Irish rights will be worth very little in five years time – surely to that juncture the product will have retained its quality – but otherwise I couldn’t agree more with Eddie O’Leary.
As I try to do, he also sees it from both sides. I don’t regard Irish racing as jamming up the screen, however, as a British viewer it can’t be right that there was no pre-race build up at all today before the first at Ludlow due to the proximity of the preceding first at Clonmel especially considering that it was at the Shropshire venue where RTV had stationed its only on course presenter and pundit. There wasn’t even time to show a list of runners.
There must be a second TV channel now!
RMG bought the rights for a certain price and will have budgeted accordingly there is no way they will pay for an extra Sky, Virgin, BT channel just to show Irish Racing, they have the rights they can do with them as they wish and no jumping up and down by anyone will force them to add a new channel for the limited times there are clashes.
As for a reduced value in 3 years time, there are two channels competing for the rights Rtv will know full well by then whether SIS still hold the rights to sell them if SIS still do then i suspect Rtv will offer much less money, if they are free to be sold to either channel you could have a scenario where RMG and Sky battle and pay over the odds but more likely Rtv will be bored of it and want to pay less and Sky will come in with an offer that is just tempting enough to swap back or know the Irish just want to be back on a non subscription channel.
Either way I can see both channels saying sorry it’s not worth that amount and being prepared to tell the HRI where to go.
More scandalous coverage today. The richest race of the weekend was the Leinster national today, so racing tv decide to cut away the finish from full screen to split screen to show us the horses only walking in at Warwick for a 3mile 2 handicap hurdle.
Compare this to racing Tv on the day Duc de genivres won his beginner’s chase at Gowran, racing TV didn’t even show ANY of the race until they were half way down the back straight on the final circuit and then totally omitted the bumper from gowran the same day.
Irish racing has been sold down the sewer
My posting on this thread has diminished due to its repetitiveness. But again today as a British fan I have been reduced to switching to ITV to watch the build up to and ensure seeing a non split screen start of races at an important meeting (Kelso) because of a workaday fixture at Thurles.
Nearly 3 months in, having sampled it, I have to say the great bulk of Irish racing is of little interest to me. In the absence of a second RTV channel Thurles should have been online only due to race times. But if I was an Irish fan I would be hopping mad had that been the case!
Good card to kick off the flat tomorrow at Naas. But with three other afternoon meetings to cover, can see the RTV coverage there being skinny. The Lincoln is smack in the middle of the four valuable races at Exeter and Carlisle, which doesn’t seem like great planning from a TV viewing point of view.
If you think race clashes on RTV are bad just now, wait until the summer, i had a look through the ATR fixture calender for the summer months and the amount on RTV is just impossible to show on the main channel.
On 6th July RTV has a clean sweep of all 9 fixtures. 6 afternoon , 3 evening.
Bellewstown (Evening) (Turf)
Beverley (Afternoon) (Turf) (Flat)
Carlisle (Evening) (Turf) (Flat)
Chelmsford City (Afternoon) (All Weather) (Flat)
Haydock (Afternoon) (Turf) (Flat)
Leicester (Afternoon) (Turf) (Flat)
Naas (Afternoon) (Turf)
Nottingham (Evening) (Turf) (Flat)
Sandown (Afternoon) (Turf) (Flat)You can bet your bottom dollar the irish fixtures will be put into obscurity online no way will they take any precedence over the Eclipse fixture at Sandown. Eddie O’Leary’s ” betting shop fodder coverage ” will be proved right.
And so they should be pushed to obscurity on Eclipse Day along with that sand rubbish from Chelmsford.
Last year was bad enough I recall with hardly any build up to Sandowns biggest flat race.
It’s not what people are paying for.Was making that exact argument on Twitter yesterday, they need to prioritise the top level racing and dedicate the main channel to that, especially on the days when ITV are not covering the meetings.
Yesterday was a good example. Naas should have been the main feature meeting with the rest shown online (Red button anyone?) but instead the big betting race of the day, irish lincoln, was shown on a split screen where i had little to no view of where my horse was in the 20 runner field.
Yeah, it’s not for me any more – quantity over quality. After Aintree I’m giving up – shame, I’ve been a subscriber since Setanta days, but it was a superior service then and worth every penny.
Some good points from JamesH re 6th of July and other dates will be similar.
I have thought for some time that RTV should attempt to make a virtue out of a necessity by trialling a totally different broadcasting approach on these ‘busy’ days.
They should take a look at NFL’s ‘Red Zone’ coverage where the difficulty of covering 8 or 9 concurrent games is handled by a talented host (Scott Hanson) with sufficient aplomb that some viewers prefer this over the old school format. Red Zone is fast paced, irreverent and dramatic and whilst racing would be more difficult to package exactly the same way I think a workable format is possible.Personally, I would make it studio based for that day, have long (free to air) race previews from breakfast time and have a rotating panel with one host as a hub (Nick Luck spings easily to mind but others may be possible).
The whole day – Breakfast Preview – Live Racing coverage – In depth review can be packaged as a new style format and possibly product (with one day cheap price), attendant competitions/prediction products, customer interaction.It is fairly clear the current approach wont please many and whilst a new format as suggest above will certainly not work perfectly first time, I think quite a few practical approaches may emerge from different radical thinking and application.
That’s basically what they’re trying to do just now RR?
They have ‘the full SP’ then raceday live, jump all over the place between meetings like Redzone do but without the control (as it’s racing and not 10 second clips of action) and then they do a small review show at the end, mainly because they have ‘The Verdict’ on the Monday after the weekend been. Your suggestion for the main action is basically WH TV.
Racing (especially class 1 meetings) need dedicated coverage, it’s incredibly intricate and the people who subscribe to RTV won’t pay £25 a month to not see these intricacies explored.
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