Sportsman

[Drone]

Despite The Sportsmans fold the question ‘there still is/isn’t room for a second racing daily’ seemed roughly evens each of two back then.

Five years on do the yays still believe there’s a viable market for a Sportsman II?

It’s a long time now since I bought a hard copy of the RP (or any other racing rag/mag) so can’t comment personally on how the RP has evolved; but the consensus seems to be that it’s become little more than a ‘bookies mouthpiece’ with the retained hacks ever more wary of upsetting the status quo and content/ordered to submit increasingly vacuous uncontentious editorial

So if dissatisfaction with the RP is indeed increasing, is there actually now a more pressing need for an alternative?

Personally I think what can loosely be termed the ‘reportage’ print medium in general has had its day, be that specialist like the RP or general like ‘Fleet Street’; and the future, if not quite the present, will be online only: its all I need or want anyway

BTW GC, I ebayed a pristine copy of The Sporting Life’s ‘Frankie’s Magnificent Seven’ for £18 a year or so ago, which was about twice as much as a copy of The Daily Mirror’s edition celebrating the Queen’s Golden Jubilee in 1977 returned

Who says racing doesn’t sell

[graysonscolumn]

Who indeed, Drone. Fine work!

Per your last question, I suppose my response depends on whether you’re asking if the marketplace can sustain two hard copy racing papers specifically.

Just under six years ago, when the idea of writing for the

Sportsman

was first pitched to me, I would have said an emphatic yes.

At the time of its cessation of publication five years ago today, I would have given the answer a more qualified yes, albeit with with the appreciable caveats that the start-up money awarded to the paper had been used more wisely; that race and event sponsorship had not been embraced with such abandon; that potential distribution issues had been identified and addressed beforehand, if at all possible (it was virtually untraceable in East Anglia for one part of its existence, for example); and that the launch hadn’t been hidden away in the ‘twixt-Cheltenham-and-Aintree hinterland.

Five years on, and with the benefit of greater sobriety and detachment, I’d tentatively suggest that a second paper-based racing daily would be incredibly hard pushed to succeed nowadays, even with all the above issues adequately addressed. The merging of the

Weekender

and

Raceform Update

last spring, coupled with the absence of any new players of any description barring

Racing Plus

(which isn’t an entirely new publication, if we’re honest), suggests that it’s hard enough to create and keep on the go a paper-based racing weekly in these more straitened, post-

Sportsman

times, never mind a daily.

Somehow managing to wrest the betting shop edition contract from the

Post

(if indeed there is still a contract to be had there – the SMT at the

Sportsman

always made great play of how big a win this would be when, not if, we got it) might strike a blow for its nascent competitor; ditto offering disaffected bookmaking and exchange firms greater on-page visibility. Whether those gains would be enough on their own, though, I couldn’t be confident about.

Ostensibly I’d see better prospects for the

Sportsman

if re-imagined solely as the high-quality content, interactive online paper that was always meant to operate alongside the hard copy version (and which simply didn’t have enough resource thrown at it back then, despite our wishes that it had).

There again, though, events have superseded that original website somewhat. I’m 99.99% sure, for example, that the

Sportsman

was offering live online paddock picks – courtesy of the peerless David Cleary – before the

Post

, albeit only ever at a maximum of one meeting per day.

Never say never, of course, but I’m not anticipating a new daily player in the physical, hard copy, paper-meaning-actual-paper racing paper market any time soon.

gc

Adoptive father of two. The patron saint of lower-grade fare. A gently critical friend of point-to-pointing. Kindness is a political act.

[ricky lake]

Grayson….good reply , and honest as always , I agree hard copy papers are fading fast , its been at least 6 years since I bought a copy of the RP (btw the online site is pretty awful as well imo)

Sportsman online with a sub is the way forward , and why not , as you say there are enough talented guys who could make it a worthwhile read at say 50 p per day or 25 p per day ,even better if you had some darn good paddock judges giving a judgement in real time , the killer blow would be a report on how the horses went to post …..Bookies beware , a new red button has arrived …

Info like this is not in the public domain ,presently is the current domain of race course professionals who make that knowledge pay (for those brave enough to drive on the chaotic roads and pay the overbearing admission prices )

cheers

Ricky

[graysonscolumn]

I think it’s less a case of paddock info not being available, Ricky, but moreso of it being available via all of the media outlets only some of the time (which is arguably even more frustrating).

RUK and ATR will do some paddock stuff, but only if the day’s given schedule (i.e. just the one meeting on their respective channel) permits and / or it is in the gift of that day’s duty trackside presenter or pundit.

Equally, from what I gather the remit of the

Post

‘s "Live Reporters" isn’t necessarily to give paddock clues to the exclusion of all else if there are other news stories developing – their responsibility is to produce material for "Talk of the Track" in the following morning’s paper first, give live text commentary on each race second (unless technology at the course in question prevents it), and anything else third.

Monday’s "Live Reporter" feeds have already been wiped at the time of writing this, so I can’t check back how many of today’s 24 races were the subject of any paddock inspection. I wouldn’t have imagined it was more than half, though this was perhaps not the day on which to judge that coverage with other well-publicised distractions foremost in all reporters’ minds.

I’d certainly proffer that paddock inspection ought to be a job for a dedicated employee trackside with no other remit, and Drone’s idea on another thread of having a red-button feed to every individual meeting covered by a specialist channel on a given day (such that even a small meeting on a Bank Holiday gets ample before, during and after coverage) would be another step forward, too. I’m not holding out any immediate hope of either materialising in the short-term, mind.

gc

Adoptive father of two. The patron saint of lower-grade fare. A gently critical friend of point-to-pointing. Kindness is a political act.

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