With horse racing, as with just about each different broadly adopted sport, there’s usually fierce competitors over who will get the correct to broadcast fixtures and supply evaluation on TV. Over the previous decade alone, the printed rights for main British horse races equivalent to Royal Ascot and Cheltenham have handed between the fingers of a number of channels, with the BBC, ITV, and Channel 4 all having held the primary broadcasting rights at one level or one other.
As such, it appears effectively inside the realm of risk that ITV will not obtain the printed rights as soon as its present contract expires in 2023. However what occurs after that? Whereas it is doable that the sport of musical chairs will proceed and that the contact will go to one of many different huge broadcasters, it is vital to take a look at different traits at play so as to decide what the way forward for British horse racing will appear like.
As sports activities TV continues to see fierce competitors from digital rivals, the broadcasters may discover themselves much less and fewer prepared to shell out tens of tens of millions of kilos for a contract within the close to future. In the meantime, it is additionally value pondering whether or not the massive three broadcasters will even be within the working for the contract by the point that it comes up for renewal.
Smaller, for-pay channels are more and more asserting themselves inside the sports activities broadcasting enviornment. Simply check out the Olympics, for instance. The Worldwide Olympic Committee determined to award the whole European broadcasting rights for Tokyo 2020 to not public broadcasters just like the Beeb, however to the cable US community Discovery, which has put most of its Olympic content material behind a paywall.
Whereas this may end in fewer viewers total, it is virtually definitely a serious boon to the community’s earnings. Within the years to return, there isn’t any purpose why smaller, for-pay broadcasters will not start severely competing for the Racehorse Media Group contract.
It is clear that the world of horse racing is at present in flux, and the way we devour this nice British pastime might change within the coming years. Keep tuned to search out out.