Sky loses rights to Victorian and NSW meetings

In one of the most incredible days off the track and in a throwback to a decade ago where a Sky blackout threatened the vision of racing, TABs in both Victoria and New South Wales were limited to audio of racing in both NSW and Victoria yesterday.

A deal between TVN and Sky over racing rights has reached its boiling point.

It won’t be as bad as the blackout for racing a decade ago as racing on TVN is readily available to most Foxtel subscribers, and is available in most pubs and clubs who won’t be charged any extra for the coverage.

The deal doesn’t affect Queensland, South Australia and Western Australia, whose racing will continue on Sky, as will the trots and dogs. However, the requirement to watch racing across two split channels as opposed to the one is going to be a headache for all involved.

Tomorrow there will be six Victorian and New South Wales meetings happening across the two states which means that TVN will be under the pump to provide coverage for these events. But TVN has already said that extra crews and staff will be rolled out in the coming days.

For mine I would like to see a new player – perhaps Channel Seven – put their hat in the ring and form a partnership with TVN to bring the coverage on free-to-air television.

Channel Seven already has a working partnership in place with TVN, showing 27 meetings across both the autumn and spring. The coverage this year was again another step in the right direction from Channel Seven who continued to evolve their coverage into a more professional approach.

Sure there is always going to be the odd cross to the celebrity or footballer in the birdcage but its still coverage of racing, and if given the rights they could produce a coverage that does justice for racing.

However that idea could be short lived as CEO of TVN Bruce Mann refused to divulge any of Seven’s interests in the coverage.

“We have not turned anybody off, Sky has made a conscious decision not to extend its rights,” Mann said.

“We have not been able to agree on a value for vision rights.

“What this means is Sky loses its rights. Racing will still broadly be distributed, we’re now on Foxtel’s basic package, we’re on (our website) Racing Network, and for a temporary time, we’re in the process of making sure punters can watch the races on Racing NSW and the Australian Turf Club’s websites.

“Racing will be broadly available it just won’t be through Sky.”

It’s expected that we won’t see the end to this stalemate for quite a while and it’s a situation where there doesn’t seem to be any winners. Either we will lose quality coverage of city meetings, or we will lose vision of country meetings as TVN will struggle to cover the load by themselves.

Personally it feels like one of those Michael Jackson moments where you get your popcorn out and just watch it all unfold.

More to come.