Vote on controversial media rights deal for racing delayed

The Association of Irish Racecourses says it is confident of securing unanimous agreement among the country’s 26 tracks for a new five-year media rights deal.

However, an Extraordinary General Meeting to vote on the matter, scheduled for two weeks-time (March 22nd), has had to be postponed due to contracts not being finalised.

A deal worth a reported €47 million per year has been agreed between Horse Racing Ireland’s media rights committee and Sports Information Services (SIS) and Racecourse Media Group (RMG).

However there has been bitter division between courses over how that money gets divided.

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A breakaway group of five smaller tracks – Thurles, Kilbeggan, Sligo, Roscommon and Limerick – has formed into their own United Irish Racecourses body after saying trust in HRI has collapsed, accusing the semi-state body, which operates four courses itself, of taking too big a slice.

UIR, which remains part of AIR, want assurances they can sell their rights to another bidder if they reject the SIS/RMG offer.

However, legislation states that the sale of media rights for authorised racecourses can only be carried out by HRI’s media rights committee.

The situation is further complicated by continuing negotiations between Dundalk and Arena Racing Company for a potential sale of the all-weather circuit.

ARC is a competitor of SIS/RMG including through its partnership with Sky Sports Racing which carries free to air coverage of its 16 tracks in Britain.

Day to day home viewing coverage of Irish racing is behind a paywall on Racing TV which is owned by RMG.

Nevertheless, AIR’s chief executive Paddy Walsh says he is confident the matter can be resolved to the satisfaction of all concerned.

“That’s our target. That’s what we’ve achieved with every other media rights deal we’ve done so I don’t see why we can’t do the same again,” he said on Friday.

“Our position is that we want to bring all the tracks with us. We recognise that Dundalk may have a special situation at the moment given what’s going on there and we’re trying to accommodate that within the deal as well,” he added.

However, the situation is fluid enough that a vote on the vital issue has had to be delayed.

A number of issues remain to be resolved with contracts and AIR is working with its legal advisers to finalise all necessary documentation.

“We have to send out notice of such a meeting. We want to send out copies of the final legal contract with that notice and we’re not quite there yet on the contracts.

“We missed the deadline for that meeting on the 22nd so we’ve cancelled that and we didn’t want to schedule another date until we have the contract in our actual hands.

“We’re talking a matter of a week or two; we’re not deferring it for any length of time,” Walsh explained.

SIS/RMG got ‘preferred bidder’ status from HRI last October and that ruled out a potential counter bid from the Racing Partnership group that includes ARC.

SIS/RMG hold Irish racing’s media rights in a current deal which winds up at the end of this year.