Leadership required to secure a ‘fudge’ that fixes media rights controversy

How best to square the media rights circle is a rare challenge testing some of the best minds in Irish racing. And by “challenge” read “Group 1 high-heeled b*tch of a problem where everyone involved has at least some measure of right on their side”.

All of it boils down to how valuable live pictures of racing here are. With even the most ordinary race worth up to €10,000, fixtures have become cash cows to an extent unimaginable to hard-pressed racecourse managers of the past.

A global digital betting market with punters able to watch any race and bet on it has turned tracks into a financial sure thing. So perhaps it was also a dead cert that problems would accompany profitability.

If there’s near unanimity about how valuable the media rights pot is, bitterness has festered and erupted over its division.

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Various incarnations of Horse Racing Ireland’s (HRI) media rights committee, legislatively charged with negotiating the best sale of pictures for all 26 tracks, have generated unprecedented wealth for them all.

The current committee has negotiated a new five-year deal with Satellite Information Services (SIS) and Racecourse Media Group (RMG) worth €47 million annually. For that SIS gets pictures for betting shops and streaming while RMG get to keep day-to-day racing coverage on Racing TV.

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It is the devil in the detail of how the money gets split, including various permutations of betting turnover rates and more money for better quality races at the bigger tracks, that threatens to turn the model upside down and split the sector.

The five smaller tracks that comprise the breakaway United Irish Racecourses (UIR) – Thurles, Kilbeggan, Sligo, Roscommon and Limerick – are at loggerheads with HRI over how much of the pie it takes, including through its ownership of four big courses, Leopardstown, Navan, Fairyhouse and Tipperary.

Arena Racing Company (ARC), the main rival to SIS/RMG, are offering €40 million to buy Dundalk, which currently hosts almost 10 per cent of Irish fixtures. ARC has also offered UIR €100,000 per fixture for their pictures, a figure a handful of other smaller tracks are carefully noting.

And now it starts to get complicated. Because it looks like whoever’s got a dog in this fight eventually faces trying to squeeze a square peg into a round rabbit hole that leads towards the sort of dirty legal spats which keep only barristers in the winners’ enclosure.

If UIR point out that media rights are the property of individual tracks, it is also true that only the HRI committee is allowed under law to negotiate for authorised racecourses. But it is true too that racecourse managements decide who sets foot on their property.

HRI might be a very interested player in all this considering its racecourse portfolio, but how many of those properties would still be racecourses without such state ownership?

€100,000 per fixture is certainly an attractive proposition to UIR. But it is HRI that’s in charge of fixture allocation in the first place. So, a core question in all this is who controls the actual fixtures?

As with so much of this maze, turning one corner means running into another labyrinthine wall.

The longer it is going on however the more entrenched positions are becoming. An Association of Irish Racecourses AGM on Tuesday apparently got very salty indeed. Any view that the UIR rebellion might get nipped in the bud by HRI conceding some ground appears to be fading rapidly.

It could ultimately be the Dundalk issue that proves a tipping point towards open revolt.

Like everything else there’s nothing straightforward about Dundalk wanting to sell to ARC since HRI holds preferential shares in the company and its weight is behind the SIS deal, which presumably is dependent on all 26 tracks signing up.

All of it is a rabbit warren of competing interests convinced they have right on their side.

It’s more than UIR who feel they’re being pushed around by HRI and are keen to secure the most return for their own media rights. However, the governing body’s brief is, by definition, much wider and supposed to serve the betterment of the industry overall.

Letting each track lucratively paddle their own canoe between competing bidders might work theoretically but it’s a model that has produced what many have concluded is a race to the bottom in British racing with too much racing for too little prize money.

Ultimately, what might be needed here is a fudge; an old-fashioned Irish solution to an Irish problem, one that sees some give on every side but also acknowledges wider implications for the sport beyond immediate commercial self-interest.

Pulling it off will demand leadership and that ultimately is HRI’s gig. The buck stops with its hierarchy stepping up and perhaps recalling Eisenhower’s line about getting people to do something you want done because they want to do it.

A good start from all concerned might be binning corporate jargon about “challenges” and acknowledging this as a cow of a problem that only skilful negotiation can solve. Otherwise, all sides could find themselves wandering around a legal minefield with little hope of escape.

Something for the weekend

Final declarations for Easter Monday’s Irish Grand National are made on Saturday and fingers-crossed PANDA BOY (5.00) features in them. Trainer Martin Brassil got close to big-race success at Cheltenham, but Ireland’s most valuable race would be some consolation.

SEABANK BISTRO (4.30) is Willie Mullins’ sole entry for Saturday’s novice handicap hurdle at Fairyhouse where soft ground and three miles looks his bag.