At The Races channel to relaunch as Sky Sports Racing at start of next year
At The Races, the dedicated racing channel that has been part of the sport’s broadcasting landscape for nearly two decades, said on Monday that it will be relaunched under the Sky Sports brand by the start of 2019 and welcome two new tracks – Chester and Bangor – to its roster shortly afterwards.
Sky Sports launched a series of channels dedicated to individual sports last year and rumours that ATR could be rebranded as Sky Sports Racing have been circulating for several months. The move will mean that racing from ATR tracks will be broadcast in HD for the first time, while the addition of Chester to its schedule will be seen as a major boost for the channel following the loss of the rights to cover Irish racing to its subscription-based rival, Racing UK.
Sky Sports Racing will be available to all Sky customers at no extra cost, and will cover around 650 meetings per year. Sky is already a joint partner in At The Races with Arena Racing Company (ARC), which operates 16 British tracks including Newcastle, Doncaster, Chepstow and Windsor.
At The Races moved its base from central London to Milton Keynes in 2012, but production of the new Sky Sports Racing channel will move to Sky’s studios in west London.
Matthew Imi, the chief executive of At The Races, said on Monday that the May Festival meeting at Chester “is a true highlight of the UK racing calendar‚“and that “there is no better home for our new channel production facility than Sky Sports’ studios which are the best in the business.”
Barry Francis, the managing director of Sky Sports, said that the new racing channel “takes us to another level”. He added: “Adding Chester and Bangor-on-Dee is fantastic news and we look forward to making Sky Sports Racing a new home for racing fans.”