Racing sweet on TV pick and mix
RACING will shake up its TV tender process this summer by asking broadcasters which races they want to bid for rather than restricting them to specific packages.
The sport is not in a position to dictate terms, in contrast to football’s Premier League. The new going rate of £11million per live PL match dwarves the £4.8m per year C4 pay for their monopoly terrestrial coverage.
And even such an outstanding day of racing as the opening Tuesday of the Cheltenham Festival saw a worrying drop in C4 viewing figures, with the peak of 910,000 a significant 71,000 down on the previous year’s figure.
Racing Media Group, the TV arm of English racing, remain remarkably pleased with C4’s coverage, which runs until the end of 2016, despite the decline in armchair watchers.
But allowing TV networks to customise their bids means racing could separately sell its crown jewels — Cheltenham, Royal Ascot, the Derby and Grand National — to terrestrial channels. Other marquee meetings may follow.
This makes commercial sense, especially as racing is already well served by two subscription channels for the run-of-the-mill meetings.
THE secret of Irish trainer Willie Mullins’s remarkable success at Cheltenham may be there for all to see, emblazoned on his horse boxes parked at the Festival. The promotional message is ‘What a difference the hay makes’. Mullins (above) gets the specially selected hay for his County Kildare stables from Alberta in Canada, through supplier Ransley Hay, based in Ashford, Kent. They say: ‘Mr Mullins is one of our best customers, so naturally we look after him.’ PUBLISHERS Hodder & Stoughton look to have already maximised their investment in Sir Alex Ferguson with two seven-figure advances and two best-selling autobiographies.
Yet Fergie, as if £2m for 20 days’ work as a Manchester United ambassador isn’t enough to augment his pension, will no doubt be trousering another £1m plus advance for a leadership book based on his Harvard business school work, written with tycoon Sir Michael Moritz.
However, one subject sure to receive little attention in the book is Fergie’s fall-out with JP McManus over the breeding rights to champion racehorse Rock Of Gibraltar. Their paths will cross only accidentally at Cheltenham tomorrow.
TOP football agent Jonathan Barnett claims the FA have not properly consulted with the middle men ahead of bringing in new regulations. Next month’s changes may be the subject of an injunction. And Barnett — who says his Stellar agency, run with David Manasseh, is now the biggest in the world in terms of representing players — declared: ‘It’s ridiculous the FA have not bothered to come and see and learn how a big football agency operates. They haven’t got a clue at Wembley. ‘They are bringing in unworkable rules without finding out about the business, especially when an agency of our size is on their doorstep.’ The FA say they are following guidelines from FIFA, who have passed the buck on to national associations to manage agents.