ITV continue to deliver as they serve racing’s new audiences

As a new television deal is discussed, Alan Tyers believes the sport will not find a better partner

Racing’s television deal is up in the air, with the current contract on ITV coming to an end in nine months. Yesterday morning found racing bigwigs and ITV executives at Cheltenham trying to get a deal done.

We might not quite be at Europe v Britain over the Brexit withdrawal levels of tension just yet, but there is a sense that the clock has been run down more than it needed to be, and that in economically uncertain times, something that could have been simple has become rather complicated and fraught.

On day one of Cheltenham, one of the biggest days in the sport’s calendar, how did ITV do, how well is it serving the sport and should racing look elsewhere?

My personal view: the coverage is very good. Another personal view: the sport would be mad to consider anywhere else for its broadcast home.

All sports, indeed any human endeavours that want people to pay attention and money to them, face the problem that you might call the Jeremy Corbyn question. That puzzler is as follows: how do you reach out beyond the few hundred thousand absolute diehards who will back you no matter what and pull in the many millions more, who might be somewhat interested, but are not going to lose much sleep if you fell off the face of the earth.

Racing has an additional problem to solve, one thornier than picking the winner in even the toughest Cheltenham handicap: it does not have one audience. Students of the form, people who love the animals for their beauty and fragility, gambling addicts, people who like looking at the silks, professional gamblers, the working from home, the pretending to work from home, the

Opening Show ITV4, 9.30am

Ballymore Novices’ Hurdle ITV4, from 1pm to 2.10pm

RSA Novices’ Chase, Coral Cup, Queen Mother Champion Chase, Glenfarclas Chase ITV1, from 2pm to 4.30pm

Juvenile Handicap Hurdle, Champion Bumper Racing TV, Live all day sick, the self-isolating, people who have followed racing since the fifties, people who have never watched before, people who left the telly on ITV after This Morning, general sports fans, folk who stick the box on in the afternoon for a bit of company… all of these might be watching ITV on a typical Cheltenham Festival afternoon.

None of these groups are going to enjoy every minute of the 3½-hour afternoon broadcast, or the hour-long Opening Show on ITV4. Yesterday, for each viewer who wanted to see Francesca Cumani and Alice Plunkett running expert eyes over the physical qualities of each individual animal, there will have been one who loved the insights and back and forth between

Sir AP Mccoy and Ruby Walsh as they explained how Rachael Blackmore tactically had the better of Paul Townend in the Mares’ Hurdle as she came up the inside to win.

There will be some who enjoyed Gabriel Clarke’s profile with Blackmore and Jessica Harrington