With horse racing, as with just about each different broadly adopted sport, there’s usually fierce competitors over who will get the best to broadcast fixtures and supply evaluation on TV. Over the previous decade alone, the published rights for main British horse races comparable to Royal Ascot and Cheltenham have handed between the palms of a number of channels, with the BBC, ITV, and Channel 4 all having held the principle broadcasting rights at one level or one other.
As such, it appears properly inside the realm of chance that ITV will not obtain the published rights as soon as its present contract expires in 2023. However what occurs after that? Whereas it is attainable that the sport of musical chairs will proceed and that the contact will go to one of many different massive broadcasters, it is essential to have a look at different developments at play with the intention to decide what the way forward for British horse racing will seem like.
As sports activities TV continues to see fierce competitors from digital opponents, the broadcasters would possibly discover themselves much less and fewer prepared to shell out tens of thousands and thousands of kilos for a contract within the close to future. In the meantime, it is additionally price pondering whether or not the massive three broadcasters will even be within the operating for the contract by the point that it comes up for renewal.
Smaller, for-pay channels are more and more asserting themselves inside the sports activities broadcasting area. Simply check out the Olympics, for instance. The Worldwide Olympic Committee determined to award the whole European broadcasting rights for Tokyo 2020 to not public broadcasters just like the Beeb, however to the cable US community Discovery, which has put most of its Olympic content material behind a paywall.
Whereas this would possibly lead to fewer viewers total, it is virtually definitely a significant boon to the community’s earnings. Within the years to return, there isn’t any motive why smaller, for-pay broadcasters will not start severely competing for the Racehorse Media Group contract.
It is clear that the world of horse racing is at present in flux, and the way we devour this nice British pastime might change within the coming years. Keep tuned to search out out.
