Lucrative broadcasting deal falters as Irish racing’s media rights spat spirals

As headaches go, the split in Ireland’s racecourse sector over media rights is a Biggie and brings to mind the old line about Mo Money, Mo Problems – or perhaps more accurately, Mo Money, Different Problems.

Time was when the biggest headache anyone running a racetrack had to deal with was stopping chancers sneaking in the gate for nothing. The impact of pictures money, and how tracks effectively turned into hugely remunerative open air studios, has been transformative.

The €47 million per annum five-year deal voted on by the country’s 26 racecourses on Tuesday valued even the most mediocre single race at close to €10,000. And five of the tracks said it wasn’t good enough. It’s a long way from dealing with cheapskates looking for freebies.

It is however a serious problem, and not just for the handful of smaller tracks that make up the breakaway United Irish Racecourses (UIR) who are now looking for the Minister for Agriculture, Food & Marine Charlie McConalogue, to intervene in their bitter wrangle with Horse Racing Ireland (HRI).

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The five UIR tracks – Thurles, Kilbeggan, Limerick, Sligo and Roscommon – got together after declaring their trust in the sport’s ruling body had collapsed and arguing that, at almost €7 million per year, HRI was taking far too much of the media rights pie for itself.

Whatever the rights and wrongs of that, and HRI does have a wider brief than looking out for its own four courses, any presumption that UIR would eventually back down and sign on the dotted line got blown out of the water this week.

Whether the courage of their convictions comes back to haunt them remains to be seen. But that it has come to this is a failure of governance with the potential to reverberate far beyond just racecourses.

Ultimately, HRI is supposed to take care of this stuff. It’s why it’s there, to sort out squabbles like this. Charlie McConalogue needs it washing up on his desk as much as he needs a busted betting slip.

Once again racing is generating far too much heat for Government than is surely good for its own long-term health.

The recent FAI furore in relation to betting tax underscores widespread prejudices about too much public money floating around in the sport anyway, coupled with far too little appreciation of how with that funding comes a responsibility to keep Irish racing’s house in order.

There doesn’t look to have been anything inevitable about this split. HRI had wriggle-room to sort it out and didn’t do so.

It managed to appease Dundalk enough to get it to eventually row in behind the Sporting Information Services/Racecourse Media Group deal despite the main competitors to the broadcasting alliance trying to buy the all-weather circuit. Yet it somehow failed to manage the same with UIR.

That failure opens an uncomfortable vista of the sport here going down a similar route to Britain where individual tracks paddle their own financial canoes, producing what many believe has been a race to the bottom in terms of prize money and quality racing.

Ultimately though, it was UIR that rejected the deal and now faces staring down some very immediate problems. The SIS/RMG deal denied, there appears to be only one other show in town, ARC, who in March reportedly put in an offer of €100,000 per fixture.

Even allowing for various deductions and charges that was a notably attractive offer for racecourses that between them host just a single Grade One race. But that was then, when ARC was hot in pursuit of Dundalk; now is now, Dundalk has signed up, and it’s not like there are bidders galore.

As a result, it’s hard to shake suspicions that UIR might have backed themselves into a corner.

All authorised tracks are legislatively required to negotiate deal for their pictures through HRI’s media rights committee. That is chaired by the Punchestown boss Conor O’Neill, and includes the semistate body’s own chairman, Nicky Hartery.

It is the same media rights committee UIR has locked horns with – with all due regard for the committee’s professionalism, expecting it to work strenuously to get the best possible deal for the rebel group smacks of Carlo Ancelotti giving the Manchester City team-talk next week.

It’s little wonder UIR are looking to try to somehow circumvent the legislation by calling on the Minister to intervene.

They argue it is unconstitutional and an infringement of property rights. They might have a point too. But proving it in court is an appallingly expensive vista of its own. Asking Government to unpick legislation looks a major ask too.

There’s also the reality that while each track owns its own property, the fixtures at the heart of this lucrative business model are allocated by HRI. Teasing out that conundrum is a prospect only the legal profession might be expected to relish.

That it might yet come to that represents a failure of racing’s own political processes. The potential for wider political involvement, and perhaps even more problems we might see, underlines the point.

Something for the Weekend

Charles Byrnes was in the regulatory wars again at Gowran on Wednesday when getting fined a whopping E6,000 under ‘Non-Trier’ rules following the effort of his runner, Ellaat.

The Limerick trainer sends three horses to Haydock on Saturday and Byker (3.15) could go one better in the valuable Swinton Handicap Hurdle than his narrow Cheltenham Festival defeat to Jazzy Matty.

Valiant King ought to have won a handicap at Leopardstown last month when not much went right and he was just edged out by Signora Bellissima. The Irish Derby entry should pick up his maiden in the Navan finale (5.10) on Saturday.