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All racing on sis in shops.
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Ok.thanks. what about american racing that used to be on turf?
Ok. Tks. I was in america for a bit so i'm bit behind
Racecourses poised for new era with potentially lucrative media rights deal
Bill Barber on the implications of a major five-year agreement
6:00PM, MAR 31 2018
At midnight on Saturday a switchover takes place at Media City, Salford, marking the beginning of one of the most significant commercial deals in British racing's recent history.
Former fierce commercial rivals SIS and Racecourse Media Group (RMG) have started a five-year agreement for the distribution of pictures and data to betting shops across the UK and Ireland which promises a major boost for racecourse finances and a new era of collaboration between the sport and the betting industry.
However, overshadowing the new deal are concerns that all sides will be hit if betting-shop numbers fall as a result of the government deciding to cut FOBT stakes.
Why did the former rivals join forces?
When the deal was announced in September 2015 it came as a major shock. RMG – which is now responsible for the media rights of 37 British tracks including those under the Jockey Club banner and the likes of Ascot, Goodwood and York – also held a half-share in TurfTV, the betting-shop pictures provider set up to break SIS's monopoly.
Racecourse Media Group chief executive Richard FitzGerald
Racecourse Media Group chief executive Richard FitzGerald
RUK
Many had been predicting SIS's demise and RMG's chief executive Richard FitzGerald, by his own admission, had set out with TurfTV to "level the playing field" with SIS.
"But things change and you do the right thing for racing," he said last week.
What had also changed were the plans RMG had made with racecourse group Arena Racing Company (Arc) to team up to sell its rights to bookmakers directly.
The idea had been to cut out the "leakage" from previous deals, which it was estimated was costing the sport tens of millions of pounds a year in income.
SIS product director Paul Witten described the new deal as a win-win for bookmakers and for RMG.
"In the past SIS would buy rights on a fixed-price basis, apply a margin and sell them to the market on a per shop basis," he explained.
"In this agreement far more of the value is going back to RMG. In return RMG have accepted a level of risk share. That allows SIS to reduce its margin and become more efficient because we are not pricing in risk or shop closures."
How will racecourse finances be improved?
In 2016, the latest year for which figures are available, RMG's tracks received £85.5 million in media rights payments, £52.2m of which came from TurfTV.
The effect of the SIS deal means those media rights payments "will be north of a hundred million pounds this year" according to FitzGerald.
The way that income is distributed to racecourses will change under the new deal, with tracks being incentivised to put on racing that maximises turnover in betting shops.
"There will be a performance pool within the payments that we make to our racecourses to incentivise them to effectively make their product even better for bookmakers," FitzGerald said.
Metrics such as field sizes and quality of racing will drive the process, according to RMG finance director Martin Stevenson.
He added: "Betting turnover, how much is being bet on respective racecourses' fixtures, is a big part of this, so if they have done well in the shops they get more money."
Racecourses will also now be helped by bookmakers sharing betting data with RMG for the first time.
For commercial reasons it will be accounting firm KPMG that will collect the information from bookmakers and anonymise it before passing it on to RMG, which will see race-by-race betting performance.
Individual racecourses will see their own data and the data of one other racecourse of a comparable size.
SIS say they want to drive turnover on racing
SIS say they want to drive turnover on racing
Charlie Crowhurst/Getty Images
Witten said: "What we're trying to do is drive turnover on racing, trying to return it to its pre-eminent position in shops.
"It has been overtaken by football and its relative value in shops has declined. There's a will on both sides to make it back into the most valuable product.
"By sharing that data RMG will be able to do a number of things. They will be able to really assess the value of the content they are putting into shops and they will be able to benchmark individual racecourses to incentivise them to produce the type of racing product that plays well with customers."
Jockey Club chief executive Simon Bazalgette said: "I would say for the first time – certainly in my time in racing – it's genuinely in the interests of both parties to grow the market for betting on horseracing."
What will happen if FOBT stakes are slashed?
The elephant in the room for any betting-shop media rights deal is what the government decides to do with the maximum stake on FOBTs.
Bookmakers claim that if the stake is cut to £2 from the current maximum of £100 it will lead to thousands of betting-shop closures, while Arc's chief executive Martin Cruddace claimed racing would lose at least £55 million in income a year from lost media rights and levy if those predictions come to pass.
FitzGerald admits to being concerned.
"FOBTs are decided by government and it is not for us to tell government what the number should be," he said.
"If it drops down to £2 what we are seeing in our research shows us it being pretty tough."
The terms of the RMG-SIS deal mean that the two sides share the risk of shop closures, which previously would have fallen upon SIS, and at a certain undisclosed number of closures the racecourses take more of the pain.
Witten said SIS had taken steps to insulate themselves from betting-shop closures but added: "A £2 stake, if it has the consequences people have been talking about, is bad for everybody including all the way through to racing because media rights payments are what fuels racing."
Jockey Club chief executive Simon Bazalgette
Jockey Club chief executive Simon Bazalgette
Edward Whitaker
Bazalgette said the betting industry had not done a good job dealing with the criticism it had faced.
He added: "From racing's point of view that's not our argument but in the end it does affect us if the number of shops goes down, which it will if the government goes to the extreme.
"That would affect our media rights and our levy as well, so that's something we're all keeping an eye on and certainly from racing's point of view we're making sure that government is very aware of the financial impact the decisions they take could have on racing."
How has Arc responded?
One of the other consequences of RMG's deal with SIS was that Arc was left at the altar, having thought they were joining forces to sell direct to bookmakers.
That led them to form The Racing Partnership (TRP) in December 2015, representing the 15 Arc courses and seven independents – Fakenham, Ffos Las, Hexham, Newton Abbot, Plumpton, Ripon and Towcester.
The channel started showing British racing from the start of last year, although not all bookmakers signed up immediately.
Arena Racing Company chief executive Martin Cruddace
Arena Racing Company chief executive Martin Cruddace
Cruddace said he wished RMG well in its new venture.
However, he added: "Having to plough our own furrow has actually been fantastic for the company because we completely control the distribution and sale of our own rights, not leaking value to a third-party aggregator.
"Yes, it was expensive that Ladbrokes Coral did not take our content for six months but it has enabled us, with the knowledge we have in our business of the bookmaking industry, to understand at a forensic level the true value of our product, which is considerable."
Unlike the RMG-SIS deal, TRP's agreements are staggered so none of them finish at the same time.
"So it would be very difficult for the industry to hold us to ransom," Cruddace said.
However, TRP is also working with bookmakers more closely, with its agreement with Ladbrokes Coral being on a profit-share basis.
"The profit-share deal with Ladbrokes Coral is performing exceptionally well," Cruddace said. "We have quarterly meetings with Ladbrokes Coral to go through what works for them and what doesn't."
What happens to TurfTV?
Another consequence of the RMG-SIS deal is the demise of TurfTV, the joint venture between Racecourse Media Services Limited, representing the RMG tracks, and Timeweave, ultimately owned by billionaire Joe Lewis.
TurfTV was a game changer, breaking SIS's monopoly when it launched its service in 2007 and changing British racing's funding model by making media rights and not the levy the sport's main source of funds from the betting industry.
Over the course of its existence, Stevenson said, TurfTV has provided RMG racecourses with £415m of income.
He added: "It was a pivotal moment in the funding of UK horseracing and a pivotal moment in racecourses working together to achieve something rather than the divided approach there had been before."
FitzGerald said TurfTV "was a very necessary part of levelling the playing field".
He added: "We would like to record our thanks to our partners because I don't think we could have done it without them.
"Also to the staff, they have done a fantastic job and we do understand the impact [of closure] on those people's lives."
Bazalgette was integral to the creation of TurfTV before he joined the Jockey Club.
He said: "The guys at TurfTV have done a great job and it's a shame that business will be no more but TurfTV was always a means to an end to this creation of a more commercial relationship between betting and racing."
Media rights in numbers
£415 million The amount RMG racecourses received from betting-shop channel TurfTV
£100 million The amount RMG courses will receive in media rights in 2018
1986 The year SIS was formed
72 The number of betting shops in the UK and Ireland not taking SIS's service
38 The number of British racecourses shown by SIS (37 RMG plus Chelmsford City)
22 The number of British racecourses shown on The Racing Partnership (15 Arc courses plus seven independents)
Members can read the latest exclusive interviews, news analysis and comment available from 6pm daily on racingpost.com
Bill Barber on the implications of a major five-year agreement
6:00PM, MAR 31 2018
At midnight on Saturday a switchover takes place at Media City, Salford, marking the beginning of one of the most significant commercial deals in British racing's recent history.
Former fierce commercial rivals SIS and Racecourse Media Group (RMG) have started a five-year agreement for the distribution of pictures and data to betting shops across the UK and Ireland which promises a major boost for racecourse finances and a new era of collaboration between the sport and the betting industry.
However, overshadowing the new deal are concerns that all sides will be hit if betting-shop numbers fall as a result of the government deciding to cut FOBT stakes.
Why did the former rivals join forces?
When the deal was announced in September 2015 it came as a major shock. RMG – which is now responsible for the media rights of 37 British tracks including those under the Jockey Club banner and the likes of Ascot, Goodwood and York – also held a half-share in TurfTV, the betting-shop pictures provider set up to break SIS's monopoly.
Racecourse Media Group chief executive Richard FitzGerald
Racecourse Media Group chief executive Richard FitzGerald
RUK
Many had been predicting SIS's demise and RMG's chief executive Richard FitzGerald, by his own admission, had set out with TurfTV to "level the playing field" with SIS.
"But things change and you do the right thing for racing," he said last week.
What had also changed were the plans RMG had made with racecourse group Arena Racing Company (Arc) to team up to sell its rights to bookmakers directly.
The idea had been to cut out the "leakage" from previous deals, which it was estimated was costing the sport tens of millions of pounds a year in income.
SIS product director Paul Witten described the new deal as a win-win for bookmakers and for RMG.
"In the past SIS would buy rights on a fixed-price basis, apply a margin and sell them to the market on a per shop basis," he explained.
"In this agreement far more of the value is going back to RMG. In return RMG have accepted a level of risk share. That allows SIS to reduce its margin and become more efficient because we are not pricing in risk or shop closures."
How will racecourse finances be improved?
In 2016, the latest year for which figures are available, RMG's tracks received £85.5 million in media rights payments, £52.2m of which came from TurfTV.
The effect of the SIS deal means those media rights payments "will be north of a hundred million pounds this year" according to FitzGerald.
The way that income is distributed to racecourses will change under the new deal, with tracks being incentivised to put on racing that maximises turnover in betting shops.
"There will be a performance pool within the payments that we make to our racecourses to incentivise them to effectively make their product even better for bookmakers," FitzGerald said.
Metrics such as field sizes and quality of racing will drive the process, according to RMG finance director Martin Stevenson.
He added: "Betting turnover, how much is being bet on respective racecourses' fixtures, is a big part of this, so if they have done well in the shops they get more money."
Racecourses will also now be helped by bookmakers sharing betting data with RMG for the first time.
For commercial reasons it will be accounting firm KPMG that will collect the information from bookmakers and anonymise it before passing it on to RMG, which will see race-by-race betting performance.
Individual racecourses will see their own data and the data of one other racecourse of a comparable size.
SIS say they want to drive turnover on racing
SIS say they want to drive turnover on racing
Charlie Crowhurst/Getty Images
Witten said: "What we're trying to do is drive turnover on racing, trying to return it to its pre-eminent position in shops.
"It has been overtaken by football and its relative value in shops has declined. There's a will on both sides to make it back into the most valuable product.
"By sharing that data RMG will be able to do a number of things. They will be able to really assess the value of the content they are putting into shops and they will be able to benchmark individual racecourses to incentivise them to produce the type of racing product that plays well with customers."
Jockey Club chief executive Simon Bazalgette said: "I would say for the first time – certainly in my time in racing – it's genuinely in the interests of both parties to grow the market for betting on horseracing."
What will happen if FOBT stakes are slashed?
The elephant in the room for any betting-shop media rights deal is what the government decides to do with the maximum stake on FOBTs.
Bookmakers claim that if the stake is cut to £2 from the current maximum of £100 it will lead to thousands of betting-shop closures, while Arc's chief executive Martin Cruddace claimed racing would lose at least £55 million in income a year from lost media rights and levy if those predictions come to pass.
FitzGerald admits to being concerned.
"FOBTs are decided by government and it is not for us to tell government what the number should be," he said.
"If it drops down to £2 what we are seeing in our research shows us it being pretty tough."
The terms of the RMG-SIS deal mean that the two sides share the risk of shop closures, which previously would have fallen upon SIS, and at a certain undisclosed number of closures the racecourses take more of the pain.
Witten said SIS had taken steps to insulate themselves from betting-shop closures but added: "A £2 stake, if it has the consequences people have been talking about, is bad for everybody including all the way through to racing because media rights payments are what fuels racing."
Jockey Club chief executive Simon Bazalgette
Jockey Club chief executive Simon Bazalgette
Edward Whitaker
Bazalgette said the betting industry had not done a good job dealing with the criticism it had faced.
He added: "From racing's point of view that's not our argument but in the end it does affect us if the number of shops goes down, which it will if the government goes to the extreme.
"That would affect our media rights and our levy as well, so that's something we're all keeping an eye on and certainly from racing's point of view we're making sure that government is very aware of the financial impact the decisions they take could have on racing."
How has Arc responded?
One of the other consequences of RMG's deal with SIS was that Arc was left at the altar, having thought they were joining forces to sell direct to bookmakers.
That led them to form The Racing Partnership (TRP) in December 2015, representing the 15 Arc courses and seven independents – Fakenham, Ffos Las, Hexham, Newton Abbot, Plumpton, Ripon and Towcester.
The channel started showing British racing from the start of last year, although not all bookmakers signed up immediately.
Arena Racing Company chief executive Martin Cruddace
Arena Racing Company chief executive Martin Cruddace
Cruddace said he wished RMG well in its new venture.
However, he added: "Having to plough our own furrow has actually been fantastic for the company because we completely control the distribution and sale of our own rights, not leaking value to a third-party aggregator.
"Yes, it was expensive that Ladbrokes Coral did not take our content for six months but it has enabled us, with the knowledge we have in our business of the bookmaking industry, to understand at a forensic level the true value of our product, which is considerable."
Unlike the RMG-SIS deal, TRP's agreements are staggered so none of them finish at the same time.
"So it would be very difficult for the industry to hold us to ransom," Cruddace said.
However, TRP is also working with bookmakers more closely, with its agreement with Ladbrokes Coral being on a profit-share basis.
"The profit-share deal with Ladbrokes Coral is performing exceptionally well," Cruddace said. "We have quarterly meetings with Ladbrokes Coral to go through what works for them and what doesn't."
What happens to TurfTV?
Another consequence of the RMG-SIS deal is the demise of TurfTV, the joint venture between Racecourse Media Services Limited, representing the RMG tracks, and Timeweave, ultimately owned by billionaire Joe Lewis.
TurfTV was a game changer, breaking SIS's monopoly when it launched its service in 2007 and changing British racing's funding model by making media rights and not the levy the sport's main source of funds from the betting industry.
Over the course of its existence, Stevenson said, TurfTV has provided RMG racecourses with £415m of income.
He added: "It was a pivotal moment in the funding of UK horseracing and a pivotal moment in racecourses working together to achieve something rather than the divided approach there had been before."
FitzGerald said TurfTV "was a very necessary part of levelling the playing field".
He added: "We would like to record our thanks to our partners because I don't think we could have done it without them.
"Also to the staff, they have done a fantastic job and we do understand the impact [of closure] on those people's lives."
Bazalgette was integral to the creation of TurfTV before he joined the Jockey Club.
He said: "The guys at TurfTV have done a great job and it's a shame that business will be no more but TurfTV was always a means to an end to this creation of a more commercial relationship between betting and racing."
Media rights in numbers
£415 million The amount RMG racecourses received from betting-shop channel TurfTV
£100 million The amount RMG courses will receive in media rights in 2018
1986 The year SIS was formed
72 The number of betting shops in the UK and Ireland not taking SIS's service
38 The number of British racecourses shown by SIS (37 RMG plus Chelmsford City)
22 The number of British racecourses shown on The Racing Partnership (15 Arc courses plus seven independents)
Members can read the latest exclusive interviews, news analysis and comment available from 6pm daily on racingpost.com
What happens to TurfTV?
Another consequence of the RMG-SIS deal is the demise of TurfTV, the joint venture between Racecourse Media Services Limited, representing the RMG tracks, and Timeweave, ultimately owned by billionaire Joe Lewis.
TurfTV was a game changer, breaking SIS's monopoly when it launched its service in 2007 and changing British racing's funding model by making media rights and not the levy the sport's main source of funds from the betting industry.
Over the course of its existence, Stevenson said, TurfTV has provided RMG racecourses with £415m of income.
He added: "It was a pivotal moment in the funding of UK horseracing and a pivotal moment in racecourses working together to achieve something rather than the divided approach there had been before."
FitzGerald said TurfTV "was a very necessary part of levelling the playing field".
He added: "We would like to record our thanks to our partners because I don't think we could have done it without them.
"Also to the staff, they have done a fantastic job and we do understand the impact [of closure] on those people's lives."
Bazalgette was integral to the creation of TurfTV before he joined the Jockey Club.
He said: "The guys at TurfTV have done a great job and it's a shame that business will be no more but TurfTV was always a means to an end to this creation of a more commercial relationship between betting and racing."
Another consequence of the RMG-SIS deal is the demise of TurfTV, the joint venture between Racecourse Media Services Limited, representing the RMG tracks, and Timeweave, ultimately owned by billionaire Joe Lewis.
TurfTV was a game changer, breaking SIS's monopoly when it launched its service in 2007 and changing British racing's funding model by making media rights and not the levy the sport's main source of funds from the betting industry.
Over the course of its existence, Stevenson said, TurfTV has provided RMG racecourses with £415m of income.
He added: "It was a pivotal moment in the funding of UK horseracing and a pivotal moment in racecourses working together to achieve something rather than the divided approach there had been before."
FitzGerald said TurfTV "was a very necessary part of levelling the playing field".
He added: "We would like to record our thanks to our partners because I don't think we could have done it without them.
"Also to the staff, they have done a fantastic job and we do understand the impact [of closure] on those people's lives."
Bazalgette was integral to the creation of TurfTV before he joined the Jockey Club.
He said: "The guys at TurfTV have done a great job and it's a shame that business will be no more but TurfTV was always a means to an end to this creation of a more commercial relationship between betting and racing."
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