Horse racing powerhouses Victoria Racing Club, Ascot and Goodwood Racecourses and the Breeders’ Cup have signed up as founding partners of a new media company that has launched today (Tuesday) and is designed to drive exposure for the sport across digital platforms.
World Horse Racing is being backed by the VRC, which operates the Melbourne Cup in Australia; leading UK racing entities Ascot and Goodwood and American racing showpiece the Breeders’ Cup.
World Horse Racing said it will focus on racing’s athletes and engaging personalities, both human and equine, along with the festivals that stage the events in a bid to offer a fresh focus on international thoroughbred horse racing.
World Horse Racing will also seek to connect the sport’s stars with its fans by providing a platform for the best in user generated content.
Coverage will be free to access on social media platforms Facebook, Twitter, Instagram and YouTube, along with an existing network of over a million who follow the respective pages of the founding partners.
World Horse Racing’s social media will be produced and managed by Engage Digital Partners, which has a team of 80 staff in the UK and India with on-ground presence in the Middle East, USA, Argentina and Australia.
Neil Wilson, chief executive of the Victoria Racing Club, said: “We lead Australia in our push into the global digital space, with partnerships with Twitter, Facebook and Snapchat providing a taste of the Melbourne Cup Carnival to people around the world. Our alliance with World Horse Racing will expand that reach further than ever before.
“World Horse Racing is another layer to the VRC’s innovative media content strategy, which is focussed on leveraging the broad range of content we generate across both racing and non-racing genres and optimising the reach of this content through carefully considered distribution across multiple platforms, both locally and globally.
“The VRC aims to maximise return on investment for our content and World Horse Racing will allow us to connect with sponsors worldwide and commercialise this content on a global scale.”
Ascot’s chief commercial officer, Juliet Slot, added: “We already know horse racing is one of the most popular sports in the world, but we felt there was real potential to tell our brilliant stories to a much wider audience.
“World Horse Racing gives us the perfect platform to reach a new generation of fans and give a more compelling and engaging story arc compared to standard news coverage. All four of us have so many fascinating tales to tell and it’s these ‘Wow, I never knew that’ pieces of content that we’re looking to celebrate.”