UK public-service broadcaster the BBC is being challenged by commercial broadcasters Channel Four and ITV as well as pay-television broadcaster BSkyB for the next cycle of domestic rights for British Champions Day, the climax of British horse-racing’s Champions Series, according to the Daily Mail.
The BBC’s existing two-year deal with Racecourse Media Group, which controls the media rights of 30 British racecourses, will expire after this year’s Champions Day in October.
The success of the inaugural Champions Day in October 2011 sparked greater interest in the rights from broadcasters. Last year’s event had over one million viewers on the BBC’s flagship channel BBC One.
RMG expects to announce domestic rights deals for the next cycle by the end of the first quarter of 2012.
“What we have done with the sport, and British Champions Day is a part of it, has opened it up to being more than just racing,” RMG chief executive Richard Fitzgerald said. “There is also an entertainment and celebrity angle which has got broadcasters thinking wider.
“We have a fantastic media landscape – the most terrestrial coverage of any sport in the UK which is quite staggering when you read about the demise of racing.”
The 2011 Champions Series – the series which leads up to the Champions Day – was staged at 10 race courses across the UK and featured 35 races. The BBC showed 11 of the races, and Channel Four had the rights for 19.
Fitzgerald said that legislation introduced in 2007 to allow bookmakers to advertise on television had stoked interest from commercial broadcasters.
Meanwhile, Fitzgerald said that GBI – a joint venture between RMG and the At The Races pay-television horse racing channel which distributes rights to UK horse racing events internationally – was close to a new rights deal in Israel which could be its biggest yet. GBI has agreed rights deals in markets as far afield as Azerbaijan and Uruguay.