ITV win horse racing rights from 2017

Not unexpected but now confirmed C4 have lost exclusive FTA rights to horse racing, with ITV picking up coverage from next year.

http://www.racingpost.com/news/horse-racing/itv-set-to-replace-channel-4-as-racing-broadcaster/2012604/top/#newsArchiveTabs=last7DaysNews

It's been no secret that many in racing are unhappy with how the C4 deal has worked out, and the F1 deal was probably what swayed it back in ITV's favour.

Will be interesting to see who ITV get to make their coverage - hopefully they'll learn from C4's ultimately fatal mistake and bring in Highflyer Productions.


Will be a loss to C4's schedule but one they can probably take - I'd say ITV need it more on a Saturday afternoon than they do at the moment, although speculation is much of it will be on ITV4. I guess the big events will get a 2-5pm slot on ITV, with ITV4 picking up the slack with the lesser weekday events and some Saturdays too. Suspect many will remain on ITV though as ITV4 have events of their own many weekends.

There was an interesting piece on Tuesday about this in the racing post. One things for sure I think most of the Saturday racing will end up on ITV/stv while most weekday stuff bar Cheltenham Festival, Royal Ascot. It must be the first time 30 years Horse racing will on Ch3.

Lucky escape for Channel 4 because no one watches the racing in vast numbers outside the Grand National

thats a lie,

WTF? Are you sure this is actually happening?

According to Charles Sale the main reason for the change is Epsom and Ascot were not happy with the declining viewing figures plus the fact ITV is set to pay £30 million while Channel 4 paid half that:

http://www.dailymail.co.uk/sport/racing/article-3381446/ITV-win-four-year-horseracing-TV-rights-deal-ahead-current-holders-Channel-4.html

Also being reported in the Racing Post, they state New Years Eve 2016 will apparently be the last ever day of Channel 4 Racing after 31 years with ITV starting on New Years Day 2017.

http://www.racingpost.com/news/horse-racing/itv-set-to-replace-channel-4-as-racing-broadcaster/2012604/#newsArchiveTabs=last7DaysNews

Aren't the Grand National rights separate? That's how it was able to be on the BBC for so long when most other races were on Channel 4 or satellite.

Lets hope they change their plans in the meantime, and allow the horse racing to improve the Saturday afternoon schedules. This is a real opportunity for ITV, and it would be great to see some programmes (similar to The Morning Line) on Saturday mornings aswell to complement the coverage, rather than most of it being shunted to ITV4.

With New Years Eve being on a Saturday I guess there might be a meeting under the usual Saturday deal, but suspect C4 will finish with Kempton and Chepstow on the 26th/27th.

Since 2013 they've all been together. No indication this time around they'll be separate, and with them doubling the rights fee this time round that's unlikely to change in 2020 either unless ratings fall further.

Worth noting to that ITV are getting a years worth of coverage (about 90 days) for about the price of one Premier League football match.

There are different groups of racecourses who can negotiate their rights independently or as groups. Prior to the current agreement, courses such as Epsom, Ascot and Aintree awarded all their meetings to the BBC, with about half of the remaining courses going to C4 (the others, mostly the smaller ones were exclusive to satellite / cable).

Not really. The figures for most of the non grand national races have been in freefall since C4 became the exclusive rights holder.

Good bit of business for ITV