Exclusive: ITV demands £1.5m reduction in racing television rights payments after losing Grand National

ITV is asking for a £1.5 million reduction in what it still owes to racing for television rights following the loss of the Grand National meeting in April.

A new three-year contract between the broadcaster and the sport, which has been the subject of negotiations since April last year, is believed to be almost ready but the Aintree issue with the current contract – worth £30 million over four years – needs resolving first. Discussions are, said an insider, “intense but polite”.

ITV won a Bafta in 2017 for its coverage of the National, which is racing’s biggest day on television. It was cancelled this year because of coronavirus along with several other popular fixtures that would have been part of ITV’s 92 days of terrestrial coverage. These included the Scottish National, jump racing’s end-of-season finale at Sandown, the Craven meeting, Chester and York’s May fixture.

ITV will cover the first Classic of the season, the Qipco 2,000 Guineas a fortnight on Saturday, with Ed Chamberlin presenting the programme from his spare bedroom in rural Hampshire.

If the prediction of Racecourse Media Group’s chief executive Richard Fitzgerald, the man heading up negotiations on racing’s behalf with ITV, is correct the signing of a new contract between the sport and the broadcaster should be about done and dusted at about the same time.

On Racing TV’s Luck On Sunday show on May 10, Fitzgerald said he was “positive the deal would get done” but that “the timing of the current [lockdown] interruption had not been helpful.” When asked when it might be completed, he said: “Three to four weeks, maybe.”

While racing has been off air it has been haemorrhaging approximately £10m a month in media rights, mainly through bookmaking channels, and, in comparison to that and the huge figures being bandied about the compensation and rebates football’s broadcasters want, ITV’s request for £1.5m is chicken feed.

Negotiations for the new contract began in April last year and, ever since, a deal has been “just round the corner”but it has been a case so far of tomorrow never coming.

Racing’s foot soldiers are getting increasingly jittery that the demands of those heading up the negotiations for racing, including the Jockey Club’s new chief executive Delia Bushell, a specialist in media rights rather than racing, might have over-played the brinkmanship and, in a worst-case scenario, could be left with no terrestrial coverage at all, which would be a disaster for a sport.

ITV had hoped to announce a new deal as long ago as New Year’s Day. Ascot was on board after an initial reluctance, as were other racecourses, but it appears to have been the Jockey Club, which owns Cheltenham, Aintree and Newmarket, that dragged its feet. Issues are believed to have included certain dates where big football matches might have clashed with marquee races and a belief that ITV, whose business model relies on bookmaker advertising, does rather too well out of the deal.

However, it is essentially a symbiotic relationship and the broadcast landscape has changed during lockdown. Quite apart from anything else, ITV’s share price has halved since January and it, in turn, has lost considerable advertising revenue from bookmakers.

One thing for sure is that racing cannot afford to lose terrestrial coverage. It is generally agreed ITV is doing a good job. From 2018 to 2019 its audience grew 17 per cent and a main ITV show has 62 per cent more viewers than Channel Four Racing used to attract. The first two days of Cheltenham in March boasted the best viewing figures since records began in 2003.

A spokesperson for ITV would only confirm that “negotiations are ongoing” and, while it has never been entirely clear whose court the ball has been in during negotiations, it now looks like it is back in the Jockey Club’s.