Racing TV viewers left in the dark as Ayr link cut off in BT network failure

Anyone hoping to watch the action at Ayr from afar were left in the dark with a connectivity issue in the local area meaning no live pictures could be shown on Racing TV.

An announcement was first made on the racing channel shortly before the opening race at 1.30pm and the issue was unable to be rectified by the end of the eight-race card nearly four hours later, with the channel only able to broadcast audio commentary from the track.

"Just after midday, almost all connectivity to Ayr racecourse was lost, with BT reporting a major network failure in Scotland between Ayr and Glasgow," explained Seb Vance, director of communications for Racecourse Media Group.

"This caused widespread disruption in the region to domestic and business telephony/internet customers including not only our main, but also our back-up video and audio paths."

Vance added: "Audio commentary of all races at Ayr has been provided but the outage meant we had no video race feed due to the various connections being down, and BT were unable to source a satellite uplink truck to go to Ayr racecourse in time.

"The pictures were recorded locally meaning we will be able to upload the races to the archive but we can only apologise to our viewers for the lack of live pictures."

Ayr results and analysis

Even more frustrating for viewers at home was the fact that there were no issues on-course, with the action screened around the track without a problem.

"It has not caused us any concerns bar our pictures that get beamed out of the racecourse," said clerk of the course Graeme Anderson.

"I was only made aware of it about 12.30pm today and it's affected the whole area and not just the racecourse. Nothing internally has been impacted, even our Wi-Fi is on. We've even got the pictures on course but the issue is beaming the picture out of the racecourse."

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