Arc interest in Dundalk adding to the chaos of Irish racing's TV rights saga

Five years after SIS blindsided the entire Irish racing industry by selling its direct-to-home pictures to Racecourse Media Group to be broadcast on what was then Racing UK, have the authorities lost control of the media rights golden goose once again?

I’d love to roll in with a definitive viewpoint in answer to that but the reality is we still don’t know. Media rights discussions are notoriously opaque, a point gloriously illustrated by the fact most racecourse managers and boards did not even realise their own pictures were being sold elsewhere by SIS until the deal was done in 2018.

To the dismay of so many, on January 1, 2019, 363 Irish fixtures were shoehorned into the television schedule of a broadcasting company owned by UK tracks, and the rest is history.