Nash keeping the dogs in the picture

Like The Almighty herself, and Lionel Messi, ARC move in mysterious ways.

From the moment that they decided to form a partnership with Greyhound Media Group, buy the GRA and William Hill tracks, along with Nottingham and Central Park, ARC have shown a slight of foot that would leave the multi Ballon D’or winner kicking fresh air.

Then they teamed up with Entain to form Premier Greyhound Racing (PGR). Who saw that coming?

Less of a shock, indeed more of an inevitability, was that the new company would want to challenge SIS/RPGTV to broadcast their racing.

(Sorry that’s Sporty Stuff TV, not even Greyhound TV any more. Nothing to do with Racing Post. Nothing. Nada. They barely know each other. A broadcasting one night stand and they have deleted each other’s phone numbers.)

Equally obvious, given ARC’s relationship with SKY (Racing), was that there would be some form of amalgamation with that channel and its internet arm, attherace.com.

With Entain severing their links with that greyhound channel (formerly known as RPGTV), its future was thrown into doubt – as was previously reported.

It still is!

I understand that there are two options that will be determined by March 31.

• The lights go out or
• The channel is taken over by SIS.

Even in the event of it being the latter, it is likely to herald a major change of format, almost certainly with less greyhound content.

Having done my due diligence, I honestly don’t know which way that decision will go.

 

As for PGR, most greyhound folk are still head scratching.

Not about the potential content – the upscaling of a whole series of events to £20K PGR competitions is self explanatory. A fabulous boost to the open race calendar.

The question was – ‘how committed are PGR to greyhound broadcasting?’

The doubters feared ‘not very’ when Sky Racing announced that its greyhound content would be behind the red button with internet content on the attheraces website.

Some greyhound racing was included as part of the channel’s main coverage but it was a shambles.

Greyhound folk tuning in to see a Category One final found themselves watching Chuck Oppenheimer junior flogging the life out of some poor nag into the stretch at Santa Cruz Meadows , or whatever the mosquito plagued place was called.

However, for those who were paying attentiion – from the beginning – there were signs that PGR was indeed taking greyhound racing broadcasting extremely seriously.

The first was the appointment of Stephane Nahum to the PGR Board of Directors.

You may not have heard of him, but when it comes to business matters, Mr Nahum is reckoned to be the Reuben Brothers most highly rated general. The guy isn’t Premier League, he is Champions League.

They also appointed Garry Nash as the Managing Director. Again, not a name known to greyhound folk but a top operator.

It was the Irishman who successfully managed the merger between Ladbrokes and Corals that has subsequently transformed to become Entain.

Quite frankly, you do not utilise talent of that level if you intend to piss about!

 

For all the preparation, the January 1 roll out of PGR Broadcasting was always going to be a leak finding exercise.

Remember – this was a broadcaster attempting to produce a commendable product from a standing start.

The faults included broadcast races being cut off before the end of a race.

There was incorrect video footage shown for races.

The replays suffered with shortened commentaries as coverage was transferred away.

There were issues relating to withdrawals and a lack of communication between the tracks and broadcast studio.

Personally, I wasn’t aware of most of them.

I know, because not only did Garry Nash note them, he published all the errors as a check list for improvements.

(It should perhaps come as no surprise to learn that the Cork man has a mindset inherited from his academic training. . . as an engineer!)

When the Star received email complaints about the quality of service, they were forwarded on to Nash who then wrote directly to the complainants.

When a leading trainer expressed some concerns about certain aspects of the PGR coverage, Garry Nash phoned him directly to explain the situation and then seek more feedback.

Not only have all the complaints been tackled, Nash is promising further developments and improvements.

They include the introduction of an industry savvy continuity announcer to link the races.

There is a new ‘picture in picture’ facility which will show the runners approaching the traps for the next race.

There will be a new greyhound specific website and an accessible library of form videos “by the end of March”.

 

As for bigger plans . . . something that would see elite greyhound racing taking a much bigger role on SKY Racing in the future? Something that would explain the expense and expertise already committed to . . ?

“No comment”

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