The media rights balance
On Monday, SIS introduced a slightly reduced schedule. They have actually only lost three meetings – Oxford (Monday) and Towcester (Tuesday/Thursday)
Overall, they are now staging 36 meetings per week compared to PGR’s 59, giving them roughly 38% of the fixtures.
So how do the numbers compare over time?
Incredibly, there are now actually more fixtures than there were two years ago!
This table shows the July 2022 fixture list before the formation of PGR when SIS had the lion’s share of the fixtures: 62 meetings compared to ARC’s 32 (66%/34%).
It is perhaps interesting to compare the number of fixtures held onto by Entain, an identical 22, though it is a slightly smaller percentage of a bigger cake, 59 meetings compared to the 52 when they were contracted to SIS. The Irish tracks have also gained a couple of additional fixtures in the last couple of year.
And looking back even further. .
This is a snapshot of ten years ago and it all seems so simple by comparison.
BAGS operated a monopoly and SIS was merely the vehicle through whom the pictures were broadcast. There were 25 tracks back then but only 40 regular BAGS fixtures. RPGTV was operating, but not directly linked to the BAGS fixtures. We also still had the occasional fixture on SKY.
At this stage, we were just over two years away from the split between the Greyhound Media Group and SIS which then led to the huge increase in the number of fixtures.
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