“No competition, no progress”
The quote is from Béla Károlyi, the Rumania gymnastics coach who tutored the five times Olympic gold medalist, Nadia Comăneci.
Of course there are all different types of competition, including commercial.
A lack of competition is seldom a good thing, even for the apparent monopolist, at least in the long term.
Those of a certain vintage will recall the pre-1985 Sporting Life. A b/w broadsheet that wouldn’t have looked out of place as a prop in a Charles Dickens film. But it wasn’t just the appearance. Following the loss of other racing papers, notably Greyhound Express, the Life abused their sole trader position to screw both their advertisers and readers.
By the early 1980s, they ‘couldn’t justify’ carrying form for ‘the provincials’. Greyhound coverage was sometimes down to a single page and the results were often two days old.
‘Like it or lump it, nobody else is running them.’
In 1985 the Racing Post appeared, largely because Sheik Maktoum was ploughing money into Godolphin and growing increasingly fed up with Fat Robert Maxwell’s anti-Arab stance. The colour tabloid Post appeared, with Brough Scott front of house, and soon put some manners on the Bouncing Czech.
The Life was forced to raise its game. (I was asked to write a weekly column in the Life – though the two events are not necessarily connected.)
The readers, both horse and dog racing, and the advertisers, all benefitted until 1991 when Roly Poly Robert rolled off his yacht (allegedly).
Things continued unchanged for a while until the Sheik saw an opportunity to stop burning money and eventually sold the Post to The Life for £1 plus the guarantee that his paper’s title would prevail.
(F-you Fat Bob)
There was euphoria among the Post greyhound desk that they had prevailed, despite the loss of a significant number of their horseracing colleagues.
But in the end, the inevitable happened.
Why do we need these big offices and all these staff when we have no opposition? When is Cheltenham week BTW – can we get £6 a copy?
One of the most bizarre cases of a monopoly going wrong has led us to the current media rights war.
The original monopolist was BAGS. They controlled all the fixtures for the betting shops and basically had greyhound racing by the whasnames.
But there was also a second, slightly different, monopoly. It was called SIS and it had exclusive rights to provide the pictures from the tracks to the shops.
Two mutually exclusive monopolies – one a customer of the other.
Now you might think that since both organisations were controlled by the betting industry, what on earth could go wrong?
In hindsight, it all seems very bizarre even to contemplate it.
Perhaps one insight might be to understand that BAGS actually represents the betting industry as a whole. Its chairman has traditionally been chosen from one of the smaller independent betting companies.
That made sense, particularly when we had four (Mecca) and then three (Coral, Ladbrokes, William Hill) High Street Goliaths.
When BAGS was formed there were hundreds of independent bookmakers who had enough clout to insist that they wanted ‘one of their own’ in charge. That would have suited the big lads too of course, not ceding power to their main commercial rivals.
From day one though, SIS was predominantly a big lads carve-up, including The Tote and Betfred, which briefly combined, plus some venture capitalists.
Friction started to build over what SIS would charge the shops for delivering its pictures and data. It didn’t matter much to the likes of Ladbrokes or William Hill if their shops were paying a hefty premium. They could claw that back through SIS dividends.
Not so, the smaller firms.
With GBGB looking for more from betting to support its welfare initiatives, BAGS saw an opportunity to find a cheaper producer (as horseracing had done with Turf TV and successfully defended its position in the High Court/Court Of Appeal in 2007/08).
SIS responded by attempting to ‘cut out the middle man’ – BAGS.
They would offer a lifeline to any tracks that signed up with them – probably around a dozen including the six bookmaker owned tracks – obvs!
The rest would probably just . . . . . quietly fade away.
“We are doing a great thing for welfare, managing the re-homing issue”.
Except – that, for the first time ever, incredibly, the tracks weren’t prepared to be bullied by the bookies.
A group of the bigger players formed the Greyhound Media Group – who stood together and found a partner with their missing expertise and powerful enough to take on the betting industry: the Arena Racing Company. ARC had their own horseracing portfolio and the means to deliver pictures. A perfect fit apparently.
Except for the tracks that GMG were happy to throw under the bus: Doncaster, Harlow, Henlow, Pelaw Grange, Towcester, Shawfield.
In the greatest ironic twist, the tracks that nobody wanted became the saviours of SIS.
No one had originally seen this coming – not least the betting industry.
Who imagined ARC becoming a player? There was a shockwave when they bought the two William Hill tracks. But a bloody earthquake when ARC announced they had a long term deal with Entain (the original Ladbrokes and Corals) starting in January 2024.
If all of this now sounds confusing – it should do. The main architects of the debacle have largely departed the nuclear fallout with the instructions ‘right lads you can take it from here’.
Imagine a chess match where some of the pieces area replaced midway though the game, and others change colour. Which side are we on now?
BUT none of this is a bad thing as far as greyhound racing is concerned.
Because if we return to the two old girls flogging eggs, that is only part of the story.
What about the freshness or quality of the eggs? With no competition, the customer is stuck with whatever is available.
What about the farmers who produce the eggs? When there is only one buyer – he or she can play hardball on what he/she is prepared to pay the producers of the product. Set them against each other, a race to the bottom. Tracks had done it for years with trainers.
ARC and SIS are the old dears, the greyhound industry are the egg farmers, and the betting industry represents the customer with an omelette habit.
Thank God there are TWO old dears!
We are now 11 months away from the biggest shift of power since the media rights issue emerged. So what will the greyhound industry look like on 1 February 2024?
In the first instance, ARC will potentially have 14 tracks on their books: their own five: Central Park, Newcastle, Nottingham, Perry Barr, and Sunderland, the four Entain venues: Crayford, Hove, Monmore and Hove, plus the independently owned: Kinsley, Pelaw Grange, Sheffield, Swindon, and Yarmouth.
As things stand, SIS will have Doncaster, Harlow, Henlow, Oxford, Suffolk Downs and Towcester.
Askern is expected to join the SIS ranks in November, possibly alongside Valley, who are currently re-fitting to be GBGB compliant, though I understand they do have some planning issues. It also remains to be seen what decision is made in relation to banning dog racing by the Senedd.
But this is where some of the guesswork comes in. Last week SIS staged 46, of which 45 were broadcast to the betting shops and one on RPGTV. ARC tracks staged 37 meetings, of which 35 were broadcast to the shops (plus one ‘digital’ – ie an internet service only).
But of the 46 SIS meetings, half were broadcast from Entain tracks. If you add those 23 Entain meetings to the current ARC schedule, that gives them 60 meetings.
It looks almost certain that the ARC service will grow, buoyed by the extra revenue and demand of the Entain/Paddy Power/Betfair agreement, but will they want 60 meetings, or the 14 tracks that stage them?
Conversely, it is impossible to imagine SIS delivering 46 meetings without the Entain tracks, even with Askern and Valley and some Irish content?
Given the loss of Entain, questions will no doubt be asked about the financial stability of SIS – though sources from within insist that their model is sound and has recently been buoyed by an agreement to broadcast South African horse racing pictures, thus competing with the ARC/TRP horse racing content. Also, never forget, that SIS have their own powerful allies, most notably Bet365, who would surely not be happy to see Entain gaining a monopoly position.
(However, don’t ever assume the alliances are clear – only today SIS announced a new horse racing agreement with Entain. They are a very pragmatic lot, the bookies)
The word coming out of Entain is that they are confident that ‘the High Street’ shop will survive and thrive, though it may be a model of ‘one modern high tech location, instead of six competing shops in the same road’. As for digital growth, both ARC and SIS regularly wheel out new overseas deals for their content, though it is seems almost impossible for us outsiders to compare relative importance and volume.
Among all the uncertainties, it is fact that from next January, RPGTV will lose its Entain racing coverage and that will hit them badly.
What replaces it?
Thus far, I am only getting ‘it is still being decided’ response from both ARC and Entain through their new media rights arm, Premier Greyhound Racing.
It is a conundrum. SKY Racing has not been a great friend to greyhounds, with the major greyhound races sometimes shuffled aside for American horse racing.
I understand that there was a cunning plan to show dog racing ‘on the red button’ until the issue of latency (the time between the race being staged and it appearing on screen) became a security issue for betting purposes.
The word on the street is that Betfair is by far the biggest financial supporter of RPGTV. Would they want to support a second greyhound programme? How legally bound are they with Sportystuff? One thing is certain – PGR feature races with no TV would be a disaster.
All of which leads me back to the our egg selling ladies – but with a different thought process.
It is common knowledge that ARC could pretty much wipe out SIS with the change from down the back of the Reuben Brothers’ sofas.
The fact that they haven’t – I am guessing – is almost certainly due to competition law. I would be reasonably sure that if a monopoly like the original BAGS were suddenly to appear today, it would be quashed by the Government. There have been various examples where the Competitions Commission have stepped in, ‘in the public interest’ notably during the Ladbrokes/Coral merger when they insisted that both sold off a significant number of shops.
Maybe PGR and SIS both need each other ‘to be’?
But that doesn’t mean they can’t compete!
If they are both selling the same product at a similar price, neither has the edge.
But what happens if one, not only guarantees the supply, but also raises the quality of the product?
God knows, if you compare RPGTV with its closest Australian comparison, there is no comparison. There is huge scope for improvement.
Put another way, in order to gain a commercial edge do SIS and PGR need to go head-to-head in terms of presentation and quality of product?
Greyhound racing will certainly be hoping so.
