Thank the racing gods that common sense has prevailed this weekend. At least for now.
A boycott of TV interviews by certain racehorse trainers was to take place this Saturday at Sandown as one group demands payments. That plan has now been abandoned in the best interests of the sport.
Group Representing Trainers Looking for Appearance Fees
Organisers of a proposed ban on televised interviews with trainers at Sandown this week have cancelled their boycott to avoid public conflict. That seems like a wise move, but will it hold?
The sport has been split in two by this proposal, though one side is significantly larger than the other, a proposal which demands appearance fees for trainers to give interviews.
Horse racing is already in financial trouble, and one has to ask: who thought it was a good idea to seek appearance fees? More importantly do they ask racegoers or take even a cursory glance at social media to see what the public thinks of this?
The group in question is the Professional Racing Association. The group claims to represent over 170 trainers, though there seems to be no public record of this.
The PRA has spoken out publicly recently to say they would get their members to boycott television interviews with its trainers unless the media rights companies, along with racecourse owners, agreed to pay for them.
Statements had been made to say that trainers wouldn’t keep the money but instead might give it to stable staff or benevolent funds. There isn’t anything transparent or definite on that and, even if there were, this is not the way to spread around racing’s finances properly.
Threats Continue as Split Appears
Though the PRA has backed off this time, it has threated to continue to intervene on the matter. That’s actually an important choice of words, “intervene”, as they appear to have inadvertently admitted that they are shoehorning themselves into racing’s hierarchy, or at least attempting to.
The PRA’s stance appears to be that it is within a racetrack’s capability to avoid TV interview boycotts. There is a further complication though, as more than one organisation claims to ‘represent’ trainers.
The National Trainers Federation also represents handlers and is in turn a member of the Thoroughbred Group. Are you keeping up? They issued their own statement informing the public that they could not support the PRA’s proposed action.
The PRA responded to that, calling off the TV interview boycott to avoid any more conflict. This comes after some of the PRA’s own members spoke out individually saying that they do not support the movement either.
Most trainers appear to understand that giving interviews, helping the public with information and advertising themselves as a business remains crucial and should not come at a fee.
Fees Requested May Jeopardise Media Support
It has come to light that the PRA last weekend contacted the Racecourse Media Group and asked for £500,000 in payments for media rights.
The group wants trainers to come into line somewhat with jockeys, who receive group interview fees. Media rights organisations pay annually for jockey interviews, the money then subsidising their insurance fees which everyone seems to support.
Similar payments for trainers just seem absolutely gross and unnecessary.
Our sport absolutely needs the media to keep us relevant and in the public eye. That’s a take supported by the Racehorse Owners Association as announced this week by their chief executive Louise Norman via a Thoroughbred Group communication.
More than ever before in history, this sport needs its personalities to be known around the country. Information and help on a complicated sport needs to be easy to access. Any blocking of this, for any amount of time, hinders a sport already in financial trouble.
Narrow-Minded View on Finance Distribution
Via a statement, the PRA said its position is that it wants to address inequalities in racing’s finances. This is a very narrow-minded take.
I say this as, paying jockeys and not trainers for interviews cannot be treated the same. The fees the jockeys get from media interviews helps their insurance and other fees. They are in danger of injuries and most are not salaried, while trainers take in training fees regardless of success on the track.
Trainers can run horses at various tracks if they have the ammunition, they can sell places on their horse boxes. They can win their share of prize money in races right around the country taking place simultaneously. Jockeys cannot. The PRA is being wilfully ignorant to this point.
The PRA did admit that the main inequality of the distribution of finance comes between how horsemen and racecourses get paid. It badly affects prize money, and they say they’ve not lost focus on that. Why start this way then, who has asked this group in particular to take on the fight?
Like many groups before them, they issue communiques that seem to mention intricate and complicated points while all the time ignoring the simple and the obvious. We let bookmakers take most of our money and that can be stopped by introducing pool betting, run by the sport itself.
Still, we know fine well that many of the PRA’s members, notably the ones in support of TV boycotts, are sponsored by bookmakers. While this is the case, the real issues will never be tackled and the PRA cannot claim to be fighting for all of us to get this sport to where it needs to be.