Melbourne Cup Week and the Spring Carnival are highlights when it comes to the Victorian thoroughbred racing media industry. But it’s a thriving sector that operates every week and most days of the year.
Looking after much of the media surrounding thoroughbred racing in Victoria and South Australia is Peter Campbell, chief executive for VTRIMB. The Racing Victoria-owned business has a handful of divisions and handles deals for media rights for the supply of Victorian and South Australian racing coverage.
VTRIMB stands for Victorian Thoroughbred Racing Integrated Media Business. VTRIMB has its own board with representatives from Country Racing Victoria, Melbourne Racing Club, Moonee Valley Racing Club and Racing Victoria.
The business manages RV’s majority-owned media assets including industry broadcaster Racing.com (broadcast and digital platforms), racing publications Best Bets and Winning Post, and industry photographic service Racing Photos. More on them tomorrow, but there are special Melbourne Cup Week editions of both out today in their busiest week of the year.
VTRIMB also manages Thoroughbred Racing Productions (TRP) and RV’s key media and broadcast partnerships including those with Seven West Media, Sky Racing and a range of Wagering Service Providers (WSPs with digital streaming agreements).
Peter Campbell
Campbell was most recently head of Fox Sports Australia (2017-2020) where he was responsible for Fox Sports commercial and broadcast operations.
Formerly, Campbell was general manager of AFL Media (2013-2017) and prior to that director of sports and Olympic Games at Foxtel (1999-2013).
Although Campbell arrived at VTRIMB just before Cup Week a year ago, with Covid restrictions in place it was a very different event.
Campbell told Mediaweek: “I can remember my first day on the job, I went out to the Caulfield Guineas. The course was empty as I visited our production people.”
Two of the VTRIMB media divisions relate to broadcast media – TRP (Thoroughbred Racing Productions) and Racing.com.
TRP has trucks and cameras on the road all but about four days a year, explained Campbell. “Last financial year we produced coverage from 694 race meetings across Victoria and South Australia which is a huge amount of live television. Our outside broadcast team calculated they did close to 1m kilometres last year.”
TRP (Thoroughbred Racing Productions) at the track
TRP doesn’t outsource its coverage, instead providing all the staffing and tech needed to cover the races.
Earlier this year TRP signed a contract with Gravity Media to use its studio facility in Docklands where coverage is hosted from.
Perhaps the highest-profile of the VTRIMB media assets is Racing.com. It is the only racing channel provided for free to FTA viewers as it sits on 7plus and digital channel 78/68. Racing.com is also available on Foxtel and also sits on the Kayo platform.
The stream is also screened live on the Racing.com website as it covers every TAB-listed race meeting every year in Victoria and South Australia. “We also provide it to the wagering service providers,” said Campbell. VTRIMB also supplies a clean feed of Racing.com to Sky Racing.
Racing.com mobile production vehicle
“On Saturdays we continue our relationship with Seven, having recently agreed to supply coverage of 49 race meetings across the year, up from 21 previously. Having live afternoon horse racing coverage on every weekend of the year on Seven in addition to them carrying Racing.com is crucial to our ambition of getting Victorian thoroughbred racing vision out to as wide an audience as possible.”
Seven has a separate deal with Racing NSW for coverage of meetings from that state.
Earlier this year VTRIMB renewed an advertising deal with SportsBet which is a long-term partner of Racing.com. “We also commenced a new deal with the Entain Group which is Ladbrokes and Neds. They are our principal broadcast wagering providers.
“We also have agreements with a number of other wagering providers plus a number of non-sports advertisers. Those include clothing, motor vehicles, wineries, many very good brand partners.”
Other advertisers include the breeding industry. “One of the things we want is more people to own racehorses.”
It was here Campbell spoke about equine welfare. “It is central to what we do,” he explained.
RV expanded a three-year equine welfare action plan to improve welfare outcomes for horses before, during and after racing. In October 2019, RV committed $25m to create a sustainable approach to equine welfare to support the work of trainers, owners and industry stakeholders.
The Paramount deal (formerly Network 10 when the deal was struck) for Melbourne Cup Week broadcast rights was signed in 2018 with RV stakeholder Victorian Racing Club. That $100m deal expires at the completion of Melbourne Cup Week 2023.
Melbourne Cup Day special tomorrow:
Best Bets and The Winning Post continue to be print success stories
+ Melbourne racing station RSN, race broadcaster Matt Hill and interstate racing competition