An ambitious plan designed to bring a new audience
to British Flat racing was unveiled yesterday - appropriately, in view of the
drama and excitement which its organisers hope to generate, at the headquarters
of BAFTA. At its centre is a new competition to decide the champion racehorse
of the year, starting in 2010, with the promise of £10m per year in new
money to ensure the venture succeeds.
The idea came from within
Racing UK and is being managed by the satellite broadcaster on behalf of the
racecourses involved. Billed as 'The Sovereign Series', it strings together 10
Group One races, with points being awarded to the first three home in each. The
horse with most points at the end of the season becomes champion, earning his
connections a significant payday.
The competition will have a prize
pool of £2m - it has yet to be decided whether this will be divided among
the first three or handed entirely to the winner. An additional £3m in
prize money will be divided among the races involved, which are already worth a
collective £5m.
A further
£3m will be spent on promotion, and those behind the initiative hope to
give a major boost to the sport's profile. "We believe the Sovereign Series
will capture the imagination of a new generation of sports fans who have never
before been interested in racing," said Simon Bazalgette, executive chairman of
Racing UK.
"Racing needs to evolve and appeal to a wider audience. Our
vision is that, in five years, the Sovereign Series will have become
established as a major sports competition in the British calendar, alongside
Wimbledon, the Open and other similar events."
Bazalgette said he was
assuming that the Series would be sold as a package to a single terrestrial
broadcaster. It is this aim which prevents the project from starting next year
- the seven racecourses involved will not all be free to negotiate new
terrestrial deals until 2010.
But even if such a sale did not realise
the sort of sums hoped for, Bazalgette insists that the promised prize money
would still be produced. "Racing UK will be generating £4m or £5m
in profits this year, so [it] is certainly big enough to be backing this
competition," he said.
"It's a very exciting initiative," said Andrew
Thompson, head of sport at Channel 4. "Many of us have been saying for a long
time that we need a better story for the Flat season."
Though he
declined to speculate on whether Channel 4 would compete for the rights to the
Series, Thompson added: "We're absolutely committed to racing, we want to stay
in racing and continue to provide the big audience that helps maintain racing's
profile."
Had the competition been in place last year, four horses -
Authorized, Ramonti, Dylan Thomas and Notnowcato - would have been in
contention going into the last race, the Champion Stakes. However, only the
last-named ran in the Newmarket race and therein lies a major problem for the
Sovereign Series.
Its backers promise to make the Champion Stakes "one
of the richest and most popular events in the British sporting calendar" but
its position in the racing calendar means it must compete with the Prix de
l'Arc de Triomphe - now the world's richest turf race - and the Breeders' Cup.
Harry Herbert, co-founder of the Royal Ascot Racing Club and among
those deployed yesterday to talk up the Series, was optimistic. "Whether you're
Sheikh Mohammed or John Magnier, if it comes down to the Champion Stakes, why
wouldn't you have a go?"
But when he was asked if Motivator, his club's
2005 Derby winner, would have been diverted away from the Arc if the Series had
been in place at the time, his response was neither immediate nor unequivocal.
After some spluttering, he managed: "I suspect we would probably have run him
in the Champion Stakes."
Similar competitions have failed to work for
the sport in the past. The World Series of Racing suffered a slow death through
lack of interest, while jump racing's Order of Merit has embarrassingly crowned
non-champions like Royal Shakespeare.
But Bazalgette was robust about
the need to try something new. "Doing nothing is the worst option," he said.
"There's an opportunity there to start getting the attention of general sports
fans - and if we don't do that, other sports will."