Sky Bet offer no betting at all at Yarmouth as media rights war escalates

In an escalation of the media rights battle between Flutter and Arena Racing Company (Arc), Sky Bet did not offer prices at any stage on Tuesday's meeting at Yarmouth.

Paddy Power, another high-profile bookmaker owned by Flutter, followed the previous course of action undertaken by the gambling giant and did not offer prices until 15 minutes before each race, and those prices were SP-only.

A notice was posted next to each Yarmouth race on Sky Bet. It read: "Sky Bet will not be offering betting on today's meeting at Yarmouth. We have several other race meetings available for customers to bet on across the UK and Ireland, as well as various international horse racing meetings."

Sky Bet and Paddy Power continued to stream the action from Yarmouth, where the eight-race card was worth £88,400 and two of the races featured in the ITV7. 

The Class 2 novice race, one of 29 restricted novice/maiden races for two-year-olds in Britain this year, accounted for just over a third of the prize-money and was worth a minimum value of £30,000.

A spokesperson for Flutter said: “This decision has reluctantly been made due to the increased costs associated with certain aspects of our horse racing proposition. 

“We remain absolutely committed to UK Racing and in 2023, we invested over £140m back into the sport.”

The media-rights war between Flutter and Arc was reignited at the start of the month when Paddy Power and Sky Bet did not offer early prices for an evening fixture at Bath.

Bath: the first staging post in the latest media-rights battle between Flutter and ArcCredit: Alan Crowhurst (Getty Images)

Flutter reversed its unprecedented decision and offered SP-only betting with Paddy Power and Sky Bet after legal intervention by Arc.

In taking the move not to offer early prices, Flutter stated its concerns about the funding of British racing and transparency.

It said: “The industry needs to have a conversation about media rights given total payments from operators stand at more than double the horserace betting levy – and there is little transparency over how much of that funding flows back into this great sport."

Other meetings at Arc-owned tracks have been affected this month by Flutter’s decision not to offer early prices, with Paddy Power and Sky Bet offering only SP prices at two Chepstow fixtures and one at Lingfield.

Ian Brown, the UK and Ireland CEO for Flutter, last week wrote an opinion piece in the Racing Post and was critical of the prize-money on offer at certain Arc meetings.

Brown wrote: “Our data suggests that the incremental value customers place on certain fixtures is much lower than what it costs us just to stream those races. Indeed, what we pay as just one bookmaker is often close to the total prize-money on offer.

“We estimate that overall streaming revenue is around three times the prize-money for meetings like Bath and Chepstow – and that’s also before the levy contribution – which makes us wonder where the rest of the money is going.

“Yet there’s a bigger, more fundamental issue here. We, as Flutter, simply cannot afford to keep investing in racing as an unprofitable product with a shrinking audience, where media costs are escalating at significant rates and the underlying quality of the product is declining. This is why I strongly feel that we need to come together across our great sport to work on real strategic change.”

Arc declined to comment when contacted by the Racing Post on Tuesday.

Read more . . .

Lingfield the latest battleground in Flutter-Arc media rights war as trainers call for prize-money agreement 

Flutter chief calls for major change and claims racing has become 'unprofitable' for bookmakers 

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