UIR tracks look isolated without Dundalk as clock ticks on a new deal with Arc/Sky the only remaining suitors

When Paul Hensey billed Tuesday's Association of Irish Racecourses (Air) emergency general meeting as an important day for Irish racing he wasn't overstating the matter.

Hensey is only just in the door at Air, but he spent 15 years as manager of the Curragh so he knows the landscape and he will know the significance of a fissure like this. Over the past two decades Irish racing's success has been built on various stable foundations, one of which was the media rights revenue stream.

With the five United Irish Racecourses (UIR) tracks voting against the RMG/SIS deal, the tracks' collective bargaining power has been diminished in an act, provoking a divide in Irish racing that hasn't been seen since the bitter wrangle that led to the formation of Horse Racing Ireland in 2001. In retrospect, that hard-won harmonisation and the consolidation of the shop window product was among the catalysts for the financial security that followed for racecourses.