The Victoria Racing Club says it is not concerned about the impact declining raw TV ratings could have on a new broadcast deal for the Melbourne Cup, as Seven indicates an interest in pinching the broadcast rights back from Ten.
Ten has one year left to run on a five-year, $100 million deal to broadcast Cup week at Flemington. Its coverage goes head-to-head with Seven, which broadcasts Melbourne racing on free-to-air TV for 51 weeks and Sydney racing throughout the year.
Ten’s raw ratings have continued to decline year-on-year – the audience for the Cup was down from a national average of 1.85 million in 2021 to 1.5 million this year across television and 10 Play.
Mark Zahra rides Gold Trip to victory at the 2022 Melbourne Cup. Credit:Getty
While the VRC is yet to launch the bidding process for its next set of rights, chairman Neil Wilson said it was “very comfortable” with its relationship with Ten, which this year brought Eddie McGuire onto the team to give the broadcast more gravitas.
Wilson said a broader view had to be taken of the Cup week audience.
“That’s just a free-to-air rating,” he said.
“We look at the whole picture, we look at the whole audience picture which is the way you need to measure it now. We see these free-to-air comparisons going on, and on a live free-to-air at that time, and it’s valid, it’s real, it’s true, but it’s not the picture you should be looking at now as a measure of engagement.
“[We’re working] to attract audiences who are very much not the ‘sit in front of one station all day’ [crowd]. There are some people that want that, there are some people that want racing only, there are some people that want entertainment and the colour of the event only.”
When the VRC signed a deal with Ten in 2019, it did so with the hopes Ten could attract a younger audience to Cup week and give the four-day Flemington carnival bespoke promotion, as opposed to Seven, where Cup week would form just one of their 52 weeks of coverage.
And Paramount, Ten’s owner, said there was an upswing in viewers in the 16- to 39-year-old age bracket, with its 2022 Melbourne Cup coverage enjoying a rise of 15 per cent on 2021 in the key advertising demographic.
Wilson said the way people watch racing had shifted rapidly since the last broadcast deal was done.
“I think people are consuming content, sport, very differently to what they did five years ago, whether it be long format or short format,” Wilson said.
“The next generation, particularly, are happy to switch to where they get the best experience.
“Over time, where does that lead? The consumers and the fans, and people that want to watch racing or the event or a combination of both, they’ll work that out.
“The market is very different [to what it was in 2019] and where that heads, we’ll see.”
Paramount would not comment on whether it was interested in bidding for the next set of rights, from 2024. But Seven’s head of sport Lewis Martin said he would certainly make a play to bring the Cup back to Seven.
“We’ve got a 52-week a year horse racing proposition, and we would love the Melbourne Cup carnival to be part of that,” Martin told The Age.
“We’ll certainly be more than happy to chat with the VRC about the Melbourne Cup in the future.”
Ten has integrated the Cup and Flemington racecourse into some of its regular programs, such as The Project, The Bachelor, MasterChef and The Living Room, but anecdotally, a lot of once-a-year punters missed this year’s race because they didn’t realise the Cup was on Ten and not Seven, pointing to an under-promotion of its broadcast by Ten. On Derby Day, Seven was broadcasting Sydney’s Golden Eagle meeting, and the two stations also went head-to-head on Cup and Stakes day.
Rusted on racing fans have gravitated towards Racing.com on channel 78 over the past four years, particularly during the COVID-19 pandemic when racing prevailed as a sport while others were shut down for long periods. Racing.com is not part of the ratings survey, therefore does not count as part of the declining free-to-air figures, and was not a genuine competitor to Seven before 2019 when Cup week ratings were much stronger.
Also a contributing factor to the drop in ratings is the growth in mobile audiences since Ten first entered the deal with the VRC. Racing.com provides a free mobile broadcast through its app and is also available via Kayo, and a number of online bookmakers provide a feed to Sky Racing through their sites.
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