Future Of Broadcast Hot Topic At ARC

Demystification and diversity were the twin keys to a broader fan base proposed to the opening day of the 37th Asian Racing Conference in Seoul yesterday.

The first was highlighted by Niall Sloane, Director of Sport at ITV. Sloane's phone had nearly melted when he alighted at Seoul airport, so many congratulatory texts did he receive after his racing team, in its first year since regaining the rights to cover the sport in the UK, had won a BAFTA for its broadcast of the Grand National. He welcomed this as gratifying proof that a conscious attempt to make coverage lighter and leaner is paying off.

“Racing has to be more inclusive, less opaque and, yes, fun,” he said. “Sometimes we appear to be all too eager to say no to fun.” He invoked the “age-old dichotomy of heritage and baggage: too much baggage, you eventually come to a standstill; throw out heritage, you end up losing your sense of self.”

Previously head of Formula 1 at the BBC, Sloane spoke of “one small problem” in trying to broaden the reach of that sport by applying for data to share with viewers: the name of that problem was Bernie Ecclestone. Sloane said he felt the former boss of Formula 1 was determined to monetise everything and counselled racing that “goodwill and understanding” was too precious to have a price.

He also cautioned against confusing ends and means. Broadcasters should only be tasked with delivering the image, not creating it. “Racing has to decide what it wants to be,” he said. “Don't trust futurologists. Whatever happened to 3D?”

That said, there was no denying the possibilities for enhanced engagement raised by Oonagh Chan, senior consultant at the Hong Kong Jockey Club, in a presentation on broadcasting technology trends and live sports television. She urged racing to harness such advances as 360-degree cameras and ever-higher definition, from HD to 4K to 8K, and also to learn from the popularity of immersive virtual reality games.

“We have to widen viewers' personal experience,” she said. “We have to allow them personal choice, liberating them from the camera angles we impose on them from the top of a grandstand or tower, and allow them to immerse themselves in the race itself.”

Woodbine has already experimented with a 360-degree jockey-cam, uploaded within 10 minutes of the race and manipulated by the viewer, who can rotate to a chosen perspective at will. Chan quoted Mark Zuckerberg on Facebook's acquisition of the leading brand in virtual reality technology, Oculus: “One day this kind of immersive, augmented reality will become part of the daily lives of billions of people.”

But technology could also have more specialised benefits for the sport. Chan highlighted the potential to integrate and standardise regulatory decision-making by sharing the progress being made towards centralised, remote television production, requiring only cameras on site.

The theme of dismantling barriers was taken up by MinKi Shim, associate manager of the Korean Racing Authority's marketing department, in analysing the phenomenal local growth of E-Sports. To approach a very different fan base, racing had to cut to the chase. To newcomers, an immediate tutorial was as off-putting as any arcane jargon; the aspiration should always be to give them the chance to “do” rather than “read.”

Diversity, meanwhile, was the theme addressed by four women in the afternoon session. Anna Seitz Ciannello of Fasig-Tipton reprised the story of the all-female syndicate, It's All About The Girls, and its Group 1 winner Global Glamour. Susannah Gill of Arena Racing in Britain described the establishment last year of a steering group to enhance diversity in a sport characterised as “white, predominately male and middle-aged”; an action plan is to be announced next month. Megumi Ichiyama of the Japan Racing Association revealed the various promotional strategies, including reserved areas of the track, pursued since a 2012 JRA survey measured female attendance at just 14%.

Victoria Carter, deputy chair of NZ Thoroughbred Racing, summed up the message by saying that a woman should not have to be “unique, exceptional or chosen” to be appointed to a leadership role in racing. She cited two recent studies. “[Both] showed that companies with above-average diversity in leadership teams reported better pay-offs in terms of innovation and higher income margins,” she said. “Companies in the top 20% in terms of revenue have a lot more women in their leadership team-nearly 20% more-than the bottom 20%. If you sit at a table with the same kind of people, you're probably with people who are going to think the same way. Divergent backgrounds mean tackling the same idea in different ways and coming up with different solutions, increasing the odds that one of those solutions will be a hit.”