Trainers double down on cash demands for interviews and target ITV Racing Live TV reporters at Sandown this weekend may have some extended gaps to fill after the Professional Racing Association (PRA), a pressure group headed by the former British Horseracing Board chair Peter Savill, said on Monday that it will instruct the 170 trainers on its membership list to boycott pre- and post-race interviews with both ITV Racing and Racing TV unless its demand for a six-figure annual payment for live interviews is met.
The PRA, a new, free-to-join organisation which seems to see itself as the militant wing of official trade bodies such as the National Trainers’ Federation (NTF), insists that trainers deserve something similar, and said last week that it had set a deadline of 31 January for Racecourse Media Group (RMG), which owns the media rights for many of Britain’s biggest tracks, to agree to a demand for £500k as an annual fee to conduct live interviews with trainers.
Sky Sports Racing, the sport’s other main dedicated channel alongside the RMG-owned Racing TV, is also understood to have been approached for a similar payment, and while ITV Racing has not been asked to contribute, its live coverage will be included in the boycott.
Following a board meeting on Monday, the PRA said in a statement that it “reiterated its call for racecourses, RMG and Sky Racing to show that they value the contribution that trainers make to the show, and also to explain why they have so far been willing to pay the jockeys but not the trainers.”.
Britain’s jockeys have received a collective fee for TV interviews since 2008, with the money being used to subsidise the Professional Jockeys Association’s career-ending insurance scheme.
