SBC News Voice of the Sports Betting Industry
The dispute over official data from sport of horseracing and The Racing Post has finally been settled after the newspaper’s owner Centurycomm managed to agree a deal with the relatively new Racecourse Data Company (RDC). The heads of terms contract over the licensing and distribution of pre-race data (PRD) ends the fractious relationship between the sport and its main newspaper that has been running this year.
In a statement, RDC added: “A long-form contract will be entered into before Christmas. As a result, the official UK horse racing data feed, supplied by Weatherbys, is now available to the Racing Post.”
During this summer the Racing Post did not have official racing data via RDC because it balked at paying an additional £500,000 fee on top of its previous £150,000 deal. But the RDC was adamant that the paper had been paying below the odds, claiming that licensing is applied via a transparent rate-card, which has industry backing and is utilised across all customers. RDC says it has aligned its licensing principles with FRAND (Fair, Reasonable and non-discriminatory), which is widely used by standards-setting organisations and in licensing. There has been no indication of how much this new deal is worth.
The Racecourse Data Company (RDC) was only formed by fifty-seven British racecourses earlier on this year. The joint venture was formed by Racecourse Media Group (RMG) and Arena Racing Company (ARC), and nine independent racecourses as shareholders.
RDC was assigned the PRD (Pre-Race Data) licence for a five-year term from Racing Enterprises Limited (REL). PRD is information on a racecard, such as final fields, owners, trainers, jockeys, weight, colours, draw and ratings. This gave RDC the right to license PRD to all third parties via a simple and coherent licensing regime. They said this enhanced control of PRD engendered a consistent approach to licencing via a transparent rate-card utilised across all customers.
