The Sport Thread

Meanwhile..
At The Races have lost the rights to Irish Racing from Jan 1st 2019 to Racing UK, according to today's Sun.

2 things -
Irish Racing have gone for the money over exposure - and there are those within the Irish Racing community who don't think that is a very good idea - there is a point of view that the sport is struggling for UK exposure as it is, without going behind an expensive paywall.
Plus, with all Irish tracks joining, Racing UK will have to think of a new name from next year.

But, I can't help thinking that Sky have been very slow to rebrand ATR to Sky Sports Racing, and if that happened on around the Sky Sports brand refresh last year, and the channel was thrown in with any Sky Sports specific sports channel package as a bonus - along with Sky Sports News, it may have tempted Irish Racing to stay with ATR / SSR.

I now wonder what the future holds for ATR?
From the start of next year they will only have a handful of tracks in the UK to cover, there will be days without any live Uk based racing at all - particularly during the summer, where the ARC owned all weather tracks (which are ATR exclusive) pretty much close down once the clocks go forward.

So, unless they start picking off overseas rights (Equipro in France and South African for instance) to add to the US/Australian, it's going to look very bare indeed.

I hadn't realised they were owned by private equity - but their amount of acquisitions over recent years should probably have been a bit of a clue. They're slowly rebranding all of their disparate parts - the Visions name is no more, though Irish-based OBS (not to be confused with the other OBS) is apparently sticking around for now.

The NEP name comes from their original parent company, WNEP - it stands for North Eastern Pennsylvania. Their head office is still in Pittsburgh.

Anyone else noticing a terrible frame rate on the 6 Nations coverage of Wales v Scotland?

Same here. It appears to be a world feed issue considering the frame rate on the BBC pre-match was fine.

Yep, very distracting. Will be interesting to see if the issue is replicated in the other games.

Yes, I started a thread on DS and there are a few comments from other folks all watching different platforms.
Some conversion is going on that shouldn't be.....

I think it's been corrected.

https://www.irishtimes.com/sport/racing/irish-racing-set-to-be-broadcast-on-racing-uk-from-2019-1.3377951

This Irish Times article appears to indicate that SIS made the call and if that’s the case I wonder if the AIR or Horse Racing Ireland see a penny of the extra cash. However this week also saw a new deal with RTÉ that will seemingly see them expand coverage



Well they didn’t help their rep by deciding to show an advert instead of the kickoff of Wales v Scotland.

But in general, I think their coverage will probably be more accepted now than if the change had happened at the height of the iconic McGuirk/Hook/Pope/O’Shea panel. Indeed their panel seems like a recreation of the modern day panel, with ROG resuming his role (only for rounds 1&2 though), Williams for Pope and Jennings for Horgan. Meanwhile Conor McNamara and Peter Stringer on commentary for Wales v Scotland (are they also doing the world feed?)

Graphics wise TV3 don’t seem to have the proper templates, it like they mocked up their own which are similar but not quite right. From their point of view it’s lucky that the (nominal) change in sponsorship has seen the blue portion of the lower thirds turn from blue to NatWest and TV3’s common favorite color of purple.

Agreed, it's fine now, pity about the first 20 minutes!

The yellow BBC logo next to the scoreboard changed style in second half of the Wales vs Scotland 6 Nations game. In the first half it had the old glass style effect, round edges and was smaller, in the second half the box surrounding the BBC logo is bigger, has sharp edges and is flat. Sadly can't do a screenshot comparison. Looks like someone put up the old/wrong one in the first half.

It looks better flat, but it looks rather small compared to the rest of the scoreboard.l bits.

Doesn't help they're taking the World feed graphics/scoreboard/font which makes everything look a bit 'off'.