Racing Victoria outbids Hutchison to buy radio station RSN

Racing Victoria has successfully outbid Craig Hutchison’s SEN, buying out the thoroughbred shareholders of RSN with plans to consolidate their media assets.

Employees at the embattled station were informed this week that Racing Victoria (RV) will take part-ownership of the station, with the previous thoroughbred shareholders - the three metropolitan racing clubs and Country Racing Victoria - looking past a white knight offer from SEN to accept terms with RV.

Craig Hutchison has been unsuccessful in his bid to buy RSN.Credit:ninevms

The Melbourne Racing Club and Victoria Racing Club had both valued the station at about $7.55 million in their most recent annual reports, and a number of shareholders told The Age the offer they accepted was at about the same value. The deal is expected to go through in coming weeks.

“The scenario now, RV taking the thoroughbred share, I suppose that gives [the station] more long-term certainty,” Moonee Valley Racing Club chief executive Michael Browell said.

Racing Victoria will co-own the station with Harness Racing Victoria and Greyhound Racing Victoria, with expectations the radio assets will now be condensed into Racing Victoria’s new integrated media business.

SEN already has its own racing radio station - known as SEN Track - which is fronted by respected racing journalist Andrew Bensley, but has not had the rights to broadcast the daily wall-to-wall race calls of all three codes.

That is expected to remain RSN’s primary objective, but a consolidation of thoroughbred media assets under the integrated business will allow the industry to share resources in a much more efficient way.

The industry already owns its own television channel on the Seven network, called Racing.com, which has the television broadcast rights to all Victorian race meetings, as well as South Australian racing, as well as a digital news platform.

RV also owns the Winning Post newspaper and Best Bets form guide, and recently bought out the metropolitan clubs’ shares of production company Thoroughbred Racing Productions.

Former head of Fox Sports Australia, Peter Campbell, was in July announced as the inaugural chief executive of Racing Victoria’s integrated media business, and the addition of RSN to his portfolio will allow him the opportunity to cross-pollinate media talent across the different platforms. Campbell starts in the job early next month.

The sale of the station will inject much-needed funds into the race clubs, who have been unable to host crowds over the past 18 months and have been the hardest hit by the COVID-19 pandemic in the racing industry.

“When the decision was made to establish the IMB and the clubs all sold their shares in TRP and then the Racing.com platform, it made logical sense to roll RSN in it as well,” Browell said.

“There was no point in us selling all other media assets but we [the clubs and CRV] ending up holding onto 73 per cent combined of a radio station.

“There should be some efficiencies or synergies now by bringing all of it into the IMB, if that’s the decision that’s made, because the cross-pollination of talent between the radio station, television and print ... it’s just the logical ownership structure for it.”

The Age also revealed on Monday that Seven Network had reached a new deal with both Racing Victoria and Racing NSW, which will see 49 Victorian Saturdays’ worth of city racing broadcast nationally on one of Seven’s mainstream channels every year until 2027.

The only Victorian Saturday metropolitan meetings that won’t be broadcast are the two during Cup week - Derby day and Stakes day - which are part of the VRC’s deal with Ten, and the Saturday which coincides with Queensland racing’s Magic Millions meeting in January.

With that enhanced coverage for Victorian racing, the addition of RSN will allow the likes of radio hosts Michael Felgate and Gareth Hall to work on Racing.com, particularly if Jason Richardson is taken from Racing.com as part of Seven’s bolstered coverage of racing.

RSN is also likely to feature form analysts and racing presenters from Racing.com more often under the proposed arrangement.

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