PRA Backs Down on Proposed Interview Boycott

[Wandering Eyes]

The Professional Racing Association (PRA), which claims to represent around 170 trainers in Britain, has reversed its call for its members to refuse television interviews during the race meeting Sandown on Saturday. 

A statement released on Tuesday read, “The PRA has decided to call off the withdrawal of trainer interviews this Saturday to avoid further public conflict between two organisations that are fundamentally aligned.” 

The PRA, which was founded by Plumpton racecourse owner and former BHB chairman Peter Savill, had asked for payment from media rights companies in return for access to its trainers on race days. Currently, jockeys receive an annual group fee for TV input which is put towards their insurance scheme.

Savill has stressed that “the money would not go to trainers personally – absolutely not”, and instead be used to aid “benevolent causes and the Injured Jockeys Fund, that need funding”.

The PRA's proposed action at Sandown had not been supported by the Thoroughbred Group, the umbrella group which represents the Racehorse Owners Association, National Trainers Federation, the Professional Jockeys Association, National Association of Stable Staff and the Thoroughbred Breeders' Association, and which is working on its own proposals for new commercial partnerships.

A statement from the Thoroughbred Group read, “The sport should be working together to ensure that everybody is remunerated fairly, and any increased contributions should not be helping to fund groups that sit outside of the sport's governance structure.

“Thoroughbred Group members are confident that the commercial partnerships proposal that is currently being debated by the industry presents a more constructive blueprint for the growth of the sport.”

The PRA has, however, insisted that the interview boycott proposal had put the issue of the unequal distribution of racing's finances in the spotlight.

Its statement continued, “Trainers fully understand the positive effect that the media have on our sport and the insinuation that any trainer who supported the withdrawal of interviews might be letting the industry down was therefore disappointing.

“The publicity that this issue has attracted has highlighted one of the many inequalities in the distribution of racing's finances.

“The main inequality though is the unfair distribution of racing revenue between horsemen and racecourses that filters down from the racecourse into prize-money. This is the PRA's main concern, and we do not want the current issue to deflect from that focus.”

It also called for racecourses to treat the sport's participants as partners and for “horsemen and the BHA to demand a seat at the table of all future media rights discussion…so that horsemen finally receive their fair share of those deals and there is no misunderstanding as to how the income will be shared. It is unacceptable that racecourses have excluded them both from these negotiations for so long.

“The PRA will continue to intervene where those in the official industry structure are unwilling to do so. Our goal continues to be to have the whole industry working together to increase the income for British racing, but this cannot happen till these imbalances are resolved.”

 

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