While thousands of punters Australia-wide were denied seeing race meetings from Melbourne and Sydney on Saturday, pressure is now mounting on the board of Racing Victoria to obtain the media and vision rights for this state.
Fairfax Media understands that heavy lobbying in the past 48 hours from major players in the industry has demanded that Racing Victoria, the ruling body, take over the rights currently held by race clubs in Melbourne.
For two years now a representative from the Country Racing, Moonee Valley Racing Club, Melbourne Racing Club and the VRC have failed to broker a deal with Tabcorp over the rights to live broadcasts in Sydney and Melbourne.
It is understood that intense pressure is now mounting on Racing Victoria's chairman, Robert Roulston, to take over the rights for vision and media and then begin negotiating with Tabcorp.
As one former racing administrator, who knocked back the opportunity to join the RVL board said, "they've been around for 13 years and what do they control? At the moment they're fighting a huge bushfire with a garden hose. Whatever it takes, the ruling body must have the control."
Racing in Victoria has its media and vision rights in one central governing body.
Despite RVL denying that country punters were not without vision of Melbourne and Sydney races on Saturday, Fairfax Media confirmed that 370 clubs and pubs in NSW alone were left without vision.
It is also understood that the newly elected Labor government has been closely monitoring the blackout, which began last Thursday. Government officials are concerned that so many Australian punters had to resort to listening to races, which hasn't been in practice since early 1980.
Part of the demands being put forward to RVL will be the immediate removal of TVN chief executive Bruce Mann and his entire tier of executives.
NSW Racing is also on the cusp of walking away from the TVN deal. However, if Racing Victoria can wrestle the vision and media rights away from race clubs in Melbourne it's believed that genuine negotiations could restart.
If the war between Tabcorp and TVN continues into January it will have cost the beleaguered network $3 million.
It is also understood that the $42 million TVN is asking for the vision rights is $10 million under what SKY Channel is prepared to pay.
Also in dispute are international racing rights but those issues seem now in total deadlock. As one NSW hoteliers association executive said: "No vision into pubs and clubs in NSW alone is like what we went through when equine influenza struck all those years ago. When there was no racing some punters left and never came back. And it will happen again this time, if they can't see it they won't bet on it."
