Multi-million pound deal over five years to provide enhanced OB services for over 350 race meetings a year

Ian Renton, Racing Director, Arena Leisure Plc, says: “We are delighted to team up with SIS LIVE to create an enhanced television experience at all of our UK racecourses. Whilst our own in-house technical services department at Arena has been extremely successful, we now have a media rights agreement in place with SIS. As part of our future joint strategy and with their extensive expertise in this area, we are very pleased for SIS to take over the broadcasting at all the Arena racecourses.”

David Meynell, Managing Director, SIS LIVE, says: “SIS LIVE has unique experience covering horse racing at ll levels. Not only do we already cover hundreds of races a year as part of our commitments to the SIS bookmakers services, but we have extensive experience of covering international events such as the Grand National and other big sporting events for broadcasters. We will bring all that experience to this work with Arena Leisure, significantly improving the viewing experience for bookmakers, broadcasters and racecourse customers.”

SIS LIVE will provide an enhanced and improved OB service to Arena Leisure, with a full review of coverage at all its racecourses, utilising the company’s vast experience of live horse racing broadcasts. New camera positions will be added, including start cameras to capture all of the action from the off, and higher quality coverage with the latest multi-format cameras, initially in Standard Definition but with a planned progression to High Definition broadcasting in the future.

SIS LIVE’s OB feeds will be provided to Arena Leisure for its on-course TV coverage as well as to the stewards for integrity purposes. In addition, the feed will be used by SIS LIVE’s parent company, Satellite Information Services Limited (SIS), as part of its television services to bookmakers, broadcasting live horseracing and other sporting events to 10,000 bookmakers in the UK and the Ireland. SIS LIVE currently provides SIS with extensive uplinking facilities and dedicated OB services to cover around 400 race meetings a year. The deal with Arena Leisure, means SIS LIVE will now provide the OBs at 800 race meetings with over 5,000 individual races a year.

 George Irvine, Managing Director, Production and Data, SIS, says: “I’m delighted with the service we get from SIS LIVE at the moment and I’m positive everyone will see a marked improvement in the quality of coverage from the Arena racecourses when the new contract begins in May.”

 The coverage will also be used by At The Races, the dedicated horse racing channel that is a joint venture partnership between BSkyB and Arena Leisure Plc. It will also be used by GBI Racing, the joint venture company of RMG (Racecourse Media Group) and At The Races, which offers exclusive international rights to all 60 UK racecourses, allowing customers to view the races as far afield as South Africa, Turkey, Italy, Singapore and Australia.

About SIS

SIS is one of the world’s leading companies in the television broadcasting industry. It is the foremost supplier of television programming and data services to the UK and Ireland betting industry. The company’s broadcast business, SIS LIVE, has the largest satellite uplink fleet in Europe and is the largest outside broadcast provider in the UK. It offers a complete broadcasting solution from onsite outside broadcast facilities through to global distribution and IP provision. The company covers 100,000 hours of live events worldwide each year and credits include The Commonwealth Games, Formula One, Wimbledon Championships and European Tour Golf, and delivers approximately 80% of live news feeds across the UK.