Ten grabs Melbourne Cup rights from Seven with huge bid

Ten Network has snatched the broadcast rights for the Melbourne Cup from long-time owner Seven.

2017 Melbourne Cup at Flemington. Picture: Michael Klein

Ten Network is understood to have snatched the broadcast rights for the Melbourne Cup, lobbing a huge bid to show the country’s biggest and highest-rating horse race from 2019.

The move means Seven West Media will not have the rights to “the race that stops the nation” for the first time since 2002 and gives Ten some badly-needed sports content after it lost cricket rights earlier this year.

Ten is understood to have agreed to pay $5-10 million annually for the deal, which will begin in 2019. The Victoria Racing Club was set to announce the contract as soon as Friday afternoon.

The deal includes the week-long Melbourne Cup carnival featuring big race days such as Victoria Derby Day and is said to be far more that Seven is currently paying for the rights.

Neither Ten nor VRC spokespeople would return phone calls.

Seven will show this year’s Melbourne Cup and continue with to broadcast other spring carnival horse races before and after the Cup carnival as well as big Sydney races. Its broadcast joint venture Racing.com also has rights to Victorian and South Australian thoroughbred races.

A Seven spokesman told The Australian: “We are proud of our award-winning racing coverage, but as we have consistently said about the economics of sports rights, the deal must make commercial sense or we will step away.”

“While another party has placed a far higher valuation on these four afternoons of television, we will do what is financially responsible and right for our shareholders.”

The VRC put its broadcast rights to tender in May, wanting to enhance coverage of the Cup carnival beyond the on-course racing to also include off-track content such as fashion. The rights included television, mobile and digital.

Ten would not return calls, while a VRC spokesperson said in a statement: “The Seven Network has been the Victoria Racing Club’s free to air broadcast partner for the Melbourne Cup Carnival since 2002 and this contract remains in place until the end of March 2019. The VRC is in the process of reviewing media rights arrangements for the 2019 Melbourne Cup Carnival and beyond. Details regarding this process remain commercial in confidence.”