William Hill has announced that they have agreed on terms with Arena Racing Company. The bookmaker has a deal in place with At The Races. That is where live racing streams on the William Hill platforms are supplied from.
Now they are using that streaming data deal to supply a broadcast to a new channel. This channel is called “Betting TV” and it is a free-to-air service. So it can be watched by anyone, regardless if they are a customer with William Hill or not.
Free-to-air Horse and Dog Racing
Betting TV delivers horse racing and dog racing content from the 24 tracks. Those are tracks exclusively managed by Arena Racing. It means some big races like the Midland Grand National and the St Leger are going to be free-to-air on the new platform.
Because there is no charge to view Betting TV it means that it is quite the shift away from the usual bookmaker practices, where (in general) a £1 stake on a race will grant access to a live stream of UK and Irish races.
William Hill the sixth bookie to join with ARC
Other major bookmakers who are part of the deal with Arena Racing Company are Betfred, Boylesports, Betway, BetVictor and Unibet. They are in a revenue-sharing deal with ARC. Instead of having operators pay for the right to broadcast races, ARC has produced the profit-sharing model instead. That’s something that not all bookmakers are happy with, citing that it would be more costly for them than paying a fixed rate per stream. Betfred was the first to join with ARC in the new model.
