JC / Railbird

Media/TV/Film Archive

DRF Sold for $200M

TheDeal.com reported this morning that Wicks Group has sold Daily Racing Form to Arlington Capital Partners for “just shy” of $200 million, despite the recent slowdown in the credit markets. Neither Wicks nor Arlington have confirmed the sale yet. Interesting tidbit pointed out by PaidContent: “The company has had more owners in the past 19 years than in [its] first 94.”

Posted in Media/TV/Film on August 20, 2007

ESPN Will Still Show CCAO

– When news broke Monday morning that Rags to Riches was out of Saturday’s Coaching Club American Oaks at Belmont, it seemed logical that ESPN would go back to their original plan to show the San Diego Handicap at Del Mar, which had been bumped for the Oaks and the anticipated appearance of the Belmont winner. Well, that’s not happening. “[ESPN] just couldn’t react fast enough,” said Craig Dado, Del Mar’s vice president for marketing. “I guess it serves them right. I think that’s what they call karma” (North Country Times).
– Breeders’ Cup officials unveiled a new Breeders’ Cup web site today and announced that the entire Breeders’ Cup day card would be streamed live online (ThoroTimes). Cool.
– Curlin worked five furlongs in 1:00.2 over the Oklahoma training track this morning (BRIS). The Preakness winner is scheduled to start next in the August 5 Haskell at Monmouth.

Posted in Media/TV/Film on July 17, 2007

No Box, No Coverage

Last November, when the Boston Globe made the disappointing announcement that racing entries and results would no longer be published in the paper’s sports section, sports editor Joe Sullivan tried to soothe readers who protested that “a Sunday box on feature races” would appear throughout the year. Two months later, there’s a small problem with that promise: There are no Sunday boxes on feature races. True, there wasn’t much to report through December. It was a quiet season. Yet, today’s Sunday paper has nothing on yesterday’s San Rafael, in which likely 2005 Juvenile champion and early Kentucky Derby favorite Stevie Wonderboy returned to the scene in what was basically a match race that just happened to be a graded stakes, finishing second. You would think that that race would warrant one of those little boxes Sullivan was talking about, or at least two inches pulled from a wire service story and tucked away in a side column sports news roundup. It didn’t even get that treatment, which begs the question: What races are big enough to earn Globe coverage? Let’s hope the answer proves to be more than the Kentucky Derby.
Related: MSNBC contributor Travis Stone urges fans to act to keep racing in the news: “The fall-out of our unwillingness to act could be devastating. Imagine the Kentucky Derby, going from front cover, to inside page, and then to a minor statistic before being taken off the press completely. The potential exists and it is time to step up. We may have broken slow, but it is too soon to ease ourselves out of this race.”

Posted in Media/TV/Film on January 15, 2006