Sport "has to fill the gap itself as it seeks to provide information to punters and underwrite the all-important wagering dollar," according to Michael Lynch of THE AGE. Racing Victoria is working to establish a digital-media business, a project that has been 18 months "in gestation" and to which the sport's key stakeholders have all invested in the realization that "working together can only be to their mutual benefit." Racing Victoria Exec Dir of Strategy & Development Andrew Catterall on Monday told a racing-media briefing that "there was little or no new money" in the A$15M ($11M) budget that the Melbourne race clubs, Racing Victoria and Country Racing Victoria have earmarked for the business's running costs in its inaugural five years. Rather, the industry "is working smarter by pooling resources and reallocating existing cash so it can get more bang for its media buck" by providing a one-stop shop for punters, racegoers, owners, trainers -- and traditional media -- to glean information about racing. Catterall said that the new business, which will have a ''soft'' launch in September tied in with the beginning of the spring racing carnival, "was not there to compete with traditional media but to complement it and offer another way into the sport." Nor "was it being set up to be a rival to TVN, which broadcasts Victorian and NSW thoroughbred racing." Catterall: ''Cricket, the AFL, the NRL have all gone very hard down this route and we have to keep up" (THE AGE, 7/21).
