On Tuesday Sydney’s Daily Telegraph launched a six-part video series to promote the richest horse race in New South Wales, the Everest, spruiking it with an eight-page wraparound of the newspaper including a story that purported to reveal a Victorian plot to undermine the “NSW showcase”.
The documentary, produced by the Telegraph’s editor, Ben English, and featuring the editor-at-large, Matthew Benns, and chief racing writer, Ray Thomas, featured interviews with Racing NSW’s powerful chief executive, Peter V’landys, who “reveals [the] emotional toll of [the] spring carnival disruptor”.
The Everest takes place on 14 October, the same day as the Caulfield Guineas, one of the highlights of Melbourne’s spring carnival , which is one reason the race has set the racing bosses of the two states at loggerheads.
“In 2017 V’landys had an idea that turned racing on its head, ” wrote Benns of the $20m event. “The success of the Everest has angered the green eyed bosses from other states,” he says.
What is not disclosed in the videos are details of the commercial arrangements between Racing NSW and News Corp, which over many years has given racing benign coverage, and at times full-blown promotion.
After nearly 20 years with V’landys as chief executive, there is a perception that the statutory authority that presides over racing in NSW has developed its commercial links with the media into something more akin to a partnership than a normal journalistic relationship.
Those links may also have helped V’landys strengthen the power base of Racing NSW, as the might of News Corp at times takes on the organisation’s perceived enemies – including premiers and other politicians.
Since the Guardian announced its rejection of gambling advertising in June, it and the ABC have been perhaps the only two major media organisations that do not receive income, either directly from commercial partnerships with Racing NSW or via advertising for sports betting.
Since 2019 V’landys has also been chair of the National Rugby League, adding to his clout in the sporting world.
He has torn strips off a premier for withdrawing funding for suburban football stadiums, received tax changes for online betting that boosted revenue for Racing NSW, and managed to convince politicians to permit the Opera House sails and the Harbour Bridge to be used in the service of promoting racing.
‘A shared worldview’
As chief executive, V’landys has an iron grip on information and access to the racing industry in NSW, which the organisation combines with generous commercial deals for media companies to support coverage of racing.
Insiders told Guardian Australia that the Daily Telegraph and Sydney Morning Herald have multimillion-dollar deals with Racing NSW and the TAB which include agreements to print the form guide.
One former editor of the Herald, who declined to be named, said he had considered cancelling the form guide to save on printing costs. He said he felt under pressure from Racing NSW, which he said at that time paid $6m a year via a guaranteed advertising deal to ensure that the form guide continued to appear in the Sydney Morning Herald, the Newcastle Herald and the Illawarra Mercury (then all owned by Fairfax).
James Chessell, the editorial director of the current owner of the SMH, Nine newspapers, said there was no specific subsidy for the form guide and the organisation received nowhere near $3m under the current contract – the estimated amount put to him.
He denied that Nine’s editorial independence had been compromised in any way by its commercial relationship with Racing NSW, and said its current deal contained a clause that specifically said approval of content was at the discretion of the editorial team.
“It’s an advertising deal and we obviously would find it more difficult to print the form guide if it didn’t contain ads. It’s the same principle with the rest of the newspaper,” he said.
The deal with the Daily Telegraph, which produces daily coverage of horse racing, is said to be more generous – about $8m to $10m a year.
Some racing journalists from both papers also make paid appearances on the specialist racing channels and radio programs owned by Tabcorp and Racing Victoria.
Sky Racing, on Foxtel, is owned by Tabcorp, the main NSW betting agency, which has a rights agreement with Racing NSW.
The Telegraph’s editor, Ben English, said: “We have no commercial agreements which constrain our ability to report as we see fit, and no person has the power to vet editorial content.
“On behalf of its readers, The Daily Telegraph has a longstanding enthusiasm for the events and sports that captivate the community, and we will never apologise for getting behind activities that promote our state, generate local jobs, excitement and fun,” he said.
Tim Burrowes, the former publisher and founder of the media-focused website Mumbrella, said his instinct was that over time “betting has become a bigger rather than smaller part of the publishing business”.
“I don’t think it’s unsubtle as messages coming down from on top. But they write within a culture and that culture normalises to the interests of the business. [Racing NSW and News] just end up with a shared worldview.”
News Corp’s legendary racing writer, Ken Callander, now retired, said he did not know the details of the commercial relationship between the publishers and Racing NSW.
“I know Racing NSW does sponsor pages in both the SMH and the Telegraph … I don’t have a great argument with it as long as it doesn’t affect journalistic integrity,” he said.
But the line is a fine one and Callander famously pulled the pin at the Telegraph in 2015 after an altercation with his editor over a column.
“I had an issue. I chose not to work under a certain editor at that time, because his ideas of what was ethical and what was not differed from mine. I am not saying who was right and who was wrong – but I decided not to stay there,” he said.
At the time the Telegraph told the ABC’s Media Watch: “There has never been editorial influence placed upon Ken Callander, or any other journalist … The Daily Telegraph can cite many examples over a long period of time … where Ken’s columns have been critical of Racing NSW, the TAB and other racing bodies and officials.”
This week’s story on the “plot” against the Everest is far from the first time the Telegraph has weighed in on the side of Racing NSW against its Victorian counterpart.
When Racing NSW began court action against Racing Victoria and the other states in May, alleging a conspiracy to shut NSW out of the national racing body, the details of the alleged plot were splashed across its front page before they were available via the courts.
“Bombshell documents reveal interstate racing bodies had a plot drawn up to declare war on Peter V’landys and Racing NSW to stop the state’s growing dominance in the sport, it will be alleged in the Supreme Court,” the report said.
“A secret dossier obtained by The Daily Telegraph maps out a battle plan for a ‘shock and awe’ campaign against Mr V’landys and advises the racing bodies to ‘prepare for months of expensive, disruptive and damaging warfare’.”
Racing Victoria’s response was included in the last few paragraphs of the report.
The documentary series launched this week will feature an interview with V’landys on “the war” it says is being waged against him and Racing NSW by Racing Victoria.
“I’ve got feelings like anybody else, and at times it gets you down, but you dust yourself off, you get back up and you keep going, he told the Telegraph, reportedly in relation to “personal criticism [of him] from some interstate racing administrators and online trolls”.
V’landys declined to answer questions from Guardian Australia except for providing a list of achievements of Racing NSW under his tenure as chief executive.
Guests at Randwick
On important race days at Randwick the senior executives of most media companies, selected journalists and state and federal politicians will be found sipping champagne at a fully catered function hosted by Racing NSW and presided over by V’landys.
Regulars include English and the chief executive of Sky News Australia, Paul Whittaker. Chessell said he and Nine editors had occasionally attended races as a guest of Racing NSW.
English said: “As editor of a major news outlet, I like other executives from media and other industries regularly attend major sporting and community events; it is part of my role.”
English recently accompanied V’landys, the Racing NSW chair, Russell Balding, and other Racing NSW executives on a trip to the Kentucky Derby.
“I attended the Kentucky Derby as a guest of Racing NSW and it provided valuable experience in how a globally renowned event is conducted,” English said in a statement.
There is usually also a fair smattering of politicians in the Racing NSW directors’ room at Randwick. The former state racing and gaming minister Kevin Anderson and former state sport minister Stuart Ayres were regular attenders. Others included the former Liberal premier Dominic Perrottet and his treasurer, Matt Kean. A notable non-attender was Perrottet’s predecessor as premier, Gladys Berejiklian.
Since V’landys became chair of the NRL and Fairfax merged with Nine, a number of senior Nine figures have been spotted, including the chief executive, Mike Sneesby, and morning presenter Karl Stefanovic.
It’s usual practice for attenders in the directors’ room to be offered little green envelopes containing TAB vouchers that are in effect free bets worth $20 to $50. It is not known whether any of the individuals named above accepted or used these gifts and the Guardian makes no suggestion that they did.
Chessell said neither he nor Bevan Shields, the editor of the Herald, had used TAB cards.
The print, digital and broadcast media rely heavily on advertising from the gambling industry, but in June a federal parliamentary committee recommended that gambling ads should be banned on all media within three years, to combat the appeal of betting to an “impressionable and vulnerable audience” of young people.
The fate of that proposed ban will test the mettle of politicians – and the independence of the media – in standing up to the juggernaut of horse racing.
