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https://www.theguardian.com/sport/2019/jan/18/drones-on-track-to-stay-flying-british-racecourses-foreseeable-future-horse-racing

Drone activity around British racecourses is likely to continue for many months to come, with Sky Sports Racing in particular seemingly unable to reduce the time-lag on its pictures from 25 British tracks as a result of its use of satellites to broadcast live coverage.

Drones have been spotted around courses covered by both Racing TV and Sky Sports Racing, the sport’s two non-terrestrial broadcasters, in recent months, providing instant feeds of action to a handful of punters and a priceless edge in the volatile in-running markets.

However, the time-lag – or latency – on Sky Sports Racing’s coverage is significantly longer than that for Racing TV’s viewers, which could make drones activity a particular problem for tracks signed up with the newly relaunched channel, formerly At The Races. These will shortly include Ascot, which will switch to Sky from the start of the Flat turf season in April, and Chester, which opens its season with the valuable Festival meeting in early May.

For many smaller tracks in particular, the advantage of signing up with Sky Sports Racing is that it is available with many basic satellite and cable packages, giving it a much bigger potential audience than Racing TV, which requires an additional subscription of £25 per month.

As a result, however, many of its viewers may be more casual racing followers, unaware of the latency of the coverage and the huge disadvantage they face if they venture into Betfair’s in-running markets and take on punters with access to much faster pictures.

Latency is a particular problem for Sky Sports Racing because its racecourse signal is sent to Sky Centre in west London via satellite, whereas many of Racing TV’s tracks connect directly to a fibre network. Seb Vance, Racing TV’s director of PR and communications, said on Friday that its pictures “are generally 1.5 seconds behind live on RTV HD for British for satellite viewers”, though the delay is currently longer for Irish courses, which switched to RTV from the start of January.

However, James Singer, Sky Sports Racing’s director of domestic and international media rights, could say only that its pictures “arrive in homes with a delay of some seconds from live action taking place on a racecourse”. He added: “There is a necessary transmission path involving signals passing from a racecourse to satellites and back to receivers as well as a transponder process that optimises capacity allocation, known as statistical multiplexing”.

The difference in speed between the two channels becomes apparent on the rare occasions when both are covering the same event, such as a meeting from Meydan in Dubai. During a recent card at the track Sky’s pictures were fiveseconds behind those on Racing TV, a latency that would give a huge advantage to punters with access to truly live pictures were it to be repeated at a British course. Sky is understood to be considering ways in which it might optimise its transmission path and reduce the time-lag on its pictures, but it seems unlikely that it will reduce significantly before Ascot, the country’s showpiece track, moves to the channel from Racing TV in three months’ time. As yet Ascot has not considered what, if anything, it can do to deter drone activity should anyone attempt to capture lag-free pictures during racing.

However, Nick Smith, the course’s director of communications, said on Friday that Ascot will resist “anything that undermines our media rights or creates opportunities to bet in-running with a time advantage,” adding that, unlike many courses, Ascot does not rent out hospitality boxes to in-running punters. “If anybody was found to be doing that, it would be the end,” he said. “We don’t feel that it is an appropriate way to sell hospitality.”

Many tracks will continue to sell spare boxes to in-running punters, however, thereby profiting from the same time-delay on “live” pictures which encourages the drone flyers in the first place. Since many courses are also surrounded by public land where it is legal to fly drones, there may be little that any course can do to stop the activity while the time-lag on pictures remains.