Channel 4 Racing has confirmed that Nick Luck will anchor its broadcast of the Grand National from Aintree on 11 April, with the fashion expert Gok Wan and leading Flat jockey Frankie Dettori also expected to contribute to its coverage of the most popular event in the racing calendar.
Channel 4 has reportedly suffered another dip in its ratings for Cheltenham this week and the station will be hoping for a boost from racing’s biggest day of the year. It has also been reported this week that BBC will be encouraged to bid to bring the sport back to its screens.
The Jockey Club chief executive Simon Bazalgette did tell the Racing Post on Thursday that he thought Channel 4 were the likeliest to be still televising racing after the current deal finishes. He said: “Channel 4 is a great partner and you would have to think in pole position to retain the rights.” But he stressed that the Jockey Club, which runs the Grand National, Cheltenham Festival and the Derby on its courses, “will be talking to the BBC, ITV and others and asking what works for them”.
The identity of the lead presenter for Channel 4’s National coverage has been the subject of speculation since early December, when Clare Balding, who anchored the broadcast in 2013 and 2014 after C4 acquired the rights from the BBC, announced that she would reduce her commitment to the channel in 2015 to just nine days: the Cheltenham Festival, which concludes on Friday, and Royal Ascot in June.
A number of broadcasters from mainstream television have since been linked to the role, including Jeremy Kyle and Jake Humphrey. Kyle, best known for a confrontational daytime show on ITV, is an enthusiastic follower of jumps racing who owns horses with Nick Gifford, while Humphrey has fronted BT Sport’s football coverage since the channel acquired some rights to Premier League football in 2013.
Luck has invariably hosted Channel 4’s racing coverage whenever Balding has been absent over the first two years of its monopoly on terrestrial broadcasts of the sport. He has now been confirmed as the anchor for a broadcast that will be expected to attract at least eight million viewers, and will also go head to head with his former co-host on 11 March, when Balding is committed to coverage of the Boat Race on BBC1.
Channel 4 acquired the rights to both the Grand National meeting and Royal Ascot when it was awarded a four-year monopoly on terrestrial racing coverage from 1 January 2013. Its ratings for the major events have often been disappointing when compared to audience figures for the BBC’s coverage, and the Grand National, which has exceeded a peak audience of eight million viewers in each of the last two years, is one of the few races taken over from the BBC which has not suffered a significant drop in ratings.
