Digital channel snaps up Badminton highlights

For the first time in more than 50 years the Badminton trials, the blue-ribbon equestrian competition, could be available beyond the BBC's TV coverage of the weekend event as part of a free offering of digital rights to rival media companies. Horse & Country TV, the digital channel run by the former ITV non-executive board director Heather Killen , has acquired the global media distribution and sponsorship rights for the event until the end of 2012. As a result the company has hired Sir Roger Jones, the former BBC governor, and Mark Young, a former senior TV sales executive at BBC Worldwide and currently senior executive at marketing group IMG, as non-executive directors to help drive the international growth of the business. The BBC has always exclusively aired UK TV coverage of the Badminton trials, which this year run from 30 April to 3 May, over the weekend of the event. A limited number of international TV highlights packages have been sold to other broadcasters, with the H&C TV channel, which is available to Sky digital satellite subscribers, running much wider coverage for its specialist audience, in the week after the BBC's UK broadcast window. Internet rights have had little exploitation. H&C, which has the aim of bringing horse sports to the mainstream viewer from the "Siberian fringes of the schedule", has developed a free rights distribution deal for broadcasters funded by signing pre-packaged premium advertisers. While the BBC will retain the first-run TV rights, H&C intends to offer a package of internet video coverage during the weekend event that will be offered for free to any broadcaster across the globe. H&C said it was the first time any serious coverage, outside of limited clips on the official Badminton website, will be offered beyond the BBC on the actual weekend of the event. The company also intends to massively increase the number of broadcasters who take the package of delayed TV and internet highlights by offering it for free. Killen said H&C was looking for heavyweight sponsors and brands that would pay a "six-figure sum" to gain a sponsorship presence in all the internet and broadcast distribution deals. Badminton is sponsored by Mitsubishi, Rolex and HSBC, while brands including H&M, Emirates and Land Rover are strong advertisers in the horse sports industry. "We are trying to get the sport out of its little ghetto ... it has been pushed to the Siberian fringes of the broadcast schedule or off the planet," said Killen, the former head of Yahoo's global operation outside the US. "We are trying to reawaken an appetite for it and bring it mainstream. We are not planning on being a nice little standalone channel in the UK alone. We want to develop a chunky, international TV and internet presence ... a model not unlike a Sparrowhawk." Sparrowhawk, a private equity group chaired by former Channel Five chief executive David Elstein, built a business with properties including the Hallmark Channel and Movies 24, which it sold to NBC Universal for about £174m in 2007 . Launched in 2006, H&C has shareholders including key industry bodies British Showjumping , British Eventing and British Dressage . At the close of 2008 Hemisphere Capital, in which Killen is a partner, took a majority stake in H&C. • To contact the MediaGuardian news desk email [email protected] or phone 020 3353 3857. For all other inquiries please call the main Guardian switchboard on 020 3353 2000. • If you are writing a comment for publication, please mark clearly "for publication".