The ugly fight for racing industry television rights is set to explode again in 2012 in the wake of Queensland Racing's decision to enter into a long term contract with Sky Channel.

Victoria Racing Club chief executive Dale Monteith said the Queensland decision to enter into a 10-year contract with Sky over the industry-owned telecaster TVN would lead to another drawn out fight for media rights when current agreements in NSW and Victoria expire in 2012.

'Mark my words, when the current memorandum of understanding between TVN and Sky expires in 2012, TVN shareholder clubs will not accept anything less than full value for their rights and this will be considerably more than is received at present,” Monteith told the The Age newspaper.

Monteith said the Queensland Racing decision had denied Australian racing the opportunity to take control of its own destiny by aligning with Tabcorp-owned Sky Channel.

'If Queensland Racing had joined with TVN it would have furthered the commercialisation of our media assets,' Monteith said.

'TVN was created for this very purpose when Sky made it very clear that clubs would no longer receive rights fees for their pictures.

'Yet, obscenely, Sky then, and now, continues to make tens of millions of dollars profit each year from racing pictures.'

Queensland Racing has confirmed that will it begin negotiations with Sky Racing for a 10-year exclusivity agreement on behalf of all Queensland race clubs.

In a departure from past media rights negotiations, the race clubs engaged Queensland Racing to collectively negotiate on their behalf with Sky Racing and TVN. QR elected to accept the Sky offer over TVN.

TVN was hoping to secure the Queensland rights to support its coverage of Victorian and Sydney racing.

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