Spotted them when I was having a bet at a pub recently. They had the new green Sky 1 on the big screen, but I watched my race on Sky 2 via the TAB Touch app.
Not sure if these “WA” versions are on satellite. A recent scan doesn’t reveal much. They could be using one of the Sky Sports feeds?
I have to say, when I first saw the rebrand I did have a bit of a chuckle at what RWWA/TAB WA must be thinking about this. It must be a monumental effort to now have 2 separate sets of graphics in such a chaotic live operation.
It definitely carried the venue coverage of the FIFA World Cup too (under the banner of “Sky Sports Football 1” - presumably the 2nd channel would’ve only been needed on the final group stage day where both games happen at the same time), including other soccer programs during the duration. On-screen bug was basically aqua-turquoise-ish and grey with the type similar to that used for Sky Sports Radio’s logo.
They do send NFL Network and MLB Network (and I think NBA.tv too) to venues… I presume that’s what they normally send on the “Sky Sports 1-3” channels (thanks for the reminder, now that makes sense) and they would’ve repurposed at least one (probably the baseball one as it was out-of-season) during the World Cup.
Probably little different to the days of Sky Ringside/“Transponder 8”, except that boxing is very much Main Event’s remit these days, and Foxtel would want to keep a hold on the venue rights.
I guess this is what is happening with the places that are not Tabcorp run (and the WA TAB, of course, is not Tabcorp and have to come to their own arrangement to run Sky Racing) and can’t handle having the eastern-states TAB logo always present.
Having different “skins” provided by Sky is not rare. For instance, VIC greyhounds site’s live feed is just old-Sky graphics:
And although I never signed up to it, I think they use different colours of the “old” skin to differentiate between channels on Sky Racing Active, which had a multi-view - the Apple App Store has this pic (semi-mock-up I presume?) used for the Apple TV version, of different state gallops feeds [which would practically be an extension of Thoroughbred Central coverage… unclear if these still exist], and then as far as I’m aware the “code-based” feeds [which still do] used the default aqua colour as in the top-left of that.
The stranger thing for me is why they bothered to change the Sky logo on the TAB version of the channel but not anywhere else yet. Obviously they still have a number of things to work out there.
That it was, SKY Business TV. It used downtime, usually during breakfast hours before regular SKY Channel programing began around 10am each day. Was way back before SKY Went 24/7. Now long gone.
Wow, never seen this preview before. Shows that custom graphics for various clients isn’t as big of a task for these guys as I initially thought. Their pres intrigues me. Would love a tour of the place.
I knew about Watchdog - used to have the stream handy. But that’s more like an independent on-course service with Sky graphics on top. It didn’t seem to be linked to the wider backend Sky uses for up-to-date dividends, splits, tips, etc, nor did it ever join the main Sky channel(s).
Going back to Sky Racing 1 and 2 for WA, it’s very glitchy compared to the main Tabcorp versions. I’ll throw up some screenshots later to prove it. Missing dividends, incorrect tips, duplicate races on the ticker, dividends staying up after the jump. Lots of weird errors.
The rotating tips and predictions also aren’t in sync or totally glitched out
There’s no additional field info shown over vision. Thought it might have been a NSW venue exclusive thing now, but not even WA races get the info so it looks like an error:
Dividends aren’t covered over once a race jumps on the dual split screen. This has been standard practice for as long as I can remember, Tabcorp advertising included. The dual split is also the only part of Sky 1 WA that uses the new font.
