Dalet Helps Victoria Racing Club Create Media Business

Dalet has worked with Victoria Racing Club (VRC) to build a fully functioning media production unit. Using Dalet Flex production asset management capabilities to store, organize and manage media, the VRC is able to take full control over its content and archive to protect its rich history and expand its content offering to rights holders, media partners and racing fans.

The Victoria Racing Club is the custodian of Flemington Racecourse, home to the Melbourne Cup Carnival and Australia’s horse race, the Lexus Melbourne Cup, which was first run in 1861.

“Flemington’s incredible history needed to be preserved and celebrated, but most of it was stored on hard drives or tape. With a range of highly valuable historical content, the VRC saw an opportunity to transform this content into an organized, accessible library for the VRC, media partners and fans,” says David Campbell, Executive General Manager – VRC Media. “Working with Dalet Flex has allowed the VRC to store rich content that tells the story of Flemington’s long and important history now and into the future.”

Dalet Flex enables sports organizations like the VRC to take full control of content, enabling wider and deeper business and fan engagement as well as a broader commercial opportunity.

A year-round opportunity

The VRC is famous for the Lexus Melbourne Cup, which runs on the first Tuesday in November every year, and is part of the four-day Melbourne Cup Carnival. With an additional 19 race meetings held at Flemington each year, the Club is generating significant video and photographic content that needs to be managed, easily sourced and utilized.

“The VRC recognised this approach was not the most efficient use of resources – simple storage of video and media assets wasn’t enough. They called Dalet to provide both the technology to take control of the assets and collaborate on a strategy to fully maximise its premium content,” comments Ren Middleton, VP – Sales – Asia Pacific, Dalet.

The VRC researched several technical options and agreed Dalet Flex was the best choice to meet their needs.

“Our partnership with Dalet, from development to implementation has been fantastic,” Campbell says. “The Dalet Flex system is powerful, easy to use and was fully integrated across the business quickly. The cloud-native architecture provides the scalability we need and future proofs our operation no matter what media production needs arise.

Data of every kind

One of VRC’s most important requirements was the reliable delivery of broadcast content, and Dalet Flex’s tools to package content for media partners have proven crucial.

According to David, the VRC journey into a media production company was well supported by Dalet: “Dalet has been wonderful partners in this project. Their attention to detail and delivery has been outstanding.”