He’s arguably the most recognizable horseracing broadcaster on both sides of the Atlantic. And he’s also almost certainly the busiest. In fact, Nick Luck hardly ever stops. His days are full seven days a week, every week.
When he’s not presenting the daily coverage on Britain’s Racing TV subscription channel or his Sunday morning racing chat show, or hosting his popular daily podcast, he has an occasional but significant role as the BBC’s equestrian commentator and is a key figure in with NBC’s international and Breeders’ Cup coverage in the United States. Oh, and he’s much in demand for corporate and other events – he presented the Eclipse Awards at Gulfstream Park in Miami in 2018, for instance – as well as being an accomplished writer.
In this 2-part feature, the 8-time British racing broadcaster of the year talks to George Dudley about his craft, his love of international racing and his recent experience commentating for the BBC on the Tokyo Olympics.
You have just returned from covering racing in Canada and then will be broadcasting the racing in the UK on Racing TV – as well as hosting the Nick Luck Daily podcast - all the following week. When do you have your time off?
It is quite difficult to get what you might call normal chunks of time off, but that’s probably the same for everyone in racing and just about everyone that works in television. With everything going on, we just have to try to snatch it when we can. But we did manage to get a couple of weeks away this summer.
That is an advance on some years. I say this every year, but I owe it to Laura and the girls - and my own sanity - to take more and longer holidays.
As the lead presenter of Channel 4 Racing, you were ostensibly the face of British racing until ITV regained the free-to-air contract for Britain in 2017. Unlike some of your C4 colleagues, you did not move to the new broadcaster. Last year you picked up your eighth HWPA (Horserace Writers’ and Photographer’s Association) presenter of the year award. Was that perceived setback perversely a positive crossroads for your career?
Quite possibly. As time passes, you can reflect on it a lot more objectively. It was certainly a setback at the time – if you take all the emotion out of it, it was a setback practically because you have to find a way of replacing your main source of employment and therefore your principal income stream.
At the time, it was difficult to see beyond it and a little confusing because I was getting so much very well-meaning but conflicting advice. Once it finished, new opportunities thankfully started popping up reasonably quickly.
People often remark that they can’t believe it has been six years since Channel Four finished but, to be honest, it feels like a lifetime ago professionally and personally.
How have you had to develop yourself from the relative comforts of working most weekends on terrestrial television to becoming a freelance broadcaster?
I have always worked for myself and been a freelance broadcaster, even when I had a contract with Channel 4, so the contrast hasn’t been as marked as you might think - there’s still the same healthy level of semi-organised chaos!
I think all broadcasters have to think more laterally now as there are so many more avenues for creating content. I am not sure anyone is quite so bound to or identified by one job and everyone is hustling a little bit more. The idea that you can just bowl up and do one day a week is probably a thing of the past.
What, if anything, do you miss about being the anchor of host terrestrial horseracing in the UK?
It is quite hard to remember because so much has happened since.
Do I miss working as part of a great team on relatively big-budget productions at the biggest meetings in the UK? Sure, yes. I really enjoyed the group of people that I worked with and the events that we covered. The bigger the event, the more satisfaction that it gave you.
I have enough in my life that I don’t particularly crave what I once had. I would rather focus on what might be around the corner.
How did your association with NBC begin?
I have been working on US TV virtually the entire time that I have been doing this job. I started off doing a Breeders’ Cup in 2003 for the Players Show, then I went to work for ESPN when they won the broadcasting rights in 2006 because they wanted a British-based correspondent as a fully integrated part of their team.
ESPN did six Breeders’ Cups before the rights returned to NBC. Rob Hyland, the executive producer, had seen me on ESPN and asked me to join NBC’s coverage. It was really down to him and Peter Rotondo (former VP of entertainment at the Breeders’ Cup) that it began to develop into the relationship we have now.
The UK has racing all year round – jumps in the winter and flat in the summer – and many of your contemporaries seem content to stay in the safe lane of covering exclusively domestic racing. You, on the other hand, have always espoused your passion for international racing, especially in America. How did this cosmopolitan point of view come about?
I absolutely love the racing in the UK and jumping is very much in my blood, so the winter sport in England is something that I enjoy very much.
I spent a year working for Kentucky Equine Research when I left school, which furthered my interest in the international bloodstock industry and, as a consequence of that, international racing.
I am pretty sure that, but for going to work for Dr Joe Pagan - a very brilliant and bright man - during that period – and working there aged 18 as a journalist alongside a great mentor in Robin Stanback, I wouldn’t have ended up with quite the same career that I have had. It wouldn’t have involved as much international racing, for sure.
What could racing do from a broadcast point of view to make itself more of an international product?
It would be great to showcase racing from around the globe a bit more prominently. It is unrealistic to think that there will ever be a comparable appetite for racing around the world as there is for what is on your doorstep, but part of that is down to the way that it is presented.
There was a period, when I first started working in television, when American racing was starting to get more popular in the UK, but that is because there had been some investment - both financial and emotional - in those broadcasts. It cultivated a niche but faithful audience. It can’t be plonked on the telly as an afterthought or just to fill time in the hope that, through osmosis, people will get enthused by it and bet on it.
No-context sport isn’t a great watch, nor does it compel you to get involved as a punter. You have to invest in the product in a similar way that you would domestic racing. Then I think that you would find more interest and then more people would want to bet on it. I strongly suspect the early success and positive noises surrounding the worldpool will have quite a significant impact.
From a legislative point of view, can racing become a truly global sport, in areas such as the harmonisation of rules?
I don’t think that you would ever get a truly global governing body because the funding models are so different across the major racing nations.
In terms of regulation, however, there are numerous efforts to harmonise on the part of IFHA and the Asian Racing Conference, and those are very welcome: It is surely to the benefit of all of us and all our horses to have a healthy degree of regulatory parity, particularly when it comes to welfare and medication.
You have cultivated your inimitable on-screen persona, which has won you legions of fans across the industry around the world. Which past and present broadcasters do you admire and who might have helped shaped your style?
There are countless broadcasters that I admire at home and abroad, many of whom I work with, and for so many different reasons. In an all-round capacity, NBC’s Mike Tirico is a phenomenon - his closing piece to camera after Simone Biles’s Olympic exit was a truly unbelievable piece of work, and all in 70 seconds.
Closer to home, I started around the same time as Lydia Hislop and Rishi Persad. We’re all very different, but they are two superb professionals. But you have to find your own style way of doing things if you’re going to be happy and confident in the job.
[That’s] particularly [true] nowadays, when there is pressure to make an impact that perhaps encourages a bit too much acting and too little authenticity.
What, if any, are the key differences between broadcasting in the UK and US?
British horseracing broadcasting is a little looser editorially, generally a little less tightly structured and formatted than in the States.
When you go on air in America, I think that you have got a slightly clearer idea of what your role is and what might be coming up on the show. If you have got good stories to tell, then they will be told. It is a bit more purposeful and directional. But, in the UK, it may be easier to improvise and run with the ball when that’s required.
I guess the trick is, within your tightly formatted structure, to give moments of high drama the chance to breathe and play out naturally. You need to know when to hold fast to your format and when to come off it. That’s the secret to any good sports production.
If you are doing a big show for a big audience, then it doesn’t matter what sport or event you are covering, you are trying to make it as engaging as possible and shed light on areas that might be a little opaque to a broad section of your audience.
I don’t think that it is as complex as people make it out to be. Communicate clearly, try to find universal touch-points and don’t talk down to people. With that, you shouldn’t go too far wrong.
Do you see yourself as broadcaster, who happens to work in racing, or do you see yourself as solely a horseracing broadcaster?
Well, both. I love the art of broadcasting and I adore horseracing, so I don’t especially see myself as one or the other. This is what I do, and I love to do it.
There is no doubt that the emphases have changed significantly in the time that I have been working. What is considered to be stylistically acceptable and preferable has massively changed. When I started doing this job, just shy of 20 years ago, there was a lot more deference to the medium of television or radio. The idea that you were on TV was an exciting one in and of itself, and you were there as a conduit for the audience.
It was about the show, and it would have been frowned upon by production to insert yourself too heavily into the production.
Now it is more personality-driven. I am not saying that this is a good or a bad thing, it is just different. I think the audience now expects a certain level of personal sharing from those that they are familiar with on-screen, which is hardly a surprise as they feel a greater intimacy with them through social media. The younger audience is made up of TV stars in their own home who have been pointing cameras at themselves for as long as they can remember, often with pretty accomplished results. To the younger millennial or Gen-Z viewers, television is no longer ‘magic’ - it has all become quite Brechtian - everyone can see you’re working.
Click here for part 2: Live commentary on the Tokyo Olympics - from a booth in North-West England
This article appears in the current issue of Gallop magazine