Solomon Sharpe, executive chairman of the Supreme Ventures Racing and Entertainment Limited (SVREL), believes live broadcast of the lucrative Mouttet Mile on FOX 5 New York will provide a huge boost for Jamaica’s horse racing industry.

The Mouttet Mile, scheduled to run on December 2 this year, is the richest race in the English-speaking Caribbean. It will carry a purse of US$150,000 ($23.5 million). The race will be aired live in the United States for the first time since its inception last year. Sharpe told the Jamaica Observer that the SVREL’s access to the FOX 5 came about through a partnership with New York Racing Association (NYRA) betting agency.

“The Mouttet Mile will be on FOX 5 New York and the viewership is massive. FOX 5 is broadcast to the tri-state [area] to over 20 million people in the United States and the horse racing audience is even bigger,” said Sharpe.

“We are going to be on a day where we are going to be matched with Cigar Mile and you know how important the Cigar Mile is in the history of horse racing North American racing,” he said.

“The fact that NYRA would have had this level of confidence in us, and given us access to their slot on FOX 5 is massive exposure globally for Caymanas Park, not just connecting us with the Diaspora market, but giving us greater access to the mainstream market… so that we can further develop the product in Jamaica,” Sharpe said.

The SVREL boss said they have been given the privilege of running the Mouttet Mile as the last race of the day.

“Our expectations are that the Cigar Mile will be at about 4:25 pm [Jamaica time] and we will be the star that will close the show at about 4:45 pm,” Sharpe said.

“NYRA has seen an uptick in their business since they have forged a partnership with FOX and FOX has also seen the benefits of being involved with NYRA because it is a quality horse racing product and it has put horse racing back on the mainstream.

“Earlier this year, FOX took over the coverage of the Belmont Stakes and the Travers Stakes and those things are massive, so this is just a continuous push in revitalising the product and placing the product in a distribution channel that a lot of us would have never dream of before,” Sharpe said.

He pointed that his organisation is very delighted to have received a number of overseas entrants for this year’s Mouttet Mile. He said there have been others from North American who have also expressed an interest in having their horses competing in the race.

“We have six entrants in North America who said that they want to be a part of it and so I think that this is going to potentially open up the floodgates for a lot more overseas entries in the future,” Sharpe stated.

The Mouttet Mile takes its name from its main sponsor, Paul Mouttet, chairman of Trinidad and Tobago-based Zodiac Caribbean Ventures Limited, currently the largest shareholder of SVREL’s mother company, Supreme Ventures Limited (SVL).