Can't see the BBC mounting much of an effort to bid against Channel 4 for the next racing deal in 2017.
Take recent experience with cricket, for example.
The BBC had two opportunities to bid against Channel 4 to win back Test cricket for the contracts starting in 2002 and 2006.
They didn't even mount a bid, and also didn't attempt to bid for highlights in two subsequent contracts against Channel 5.
When they lost Test cricket in 1999, the Beeb went into a huge sulk and didn't show any cricket until it screened Ashes highlights in 2006-7.
Admittedly, the willingness of cricket's governing body, the ECB, to throw all it's eggs in the BSkyB basket in recent years hasn't helped, but the BBC should have really made much more of an effort with cricket.
Now I can see the BBC become equally uninterested in horse racing unless there's any great incentive for them to become reinvolved in the sport, which I don't think there is.
The excellent Five Live big race coverage will continue, but the only way I could see racing returning to the BBC TV screens is if Channel 4 lose interest in the sport (possibly at the end of a further contract extension in around 2020) and the BBC picks up the protected free-to-air events of The Grand National and the Derby.
And in that case, that's all there would be, plus possibly Cheltenham.
The racing authorities are playing a dangerous game.
Channel 4 has come close on a number of occasions in recent years to walking out of the sport altogether, and despite the sweetener of the Grand National and exclusivity, if the new TV deal doesn't deliver what Channel 4 expect, they will walk away, and I can't see too many free-to-air broadcasters being interested in picking up horse racing.