He is guaranteed two historical fights with Mike Tyson, regardless of whether he wins his court case against Don King for a rematch with Hasim Rahman. Lewis v Tyson I and II will be the highest grossing fights in the history of boxing, with Mike and Lennox sharing over $160m between them.”Ogun’s office said that he had been “locked” in talks with Shelly Finkel and other other members of Tyson’s team all weekend. It was also claimed that HBO and Showtime reached agreement on Sunday to share a pay per view and delayed broadcast of both Lewis and Tyson I and II. The first fight is said to be scheduled for 8 December this year.No confirmation of the deal was forthcoming at either of the TV companies yesterday. Kerry Davis, the chief negotiator of HBO, was in “important meetings”, and Jay Larkin, Showtime’s chief executive, was due to give evidence in the federal courtroom.

What is clear, though, is that the financial weight of Lewis-Tyson has become increasingly compelling to both companies. Earlier this year, Larkin was at pains to point out that his company had made a series of “compromise” offers to their fierce rivals HBO.”We have done all we can to make a deal with HBO, and we are prepared to negotiate any possibility that would get the fight on,” Larkin said. “Obviously, it is the biggest fight out there and we have tried everything to make it happen. The ball is in HBO’s court.”Now Ogun is running with it with great enthusiasm, but in the past some of his statements have been marked with more than a touch of optimism.

However, the uncertainties created by Lewis’s defeat may have concentrated the minds of all negotiators, including HBO’s. Boxing has never been known to reject big, easy money and that is what Lewis-Tyson increasingly represents as the lawyers rack up their charges in the New York courtroom.. The green screens had been up around the Go Racing consortium for several days, but it was only in the early hours of yesterday morning that it was finally put out of its misery. Dawn had broken over Portman Square when the British Horseracing Board decided that it could not sanction the use of its vital pre-race data by the consortium, and a deal that was supposed to be worth £307m was suddenly worth precisely nothing at all.

The green screens had been up around the Go Racing consortium for several days, but it was only in the early hours of yesterday morning that it was finally put out of its misery. Dawn had broken over Portman Square when the British Horseracing Board decided that it could not sanction the use of its vital pre-race data by the consortium, and a deal that was supposed to be worth £307m was suddenly worth precisely nothing at all.
You could describe the tale of the Go Racing contract as a sorry chapter in the history of the sport, were it not for the fact that, after almost three years of negotiations, and many thousands of wasted hours, chapter is far too small a word. It has been more of a Norse epic, a struggle for power in which few of the characters emerge with credit, although Go Racing itself, an alliance including Channel 4, BskyB and Arena Leisure, fits more into the role of a victim caught in the crossfire.What it all came down to was the simple question: who runs racing? Most racing followers, or at any rate those who can be bothered to wonder about such things, tend to think that it is the BHB. But when 49 of Britain’s racecourses, including all the major ones, agreed to sell their media rights to Go Racing for the next 10 years, they did so without any input from the BHB. When one sector of the industry starts to act with such complete independence of the rest, it cannot be long before people start to ask what, exactly, the BHB is for? Answers on a post card, please, to Peter Savill, Portman Square, W1.The BHB was unamused. Nor did it help that the Jockey Club, which ceded power to the BHB in racing’s Velvet Revolution a decade ago, seemed to be grabbing back influence via its control of Racecourse Holdings Trust, the body which owns many top tracks But the BHB also held one important card.

It owns the rights to racing’s pre-race data ­ runners, riders, and so on ­ without which live pictures are meaningless.The Go Racing deal, signed by the courses months ago, included the pre-race data, at a price to be negotiated at a later date. But the courses had effectively sold something they did not own, which is never a wise idea, particularly when the actual owner is as pugnacious as Peter Savill, the BHB chairman.In recent weeks, some of racing’s other interest groups, notably the owners and trainers, started to question what was in it for them The answer, they felt, was not much. There was unease, too, about the length of the deal, 10 years being far too long in a rapidly changing media world, while Go Racing’s plans to launch an off-shore betting operation, just when Customs & Excise had been persuaded to abolish betting duty to lure British bookies home, was insensitive, even inflammatory.All were useful sticks to beat the deal. The final, insurmountable sticking point, according to the BHB, was that Go Racing wanted pre-race data rights for new platforms, such as the heralded 3G mobile phones, included in the contract. This the BHB would not concede.The questions now are whether Channel 4 will maintain its commitment to terrestrial coverage, and whether the BHB, in unison ­ if such a thing is possible ­ with the courses, can find a better deal than the one it has just torpedoed.”Our position is that we only see a future in racing if we are involved on a cross-platform basis,” a spokesman for Channel 4 said yesterday “We need to pay for programming and make a return. We invest over £10m a year in racing, and we certainly don’t get that back on the current coverage.