Regular readers of this blog will know that the attendance of the Cheltenham Festival is a topic that we have looked at on a regular basis. In 2022, the meeting saw a record number of people in attendance as the post-Covid bounce saw punters flock back to the Gloucestershire course as a celebration of their freedom. In fact, so many people attended that the Jockey Club felt it necessary to put a cap on the possible attendance for 2023, allowing just 68,500 people in each day in 2023. With nearly 74,000 people turning up on Gold Cup Day in 2022, it was a huge drop off in terms of numbers to see the Blue Riband event last year.
Inevitably, the cap meant that the 2023 attendance was down on that of the record-breaking year before. Yet the cap wasn’t the only reason the attendance was down in 2023, with Gold Cup Day being the only one that actually sold out. Ladies Day, as an example, saw more than 14,000 fewer people turn up to the course in 2023 than had done in 2022.
Now we know that the attendance for 2024 was down even further, but is there an obvious reason why? The Cost of Living Crisis had started to bite a year ago but was having even more of an impact this time around, whilst the overall cost of the experience is making it too expensive for many.
What the Numbers Say
| Day | Attendance |
|---|---|
| Champion Day | 60,181 |
| Style Wednesday | 46,771 |
| St Patrick’s Day | 53,918 |
| Gold Cup Day | 69,129 |
| Total | 229,999 |
If the 2022 Festival saw a boom in racegoers keen to celebrate their post-Covid freedom and 2023 witnessed a drop because of the cap put in place on attendance by the Jockey Club, what do the numbers tell us about 2024? The table above looks at the attendance figures for this year’s Festival.
With nearly 330,000 people turning up over the course of the four days of the Festival, it would be untrue to say that it was a total washout. That being said, there is no question that the numbers are down overall, significantly in some cases. Although Gold Cup day is always a sellout or close to, the same cannot be said of the other three days of the Festival. Here is a look at those days across the past five years that the meeting has taken place:
| Year | Champion Day Attendance | Difference | Style Day Attendance | Difference | St Patrick’s Day Attendance | Difference |
|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|
| 2019 | 67,934 | N/A | 59,209 | N/A | 67,821 | N/A |
| 2020 | 60,664 | -7,270 | 56,943 | -2,266 | 65,218 | -2,603 |
| 2022 | 68,567 | 7,903 | 64,431 | 7,488 | 73,754 | 8,536 |
| 2023 | 60,321 | -8,246 | 50,387 | -14,044 | 61,451 | -12,303 |
| 2024 | 60,181 | -140 | 46,771 | -3,616 | 53,918 | -7,533 |
You can see that, with the exception of 2022 when there was the post-Covid boom in attendances, there has been a drop-off in how many people have been attending the Festival compared to previous years each time. In some case, such as the 14,000 fewer people turning up on what was then Ladies Day in 2023 compared to 2022, that drop-off has been dramatic. In other cases, like with the 140 fewer people who turned up on Champion Day in 2024 compared to 2023, it has been somewhat negligible but still saw fewer people in attendance than the previous year.
What About the Television Figures?
It would be easy to assume that the drop in the number of people turning up to watch the Cheltenham Festival in person is a sign that horse racing in general is just less popular than it has been in the past. With animal rights protestors drawing attention to the sport in new ways, including protests at last year’s Grand National, it wouldn’t be unreasonable to think that the British public is being turned off by horse racing as a sport.
The question is, is there any basis for that line of thinking? In order to get a sense of whether that is true, we need to have a look at the viewing figures to see whether people are tuning in on TV instead.
Here is a look at the viewing figures over the past three years of the meeting:
| Year | Gold Cup Viewers | Average Viewers for Week |
|---|---|---|
| 2022 | 1.6 million | 967,000 |
| 2023 | 1.68 million | 941,000 |
| 2024 | 1.59 million | 953,000 |
You can see, then, that the number of people tuning in has gone through some peaks and troughs over the three years in question. Whilst the number of Gold Cup viewers is down on 2023 and the lowest that there has been across the past three years, the number of people tuning in on average across the week was higher this year than last.
Though 2022 remains the winner for the average number of viewers, it is worth bearing in mind that a lot of people will still have been worried about Covid at that point and would therefore be more inclined to watch on television.
Why are Attendances Suffering?
Although Gold Cup Day saw a capacity crowd turn up to watch Galopin Des Champs succeed in defending his crown in the Blue Riband event, there is no question that the Festival otherwise suffered from a drop in attendances. Even changing the title of Ladies Day to Style Day couldn’t do much to salvage a drop in the number of people turning up to Cheltenham Racecourse in order to watch the races play out. For Ian Renton, the Managing Director of the Jockey Club in the region, the obvious answer is the cost of living crisis. He said:
“The Cheltenham Festival remains the pinnacle of Jump racing and a marquee event in the sporting and social calendar, but we and all businesses operating in the leisure and hospitality industry know only too well the huge effect that the ongoing cost of living crisis is having on consumer behaviour.”
The most interesting part of what Renton had to say, though, might well be in the follow up sentence, in which he said, “Whilst we’ve seen slightly lower numbers in terms of general admission this week, hospitality sales continue to go from strength to strength.”
In other words, those that can afford to spend good money on hospitality tickets are happy to do so, whilst those that struggle to afford even the £37 tickets weren’t able to find the money to buy them. The cost of living crisis is undoubtedly continuing to cause issues for those who might see heading to the races as something of a treat, but it isn’t the only factor having an impact.
Killing the Goose that Lays the Golden Eggs?
The big question for Ian Renton and everyone associated with the Jockey Club is whether or not they are accidentally killing the goose that lay the golden egg. The Cheltenham Festival has long been one of the big money-makers for the industry, seeing not just tens of thousands of people turn up to watch the racing in person but also tuning in on television and also placing countless bets on the races that take place across the week. Even Gold Cup Day, which sold out before the end of January in 2022, had tickets remaining as recently as late February this year, suggesting that it lacks the pulling power it once had.
Yes, the cost of living crisis continues to make people question their ability to spend money on something as frivolous as horse racing. Yet the Jockey Club aren’t helping themselves. It was £7.50 for a pint of Guinness at the Festival this year, which is just unsustainable for most people. Local hotels, meanwhile, are charging people an average of £3,000 for a four-night stay. Whilst that isn’t the fault of the Jockey Club, it is yet another area in which punters are being asked to shell out large sums of money, seeing the cheapest hotel room on the Monday night of Festival week sitting at £399 for just one night’s stay.
Although Renton might point to the £37 starting price for tickets, the fact that there were clear spaces in the likes of the Best Mate and Tattersalls enclosures, where the cheaper tickets can be found, is suggestive of the fact that the Festival overall has become an event that only the well-off can afford to go to. Those that can’t afford the cost of a hospitality package are essentially being asked to pay the price of three pints at their local for one pint at the Festival. That is just for an alcoholic drink, with people also needing to pay for travel, accommodation, food and also have some money to place a few bets on the races themselves.
For many people, the choice then comes down to whether they would rather spend the money on a few days at the Cheltenham Festival or a week’s holiday in the likes of Greece or Spain. It doesn’t help that people have to pay as much as £210 to park their cars at the racecourse for the week, with some getting stuck in the mud when they tried to leave on Thursday. Paying such a huge amount of money to then not even be able to drive your car away is enough to make many consider if this is really how they want to spend both their time and their money when they’d have a better view watching it on TV at home.
Have the Bookies Been Affected?
To be honest, most people won’t care a jot about whether or not the bookmakers have been impacted by the drop in attendances, given the fact that the bookies are regularly considered to be the bad guys of any given situation. That being said, we should all be aware that if the bookmakers start to struggle then that will have a long-term impact on horse racing as a sport. Whilst we’d all love to win every bet we ever place, if we actually did that then the bookies would end up giving less money to the sport overall and the quality of what is on offer would suffer even more than it has done in recent times. Be careful what you wish for…
The interesting thing is that it looks as though it is something entirely unrelated to attendances that is having the biggest impact on bookmakers and that it is actually working out in their favour. The newly introduced Affordability Checks that have been put in place on online bookies are seeing punters become more willing to place bets in cash at the racecourse. Some bookmakers reported taking as much as 20% more than they usually would on the opening day of the Festival, with others saying that more cash was being used than would typically be the case, with bets worth £100, £200 and even £1,000 being placed.
One bookie said that the opening day of the Festival this year was ‘like the old days’, with younger punters acting more like their older colleagues. With older bettors dying off, the on-course bookmakers are concerned about the fact that young people tend to face more distractions, heading to Cheltenham for the ‘big day out’ but not placing bets in the same volume. He said, “Yesterday was like those old days but it’s still a long way off.” The result went against the bookies owing to the fact that three favourites and two joint-favourites won, but the fact that they were taking so much cash meant that it was still good news for them.
It is also worth pointing out that it wasn’t a universal celebration from the bookmakers. Whilst there was plenty of anecdotal evidence of people placing bets with cash because they wanted to avoid the Affordability Checks that are now in place online, one bookie observed that he’d taken less than the previous year and pointed to the reduction in attendance. It seems that what they are gaining from with punters reacting to having to prove where they got their money from when betting online, they are losing thanks to the overall reduction in attendance across the week of the Cheltenham Festival.