The Cheltenham Festival has certainly seen a facelift over the last week, with many changes on the course confirmed, but there’s also news for racing fans who go to the meeting.
Changes have been announced to improve the customer experience, and the good news for the racecourse is that the bar is pretty low, so anything they do for 2025 should make things better.
Before explaining the changes, I’ll explain my situation. I’m a former Cheltenham racecourse member veteran of many festivals but someone who, in recent years, has cut back on visits to Cheltenham, including stopping attending the festival all altogether.
I found myself not enjoying the experience. I like to see horses in the parade ring, watch the action live on track, greet winners back to the winner’s enclosure, and fit a bet and a drink in between. At major meetings, you have to sacrifice some of that, which I appreciate, but I found myself sacrificing a lot of it.
Cheltenham Bid to Improve Customer Satisfaction
To be fair to Cheltenham, they’ve listened to racegoers. I was sent an email asking for my thoughts on how they could improve. The changes have been made with all of this in mind.
Here’s a look at the headline changes:
- Ticket prices are frozen, anyone buying multiple-day tickets can get a 20% discount, but this excludes Gold Cup day.
- Grass car parks to be laid with tracks to assist people getting out of the racecourse
- New park and ride system launched from Cheltenham
- Coach partnership with National Express to provide coach transfers from 20 locations directly to the track
- Package deals created to offer discounts on those booking tickets, travel and accommodation together
- More course facing bars, food meal deals introduced, more indoor seating
I’m happy to say that all of those are positives and should make the whole experience a far better one than it has been in the past.
But when you see the changes, you have to think to yourself that this is about a decade’s worth of work that should have been in place already, and Cheltenham are late to the party by adding it now.
I have never parked on course for the festival itself, but have for many other meetings, and the fact that a winter sports venue that attracts 60,000+ people has grass car parks has always been one of life’s mysteries for me.
I’ve never been stuck as some have, but I have certainly handled the mud bath once or twice myself, and it’s not the best way to end a day out.
The 20% discount on buying tickets for multiple days has been a long time coming and is great to see. It’s a start, but it should include Gold Cup day, which, for those who don’t know, is usually around £20 more expensive than the other days.
The improvements to course-facing bars and upgrading bar facilities have been a long time coming, and it makes no sense why Cheltenham wouldn’t want to do this.
Guinness will be £7.80 a pint this coming season, and people queue up for it at that price, I do myself, rightly or wrongly. But if you’ve got queues, sometimes big ones too, and you’re charging that much money for the drinks, then surely it makes business sense to increase your selling capacity and get more money in.
Let’s face it, whether you like them or not, some people will go to the races and get a new drink every time their cup is empty. The queuing time will prevent plenty from having an extra pint or two, so this should almost instantly pay for itself.
Park and ride coverage, coach travel to the course, and package deals are all welcome, hopefully making the Cheltenham Festival a little more easier on the pocket for some people or easier by taking away the stress of getting there and back.
Cheltenham Improvements a Long Time Coming
I’ll end this by saying that I’m happy with the improvements suggested, and this should make the 2025 Cheltenham Festival better for those who attend.
But at the same time, they have been a long time coming. When you manage one of the biggest sporting events in the UK, you have to monitor things constantly. The Cheltenham Festival has been in decline on and off the track for quite some time now.
I hope this is the beginning of us turning the corner, and who knows, perhaps I’ll be back at the festival one day again. I’m very interested to read what the vibe is on social media in March and see how much both seasoned racegoers and once-a-year visitors talk about the changes, and whether they’ve impacted them positively.