By Richard Wayman, Director of Racing 

Throughout 2025, we’ll publish quarterly blogs that aim to summarise the overall year-to-date performance of action on the racecourse. The blogs will cover the two-year trial of fixture list initiatives that runs to the end of this year and has the overall objective of making our racing as attractive as possible for the sport’s fans, both existing and new.

Alongside the blog, we’ll also publish the latest racing data report which includes a lot of the measures that you would expect to see covering key areas such as race competitiveness, prize money and horse numbers. There will always be a slight delay in publishing the blog as it will also refer to some customer data, such as betting information and racecourse attendances, which takes a little bit longer to compile.

When looking back at the results from Q1 of 2025, as is often the case, they are a bit of a mixed bag with some grounds for optimism, but also areas of concern.

In terms of the ‘field of play’ results, it was good to see a more competitive period of Jump racing than 12 months ago. Average field sizes at Jump Core Fixtures grew slightly from 7.85 to 7.93, whilst there was a more significant increase at Jump Premier Fixtures from 9.29 to 9.63.  That overall improvement was against a backdrop of there being 42 more Jump races staged in Q1 this year, albeit it should also be acknowledged that the very soft ground in the first few months of last year undoubtedly impacted field sizes at that time.

Conversely, the field sizes on the Flat in Q1 have been lower this year, with the average at Core Flat Fixtures falling from 8.82 to 8.62. It is however worth remembering that last year’s numbers would have been boosted by the trial of six Sunday evening fixtures, where the relatively high prize money on offer usually resulted in something close to full fields.

In terms of customer data, total betting turnover has fallen by 9% compared with the same period in 2024. Whilst there is work to be done on the racing product to grow its appeal as a betting medium, there would be a much wider range of factors contributing to this concerning decline. These include, for example, that improvements in gross win through Q1 would suggest that results on the racecourse didn’t help turnover levels through this period.

Looking more closely at the decline, it is interesting to note that the average turnover per race at a Core Fixture has fallen by 14.4%, whilst at a Premier Fixture it has remained unchanged. This suggests changes in the profile of customers betting on racing with some of the larger higher-staking customers either betting less or moving to unlicensed operators where they can avoid the checks that are routinely required within the regulated markets. More encouragingly, we are seeing growth in the number of recreational punters betting on racing. Such customers are more likely to focus on our higher profile fixtures and races, albeit their activity does not make up for the loss of the larger-staking bettors.

As for racegoers, total attendances have fallen by slightly more than 16,000 from 682,385 to 666,069. However, it is worth noting that most of the busy Easter period fell in Q1 in 2024 but not this year, and also that there were slightly fewer fixtures run throughout the quarter. A like-for-like comparison with 2023, another year where Easter fell in Q2, shows a marginal increase in overall attendances of just over 1,000 racegoers.

Of course, with the Cheltenham Festival being the highlight of Q1, the reduction in crowds there of just over 11,000 is also significant in the total numbers this year.

Off the track, overall prize money was down by £1.5m from £33.9m to £32.4m. Over Jumps, the total has actually increased by £1.5m from £20.9m to £22.4m, albeit there were 42 more Jump races run this year. The £3m drop on the Flat, from £13m to £10m can largely be explained by the aforementioned trial of Sunday evening fixtures (total prize money of £945k), and also the timing of the Good Friday fixtures (the three fixtures staged that day offer a total of £1.7m).

The horse population on 31 March is down by 1.9% compared with the same date in 2024, falling from 15,359 to 15,070. More positively, after a continuous decline in recent years in the number of higher rated Jump horses running in Britain, there has a been welcome increase in the number of 135+ rated horses appearing on the racecourse in Q1, from 288 to 307.

Finally, the efforts made by all involved to ensure races start on time is bearing fruit with in Q1, 87.6% of races starting within 2 minutes of the scheduled off-time, which compares with 79.2% in 2024 and 72.7% in 2023. This improvement is important given the impact of race clashes on those who view their racing via streaming, the racing channels or in a betting shop.

By the time of my next blog at the end of Q2, we will be a long way down the road of producing the 2026 fixture list. The current trial of changes is allowing us to test various things, and it is obviously important that the 2026 fixture list builds on the areas where we have seen improvements and learns the lessons from those initiatives that haven’t achieved their aims.