Cheltenham Festival reaction: Neil Channing on what must change for racegoer experience

In case you have avoided all forms of both racing and social media since the flag went down for the Martin Pipe last week, I should perhaps tell you that attendances were down at Cheltenham this year.

From around 260,000 people a year in 2018, 2019 and 2020 there was a spike in 2022 when post-Covid euphoria took the numbers up to 280,000, but racing fell back to earth a little in 2023 when 240,000 showed up and this year the number was down to 229,310.

It's good to get some actual numbers into this article as discussions around these issues are often based on supposition and feel rather than evidence, and when you are planning to make changes to something you really are better off basing your changes on something solid.

Anecdotal evidence massively outweighs scientific evidence on this complex issue of why people aren't going but with so much anecdotal evidence, and much of it making the same points, it shouldn't be totally dismissed.

Before getting onto why people aren't coming we should perhaps ask a couple of other questions about when they aren't coming and who these people are. Let's start then.

The good news is we have some more figures here and they definitely help us figure out the why. Wednesday is definitely the weakest day of the meeting in terms of numbers and we can see that from getting roughly 57,000 people in 2017 through to 2020 it spiked at a high of 64,000 in 2022 before falling in 2023 to 50,000 and in 2024 to 47,000.

I think we can correctly deduce that this fall in numbers and the lesser interest in attending on Wednesday is down to the race programme; the races on Wednesday just aren't as popular. I think everyone agrees that the day two card this year was particularly bad with small fields and short priced favourites in the opening novice races and the Champion Chase. Whilst that is clearly true and solving the problem could involve implementing some contentious changes to a couple of those races, I think the evidence shows us that Wednesday has been the least popular day for years now.

Luckily I come here with solutions. It seems obvious to me that two races which punters and pundits often dismiss as not being worth their attention are the Champion Bumper and the Cross Country. Given that life would be easier for Cheltenham and more pleasant for racegoers if the same number of people attended on each day, one immediate change I would make is to move one of these races to a different day and swap in something more popular.

Ideally the change would involve moving them either to Tuesday or Thursday and given that Thursday is the day which has three handicaps I would suggest swapping either the bumper or the Cross Country with a handicap from Thursday. The easiest way to do that without moving the times of other races is to swap the Bumper and Kim Muir around.

Ok, that's sorted out Wednesday, (I'm joking, clearly the problems that the Festival and the sport have run deeper than that, but this is just one article and I'm looking for low-hanging fruit that doesn't damage the whole ecosystem and cause multiple hissy-fits).

So why are people not flocking to Cheltenham?

Next up we want to try and work out who are the people that aren't coming.

I think that one is pretty clear. We had lots of people coming before and we have less people coming now so we can assume we have a customer-retention issue. It's not that loads of people gave up following horse racing as a hobby and we have failed to replace them, (although that definitely is happening a bit), but that we have a load of people who used to go, who no longer do so.

Our numbers tell us that the ticket sales in the Club and Tattersalls enclosures have held up well and that the drop off has happened in the Best Mate enclosure. That might suggest that it's less about the race programme and the sheer quantity of small fields, odds-on favourites and domination by a small number of stables, (we'll call these on-track factors), and more about off-track issues.

If it was all those other things you'd expect numbers to drop off everywhere and not just in one enclosure. Obviously I'm not saying that none of those on-track factors are having any effect on numbers or that they aren't important, it's just the evidence suggests that they are possibly less of a factor than discussions I have read seem to think.

Now let's ask what are the off-track factors that might be stopping people coming?

First up must be the state of the economy. I definitely haven't got time to go into all that is wrong with the UK economy here but clearly people have less money to spend and a trip to Cheltenham is an expensive luxury.

You can add to that the alternatives and we hear of people jetting off to Spain or hiring hospitality suites in hotels and pubs to watch the meeting with their friends, many miles away from Gloucestershire. Less often we hear of the people who have just decided it's better watching at home, the TV coverage is superb, you don't have to waste time travelling, you never miss anything and it costs way less. Surely most people who don't go now are just sitting at home watching it?

If you break down the costs of attending the Festival they are basically travel, accommodation, transferring to the course or parking, getting in and food and drink while you are there. I'll leave the betting aside as people will do that whether they go or not and the cost varies enormously for different people.

Starting with ticket prices I actually don't think that is the main problem and I feel the freezing of prices for early bird sales is a positive move. Given that sales of Tattersalls and Club tickets held up they can't be too expensive under this crazy system which we run our world by. The drop off was in the Best Mate and you could definitely argue for dropping the price there, but clearly costs have shot up in recent years and freezing the prices is a decent offer. The points about comparisons with other major events are fine as long as the facilities are equal to other events and that brings us on to food.

At the Japan Cup the vendors pay nothing to the racecourse for access to sell their products there. They are told that the prices must match their normal prices at their restaurant or premises in Tokyo. Clearly Japanese racing has a different funding model and I get it that Cheltenham need to make money on the week and their profits go back to racing, but if people feel ripped off in terms of price and quality that will help worsen this customer-retention problem.

Maybe there is a way to get racegoers to review each food stand via an app and those that earn the best reviews get a cheaper price next year, maybe the worst ones are told they haven't met the standard and they can't come next year and maybe some of them should simply be escorted off the racecourse by the chip police...

Alcohol prices always make big headlines but actually I don't think paying £7.50 for a pint is particularly an issue when it's over a fiver in a lot of towns these days. I think getting served quickly and efficiently, the bars being set up properly to make the drinks with ice, lemon and lime, snacks and perhaps even a place to sit would be a lot more important in keeping hold of our customers.

How do people get there?

In terms of travel I think it's easy to say that Cheltenham would prefer more people to come by train as it helps relieve congestion on the roads around the town and makes the problem of parking easier.

Currently around 20% of the visitors travel by that method. The racecourse can have conversations with the private rail company asking them to put on more trains and about prices but at the end of the day they have no leverage in that negotiation. A return ticket from London to Cheltenham on a normal midweek morning is just under £70 and in Cheltenham week it is generally £150 and can be higher.

This clearly pushes people into travelling by car. I do think the bus from the station is a good thing and although they charge, it isn't a rip-off. Given that Cheltenham is a small town with a population of 100,000 people it's clearly mad that around 40,000 people are encouraged to drive into the town at exactly the same time.

Cheltenham had 7000 more cars than anticipated turn up on the Tuesday this year and we all saw the problems it caused in terms of parking. If you are paying £30 to do so and there is a risk you'll get stuck and have to be towed out by the overworked tractor, the money you save by not getting the train might not seem so appealing.

If you also consider the time it takes to exit the car park followed by hours sitting in traffic, it seems crazy that people would still come by car. I really think many are just crying out for an alternative.

Cheltenham tell us that there was a 13% reduction in tickets purchased by people living over 100 miles away and that there was no real change to people living 25 miles away or nearer. There are two possibilities here. One is that those travelling further have much higher travelling costs plus they are way more likely to need to stay at least one night.

Looking at hotels you will find that rates in and around Cheltenham are roughly £500 a night during the Festival and although conversations are had with hoteliers and the council over prices, there is no way that small private businesses are going to reduce their prices on their busiest days of the year. The answer has to be to increase supply.

So what's the solution?

Luckily I have the solution both to the travel issues, the parking, the congestion and the accommodation all in one go and it's this:

Cheltenham needs to spend the money necessary to create an enormous park and ride scheme. I'm not talking about a tiny car park just out of town and a rickety old bus making two journeys to and from the course before racing at a charge of £20.

I'm talking about laying on dozens of executive coaches that will transport people every 30 minutes throughout the morning of each day and until fairly late into the evening. Getting a huge proportion of the crowd to stop at Oxford, on the way from London, at Worcester, on the way from Birmingham on the M5 and from Bristol also on the M5, and bringing them the rest of the way in on buses would mean thousands less people needing to park and a whole bunch of cheaper hotels now looking like a great option. Hotels in Worcester are around half the price of those in Cheltenham during Festival week and those in Oxford are cheaper still.

I was disappointed that Ian Renton, the Jockey Club Director responsible for Cheltenham, responded to the idea of park and ride by suggesting that it's not what his customers want as they like their cars, or words to that effect.

I would suggest that nobody likes paying five times the standard price for a hotel, being stuck in traffic if they just come on the day, paying £30 to park and waiting over an hour just to leave the car park only to be ready to sit in a load more traffic once they are out.

If they knew there was an alternative that was done really professionally, so they could have a drink at the races and get the bus back to their hotel in a town 40 miles away or that they could come into Cheltenham nice and early and have breakfast in the town and enjoy the atmosphere or stay late in the evening and have dinner knowing there is a bus waiting to take them back to their car, then I think they could find they love the idea a lot more.

I totally understand that there will be a massive cost for this in terms of paying out for huge numbers of buses which really must be operating extremely regularly right through the day if the scheme is going to work.

Maybe Cheltenham would only consider doing it if they were charging for the bus journeys. I would warn them not to do that as sports events that have successfully implemented park and ride overseas don't charge, appreciating the need for mass adoption.

It must look like an absolute no-brainer to the guy who doesn't really want to give up his car. You could make it a scheme where people have to download an app and register in order to use the buses and perhaps even get a sponsor on board. Imagine if the Tote subsidised the whole thing in exchange for the data of people getting on the bus, it could be a win for everyone.

I'm pretty sure that Cheltenham doesn't even currently make any money out of car parking once you consider staffing costs and the price of the trackway they have to lay down. I'm equally sure that the hoteliers and hospitality businesses in the town might not like the Festival moving outwards.

Cheltenham would need to be strong and take the flak they'll get as the customers will soon realise that you can halve the travel and accommodation costs by taking advantage of the scheme and for all other racegoers who choose to drive to the course and park they will have less traffic to sit in and less trouble parking.

It's a solution to their traffic, parking, travel costs and accommodation problems all in one and it could just make the whole week much cheaper for those who are currently absent and we need to win back. It would also be more pleasant for everyone else there too.

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