Bookies count cost of Cheltenham week

Bookmakers were left licking their wounds after last week’s Cheltenham Festival, despite mounting something of a fightback on Thursday and Friday.

The industry narrowly avoided wipe-out on day one after a fall at the last fence spared bookies a painful £50m pay out, however, a string of short-priced favourites throughout the week was enough see punters finish on top.

“It was impossible to claw back all of the opening day losses despite a good final day,” Charlie McCann, head of BetVictor online PR, told eGaming Review.

“The opening race of the day set the tone for punters on each of the four days, with three winning favourites and a well-backed second favourite obliging in the first race,” he added.

However, McCann said BetVictor had seen a good response to its new account sign-up offers, such as 6/1 on Willie Mullins to train a winner on day one, while betting volumes were also positive.

“We were absolutely thrilled with the success of our new customer offers while bet numbers exceeded our wildest expectations. Our challenge now is to make sure our new Festival customers make BetVictor their bookmaker of choice,” McCann said.

Ladbrokes head of consumer PR David Williams told eGR the firm had lost “a few million” across the week and that Cheltenham 2015 would “not be fondly remembered by bookies”.

“Results were disappointing and there’s no escaping that,” Williams said. “Across the piece we finished the Festival facing small losses but we’re still left with a feeling of ‘what-might-have-been’,” Williams said.

He added that, results aside, Ladbrokes was pleased with many of the underlying metrics Cheltenham delivered, with the firm seeing “clear spikes” around its offers and pricing strategy.

“Sign-ups were in line or above plan for the week and turnover was up markedly on mobile year-on-year across all four days,” William said.

“We were top price in the morning on all four of the favourites in the Championship races and three of them were beaten so our clear position of wanting to attract money on the fancied horses saw customers respond as we had hoped,” he added.

Unibet head of UK marketing operations Ed Nicholson said after a tough start the operator managed to finish the week “honours even” and reported some record KPIs.

“We saw an unprecedented number of actives during Cheltenham week, while our various marketing activities across a multitude of platforms resulted in a record number of new depositors.

Approximately £200m was estimated to have been wagered across the four-day Festival, an event Betfair chief executive Breon Corcoran recently described as “this year’s World Cup”.