The word ‘Cheltenham’ is synonymous with horse racing all over the world.
It’s the Olympics of the sport and one of the pivotal moments for Flutter’s UK and Irish division each and every year. Last week was no different, with over 2.5m active customers across Flutter’s three main UK and Irish sportsbooks – Paddy Power, Sky Bet and Betfair – placing nearly 35m bets over the four-day Festival.
As Karen McMahon, Racing Director at Flutter UKI, explains, it is the brand’s “opportunity to shine and lots of preparation goes into ensuring our customers enjoy a seamless and fun experience – hearts definitely beat faster during this week.” To pull this off at scale and at speed, meticulous planning is essential to ensure maximum customer entertainment, with compelling campaigns and top-notch offers driving this engagement.
Odds compilers and product developers work hard alongside one another to provide real-time prices and maintain app stability, while customer service teams are primed for one of the busiest days of the year. In fact, UKI colleagues tend to handle “over 85,000 customer contacts and 51,000 verification documents during the four days, a volume typically seen in a month,” according to Arlene Griffin, Flutter UKI Customer Service Director.
A balancing act
Despite these preparatory efforts, the quality of the card means that outcomes are incredibly hard to predict – even for seasoned traders – so the battle between punters and our sportsbooks swings from race to race. This year, the first two days of the Festival swung in the punters’ favour, with Flutter losing around £3m on Slade Steel in the opening race – the Supreme Novices Hurdle. However, the latter two days were in the black for our brands, with 33/1 outsider, Stellar Story, winning the Albert Bartlett Novices’ Hurdle on Friday, ensuring Flutter brands clawed back £2.5m.
Celebrating its centenary year, the most prestigious and highest staking race of the Festival – the Gold Cup – was a similarly mixed result. With Galopin Des Champ winning the big race for a second year in a row, creating history after going off as a tight 10/11 favourite, one might have expected a tough day at the office for the industry. However, as he was the only winning favourite on the card that day, a lot of customer’s multi and accumulator bets failed to come through, meaning Flutter’s trading teams were able to breathe a sigh of relief.
"Getting Cheltenham right creates cultural moments people talk about for years."
Striving to provide a better customer experience each year, our brands constantly explore new ways to make the Festival unforgettable. Some prepare a year in advance to ensure they get their brand’s positioning right. Leah Spears, Head of Brand at Paddy Power, points out that “Paddy Power’s heritage is in national hunt racing. It’s what we’re best known for and what the brand was built on; people think of Cheltenham, and they think of Paddy Power. We know that getting Cheltenham right not only impacts the business but creates cultural moments that people talk about for years.”
Having legendary jockey, Rachael Blackmore, as an ambassador allows fellow brand, Betfair, to do just that. “The Rachael Blackmore Serial Winners Fund has seen us donate £5,000 for every winner Rachael has had since The Betfair Chase at Haydock in November,” Kaite Baylis, Head of PR, Content and Social at Betfair details. “We doubled that to £10,000 per race at Cheltenham and the final season total will go to The Injured Jockeys Fund and the Irish Injured Jockeys, two amazing charities that are vital to the racing world.”
"We know our customers love racing and Cheltenham."
Meanwhile, Sky Bet chose to integrate football into their campaign. Ruairi Stirling, Commercial Performance Manager, explains, “Sky Bet has always been a football-first brand - but we know our customers love racing and Cheltenham. Therefore, we selected offers and promotions that we knew our racing customers expected but also spoke to our football customers.” For Sky Bet, the Festival is a springboard for other major sporting events, including Aintree, the Masters Tournament, and the FA Cup and Champions League finals.
"Horses become heroes; jockeys become legends."
Overall, Cheltenham is a great opportunity for Flutter to provide customers with an entertaining and safe experience. This approach is at the heart of everything our brands do, from offers to content, campaigns and customer service. There’s no event quite like it – bringing together the best horses, jockeys and trainers for epic, captivating action. As Leah concludes, “horses become heroes; jockeys become legends, creating lasting memories and stories that are told for years.”
For everyone at Flutter, we’ll be talking about the events of last week until at least March next year, when new stories will be told and fresh history will be made.
Interested in a career within our UK & Ireland division? Visit the Flutter UK & Ireland careers site.
