Our man at the races and Senior Client Service Manager, Harry Beaven, explores the wonderful world of horse racing in our latest category insight feature
Horse Racing returns with a bang next month as the Cheltenham Festival puts fans of the sport under starter’s orders for a season of high drama at the races.
And this year, race meets are promising to be a thoroughly excitable affair with punters returning to courses in person across the country. And with the Derby at Epsom Downs officially part of the Queen’s platinum jubilee celebrations, 2022 will truly be a year like no other for her majesty’s favourite pastime.
Horse Racing is the second largest spectator sport in the UK behind football. It’s big business too, with the industry estimated to be worth over £4 billion in revenue. And with over 85,000 people working directly or indirectly through the sport, it’s a huge employer and an important part of the nation’s economy.
It’s also a huge passion point among the millions of horse racing enthusiasts we see frequently across the Ozone platform. With 2.5 million monthly readers, our Horse Racing audience has a consistently strong level of scale even before the draw of big ticket events like Cheltenham and the Grand National. Typically, we see a huge escalation in audience numbers as we move closer to the bigger horse racing meets.
Looking at last year, in the week of the Cheltenham Festival Horse Racing engagement grew significantly, with Page Views increasing by a huge +274% week on week. We saw a further engagement boost in April with the Grand National. Weekly Page Views were almost +30% higher for the Aintree meet versus Cheltenham, as the interest of millions of racing novices was piqued.
Naturally, we see similar rates of growth in engagement with Gambling related content around these events. It was estimated that around £500 million was spent at Cheltenham last year, while over £100 million was spent on the Grand National alone in 2021, a record for an online betting sports event.
With once-a-year-punters placing their bets on the runners and riders at the National, weekly Gambling Page Views increased by almost 800%. While it sounds like a ridiculous rate of growth, even the most seasoned Horse Racing fan will still turn to the top tips and advice from experts at some of our premium publishers - it can be invaluable if you want to break even!
Unsurprisingly, among the Ozone Horse Racing audience, mobile is the most popular device on which content about the sport is read - and with many more punters at the races this year, it is to be expected this will continue.
While our insights might not help you to back a winner, you can certainly bet on Ozone to help your brand connect to relevant audiences when the big events happen. Our top tip for connecting with our Horse Racing audience is to start your advertising around the likes of Cheltenham, the Grand National - and the Derby at Epsom over the Queen’s Platinum Jubilee weekend - to maximise the impact of your campaign.
