Irish start-up RaceCaller to capitalise on tips for Cheltenham Festival

With racing fans and members of the public alike after a tip for Cheltenham, one Irish start-up is hoping to capitalise on the excitement of the four-day racing festival.

Dublin-based RaceCaller, which provides free horse racing tips, as well as a social platform for horse racing fans to connect and compete, is expecting more than 30,000 visitors to its site today, and more again tomorrow for the Cheltenham Gold Cup.

"Peer recommendation works well for tips. People like getting tips from other racing fans, especially racing fans with a good track record," RaceCaller co-founder Cillian Barry said.

“During Cheltenham we will have 180,000-200,000 fan tips and comments shared each day and we are able to filter these based on the tipsters’ recent success rates,” he added.

The site also creates race trends and tips based on the company’s own analysis.

“For example, we might notice that winners over the last 10 years for a particular race tend to be French, eight years old with odds of 8-1,” Mr Barry said.

Mr Barry said the site began as a forum discussion for horse racing fans, but has since evolved into a platform for fans to share tips, view comments on horses and build up a reputation through some successful predictions, earning bragging rights and prizes along the way.

“Race fans tend to have a deep understanding of horse form and other related racing stats but don’t have an immediate group of friends, family or colleagues they can talk about the 13.50 at Leopardstown,” he said.

“So we decided to create a platform for race fans to share tips and thoughts, they can follow each other, win badges and bragging rights and easily discover the best amateur tipsters for every course in UK and Ireland,” he added.

The company provides tipping games and social data, such as fan tips and fan comments, to third party clients such as Sky, Sporting Life, the Sun, Trinity Mirror and At The Races.

The company recently received an investment of €500,000 from Enterprise Ireland and three private investors. It aims to use the money for further expansion in the United States, as well as building a secure and solid server infrastructure.

Depending on revenues, they hope to have a team of nine in Dublin by the end of the year. Right now the firm employs five people in Dublin and six outside of Ireland.

While the site just does tips for racing at the moment, Barry said it might soon expand into other sports.