For the first time in a decade Cheltenham won’t have Rachael Blackmore in action on the track. Instead, she will be at the promotional forefront of a concerted effort by Cheltenham’s authorities to try and rejuvenate spectator appeal at jump racing’s biggest festival of the year. Not for the first time there’s a sense of the Irishwoman riding to the rescue.
Blackmore retired last May from a pioneering riding career that shattered the glass ceiling in relation to women jockeys. Her appointment by the Jockey Club in an ambassadorial role to encourage more women to go racing was an obvious step. She remains the sport’s most recognisable figure. Not employing her in an emergency would be odd.
Cheltenham’s predicament is a stark decline in attendances since the post-Covid peak of 2022 when more than 280,000 people crammed into Prestbury Park over four days. The final day saw Blackmore’s seismic Gold Cup victory on A Plus Tard. In post-pandemic euphoria, and the sport spotlighted for all the right reasons, it was hard to think of the festival ever losing its allure.
But it has, and remarkably quickly too. The Day Two crowd in 2022 was 64,431. Last year it collapsed to 41,949, a 34 per cent slide. The total 2025 festival attendance was 218,839, a massive 22 per cent drop in just three years. The scale of the decline was underlined on New Year’s Day when a holiday crowd for a relatively nondescript card reached 44,151. It smacked of the problem not being Cheltenham but its festival flagship.
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Last September, the Jockey Club delivered a series of much heralded announcements about its plans to solve the problem. A cut in the price of a pint of Guinness was a headline grabbing move. There was also a freeze on ticket pricing. There was confirmation too of a return to branding Day Two of the festival as Ladies Day, which is where Blackmore comes in.
Some frown on the Ladies Day concept, finding it politically problematic rather than some frivolous piece of fun. But they remain hugely popular at many other festivals in Britain and Ireland. Blackmore has no trouble lending her prestige to it and Jockey Club data shows only a quarter of Cheltenham ticket purchasers are women. It suggests an obvious gap in the market.
Cheltenham officials have reported that ticket sales for the festival are ahead of last year’s figures. An uncharitable view might be that that is clearing a low bar. Since capacity at next week’s festival has been reduced to 66,000 from 68,500, the bar for any full-house signs has been lowered too.
But by any measure, this year is a critical test of the festival’s spectator appeal. Official cross-channel statistics reveal that overall attendances there exceeded five million for the first time since 2019 last year. That’s up nearly 5 per cent on 2024. The average attendance rose by 3.6 per cent. The trend is going one way. It will be ominous if the biggest week of the year proves an outlier.
One encouraging set of festival figures in 2025 related to TV viewership. The Gold Cup drew an ITV audience of 1.8 million, up 200,000 on the year before. 20 races on the mainstream channel attracted an audience of more than a million. It begs the question as to why such widespread interest isn’t translating into boots on the ground.
Some elements are largely out of the Jockey Club’s control, such as extortionate accommodation costs in the Cheltenham area that dissuade people from travelling to the festival, particularly for four days.
Measures that are in their control such as cutting the price of a pint, and where you’re able to drink it, are welcome but unlikely to have anything but a negligible impact on attendance. It remains to be seen if brand Blackmore works to attract more women racegoers, in particular.
It’s hard to avoid the suspicion though that the core competitive element is what ultimately gets people through the turnstiles, whatever the sport. Racing is no different. The price of a pint doesn’t seem to have any impact on footfall at Premier League football games or Six Nations stadiums being full.
It’s the festival’s good fortune then that this Cheltenham is shaping into a more competitive proposition than it has for some time. Ante-post markets don’t present a picture of overwhelming Willie Mullins dominance. His great rival Gordon Elliott has been putting it up to Mullins all season at home and could well do the same next week.
Most of all though there is a rising sense of optimism among the home team that the traditional Anglo-Irish rivalry might be a meaningful competition again.
The New Lion is favourite for Tuesday’s Champion Hurdle. Jango Baie, The Jukebox Man and Haiti Couleurs are all legitimate hopes for a first cross-channel trained winner of the Gold Cup since 2018. The Irish raiding party is still overwhelming favourite to emerge on top numerically in the 28 races next week. But championship glory is what counts in any elite sport.
A lot of people will be happy to see Blackmore back on her old stomping ground. But proper competition of the kind she excelled at promises to rejuvenate the festival’s spectator appeal.
Something for the Weekend
AG OBAIR GO CRUA (3.43) is just 6lbs higher in the ratings for a course and distance victory at Gowran in October when he lines up in a handicap hurdle there tomorrow. He’s been over fences since, including winning at Tramore, and should relish testing ground conditions.
Gowran’s feature is a €45,000 handicap chase and it could be worth siding with the sole Willie Mullins hope MORE COKO (4.18) despite his fall last time at the Dublin Racing Festival. Before that he’d run second in the Dan Moore at Fairyhouse. He’s a previous winner too on heavy ground.
