Study ranks every British horse racecourse

With around 7 million visitors attending horse race events in the UK and Ireland in 2019, it’s set to be a record year for attendances in 2022 following the two-year enforced break. For racegoers eager to get back to the action, which venue promises the ultimate day out? BoyleSports wanted to find out!

Of the 85 horse racecourses in the British Isles, it’s Ascot that takes the crown with a final score of 83.7 out of 85, followed closely by Cheltenham (83.5), and Chester (81.6) – https://betting.boylesports.com/ horse-racing/revealed-uk-and-irelands-best-loved-racecourses-horse-racing

Top 20 Racecourses in UK & Ireland

Attended by nearly 600,000 people a year (which accounts for just shy of 10% of all racegoers) and home to Royal Ascot, it’s no surprise to see Ascot racecourse in the number one spot. Racing has been held here since 1711, but the punters today love it as much as ever with a Tripadvisor score of 4.5 and over 300,000 Instagram posts and 200,000 Facebook likes.

The top three is also made up of Cheltenham – home to the Gold Cup – with the Cheltenham Festival in March always kicking off the horseracing calendar with a bang. Cheltenham is certainly the most-searched-for racecourse and holds its own in terms of social media. Interestingly Chester makes the top three – after all, it is the oldest racecourse still in operation in the world. And wow what a setting too. No wonder it’s the most reviewed racecourse on Tripadvisor in the UK and Ireland.

Home of the Grand National – arguably the most well-known horse race in the world – Aintree makes the top 10 at number six, whilst York and Doncaster sneak into the top five. The headquarters of British horseracing, Newmarket, just makes the top 10 .

Leon Blanche, Head of Communications at BoyleSports comments: “There’s nothing quite like a day at the races. From the hype around Royal Ascot, to the Instagram coverage and the chance to see the world’s best runners and riders in the flesh, we love it in the UK and Ireland. In fact, we love it so much that just shy of 7 million of us turned out in our finery with our betting slips in hand to get trackside at the races in 2019.

At BoyleSports we wanted to settle the debate once and for all and find out which is the most loved racecourse by racegoers. And to really understand the love, we had to look at a variety of factors. Which course is getting talked about the most on social media, which do the punters rate the most in terms of experience and which is being searched for on Google. All this information enables us to build out a picture of where the love really lives when it comes to our racecourses.”

The Formula

To compile the 2022 best-loved horse racecourse index, key factors were analysed to create an overall score for each venue. BoyleSports began with attendances, looking at the number of race day goers through the turnstiles for the full 2019 season. Next came each course’s total visitor score based on Tripadvisor and Google ratings and the combined number of user reviews to ascertain if the punters are enjoying themselves when going to the races at each course. And in today’s racing world, with social media playing such an important part, BoyleSports scored each location on Facebook likes, Instagram followers, and the number of Instagram posts. Finally, we also wanted to look at the volume of people searching for each racecourse through Google and how this is changing year on year to ascertain popularity trends.