If there’s one thing horseracing fans hate, it’s unpredictability. Ignore the fact that the whole basis of the industry is built on not being able to choose the winning runner every time. Most punters do, as they believe that with the correct research, brushing up on recent results, tracking trainers, horses, and specific jockeys, they will be able to beat the odds and earn success in a sport stacked against them.
In recent years, that irrational logic has been truer during the Cheltenham Festival than perhaps any other meeting. The event is the climax of the National Hunt season; it draws in crowds of around 250,000 spectators over four days of thrilling horseracing goodness and generates an estimated £274m (based on 2022 figures) in economic impact. That figure is up from around £100m in 2016, and one of the many reasons for that is the seemingly predictable nature of the races themselves.
