State of Racing Survey 2025 Full Results: What Fans Love, What’s Driving Them Away & What They Want Next

The full results from irishracing.com’s State of Racing Survey has revealed a clear, detailed picture of how racing fans across Ireland and the UK feel about the sport in 2025.

The favourite racecourses from both sides of the Irish sea have been revealed, along with factors that keep them away from the racecourse, their bucket list meeting and more.

Across 389 respondents, three themes emerged again and again: Cheltenham’s dominance, competitiveness concerns, and a growing focus on value for money.

Favourite Racecourses Revealed

Cheltenham dominated in two categories. Firstly, when respondents were asked to name their favourite UK track Prestbury Park came out on top by some distance.

Cheltenham took top spot with 116 votes — more than double York in second place which earned 45 votes, narrowly above third-place Ascot’s 41.

For Ireland, the top three were closer but there was still a clear winner with Leopardstown earning 72 votes, compared to Punchestown in second with 45 and the third-placed Curragh with 42.

Interestingly, all 26 Irish racecourses ended at least two votes with Tipperary, Limerick and the all-weather Dundalk track bottom of the list with a pair of votes each.

UK’s Favourite Racecourse Top 10

Ireland’s Favourite Racecourse Top 10

Bucket List Destination: Where Fans Still Dream of Going

The popularity of Cheltenham was also reflected in the open-ended question to racing fans about their bucket list festival or meeting.

Unsurprisingly the Cheltenham Festival, still seen as the pinnacle of the sport, came out on top.

Of our respondents, 61 chose the Cheltenham Festival as their bucket list meeting with a further five putting the November meeting at the top of their bucket list.

The list was much closer but dominated by the UK with Royal Ascot at two, Grand National meeting at three and York’s Ebor meeting at number four.

Paris Longchamp’s Arc meeting rounded off the top five and was the top-ranking international event while the Punchestown Festival down in six was the most popular Irish meeting.

Top 10 Bucket List Meetings

What’s Keeping Irish Fans Away? Competitiveness Tops the List

A key finding from irishracing.com’s State Of Racing survey is what was keeping fans away from the sport.

Respondents were given nine options to choose from when answering the question ‘what would make you more likely to attend race meetings?’

Below is the full list of answers with the percentage of respondents that cited the reason.

Value for money remained a key concern with it broken down to costs associated with tickets, food and drink and accommodation. However, the top concern was the competitiveness of racing.

This reflects frustrations around field sizes, prize money and the dominance of big trainers across National Hunt and Flat racing.

Our research also showed that the average Irish field size fell from 28.1 in 2021 to 22.9 in 2024, an 18.5% drop. Meanwhile, trainers with Flat horses rated 100+ fell from 21 in 2019 to 16 in 2024 all while yards like Aidan O’Brien and Willie Mullins increased their share of top horses and winners.

Message To Racing

On a similar theme, respondents were invited to give their message to the racing authorities about what they would change about the sport.

We categorised the answers into nine distinct categories with ‘affordability and fan experience’ coming out on top with 30% of answers in that theme.

Prize money and ownership structure was in second with just over 20% of answers while a further 15% of answers were centred around the theme of fairness, integrity and regulation.

One reader wrote “we’re all in this together but racing needs to start acting like it.”

There were genuine concerns with evidence to back up the majority of messages and the answers aligned with three goals detailed in HRI’s strategic plan for 2024-2028.

Accessibility Issues

The final question to our survey respondents was around accessibility with a worrying 8% of respondents revealing they had experienced accessibility issues at a racecourse. A further 12 (or 3.1%) preferred not to answer the question.

Respondents were also invited to add comments around any issues they had faced and the vast majority cited issues around parking, including a lack of disabled parking bays and unhelpful car parking attendants.

Naturally, many expressed regrets at their experience and admitted they would not return to the racecourse where it happened despite “loving” the venue.

What All This Means for Racing

While every fan’s answers were different, a consistent but nuanced picture emerged from our survey.

For all of its flaws, horse racing fans still love the sport. The traditional pinnacles like the Cheltenham Festival and Royal Ascot are still popular and appeal to the hardcore.

However, they want more value. That is a fact of life in the cost of living crisis and this is proof racing is not immune to the concerns of the wider world. Fans do not want just cheaper racing, they want better value for money and an emphasis on quality over quantity.

Irishracing.com Editor Vincent Finegan commented:

“It is great to see how invested our audience is in the sport and that the iconic horseracing events still resonate with them.

“Value for money and quality over quantity are two definite takeouts from this survey.

“To be fair to the sport, a day at the races compares favourably to most other social activities when it comes to ticket prices and the cost of food and drink, but I suppose when the money racegoers spend on betting is factored in, it does become more expensive than many other comparable days out.

“Work needs to be done to improve the quality of the racing itself at many of the fixtures as uncompetitive contests have become a real turnoff for racing fans.”