UK Racecourse Attendance 2025: Five Million and Counting

Racecourse attendance in the UK reached 5,031,640 in 2025 — the first time the annual figure has crossed five million since 2019, and a 4.8% increase on the previous year. Those numbers, collated by the Horserace Betting Levy Board and analysed by the Racecourse Association, represent a genuine recovery from the pandemic years and a strong signal that live racing, as a leisure product, is competing effectively for people’s time and money. Whether this growth is sustainable — and what threats sit on the horizon — is a more complicated question.

The headline number is encouraging, but the detail underneath it reveals a sport that is growing unevenly: some fixtures and festivals booming, others treading water, and an entire debate about taxation threatening to cap the upside.

Quarterly Breakdown: Where Growth Came From

The 2025 attendance story divides neatly into quarters. The first quarter — January to March — saw 666,483 racegoers, a 2.3% dip against 2024. That comparison is skewed by Easter falling in April rather than March, which moved a significant cluster of festive fixtures out of the first quarter. A fairer comparison is with 2023, when Easter also fell in April: against that year, Q1 attendance was marginally up.

More encouraging was the performance of non-festival fixtures during the first quarter. When the major meetings are stripped out, grassroots attendance at the everyday cards — the sort of meeting Southwell, Wolverhampton and Lingfield stage week in, week out — grew by 6% compared with the equivalent period in 2023 and 8% when measured against non-festival average attendance. That figure matters because it indicates genuine growth in routine racegoing, not just a bump at marquee events.

The second quarter — April to June — was where the growth truly materialised. With 1,763,912 racegoers, the period showed an 8.3% year-on-year increase, powered by strong returns from Aintree’s Grand National Festival, Newmarket’s Guineas meeting, Chester’s May Festival, York’s Dante meeting and Royal Ascot, which posted a 4.8% attendance increase. Met Office data confirmed that April and May 2025 were the warmest and sunniest on record, with June producing two official heatwaves — conditions that pulled racegoers outdoors and rewarded those courses with the capacity to handle large crowds.

The third quarter sustained the momentum. A total of 1,679,386 visitors attended between July and September, a 4.5% year-on-year rise. The Qatar Goodwood Festival saw an 11% attendance increase, York’s Ebor meeting grew by 2.9% and Doncaster’s St Leger Festival added 4.7%. Provisional Met Office data declared summer 2025 officially the warmest on record, with a mean temperature of 16.10 degrees Celsius — breaking the 2018 record of 15.76.

The fourth quarter, covering the autumn and winter jumps season, rounded out the year solidly. December alone attracted 331,405 racegoers, an 8.6% increase, driven by festive fixtures at Kempton, Ascot and Leopardstown. Across the full year, average attendance per fixture rose to 3,526 — a 3.6% increase — across 1,427 meetings staged.

The Going Is Good: Racing’s National Marketing Campaign

Part of the attendance story is marketing. The sport launched its national campaign — branded “The Going Is Good” — in May 2025, with the explicit aim of reaching younger audiences and positioning a day at the races as a mainstream leisure option rather than a niche pursuit. Kevin Walsh, Racing Director at the RCA, attributed part of the growth to these efforts, noting that racecourses deserve credit for “understanding consumer drivers and implementing attractive, effective marketing campaigns.”

The campaign ran across digital channels, social media and broadcast platforms, with a particular focus on the 25-to-40 age bracket that racing has historically struggled to attract. Early metrics were promising: racecourse content engagement among millennial audiences showed measurable uplift during the campaign period. The second series of “Champions: Full Gallop” — an ITV documentary following racing yards through a season — was commissioned for broadcast in autumn 2025, providing the sport with a rare window into mainstream living rooms outside of the traditional Saturday afternoon coverage.

Whether marketing alone can sustain attendance growth is debatable. The 2025 figures benefited from historically favourable weather, a full calendar with fewer abandonments than 2024, and the post-pandemic return of social events as a priority for consumer spending. Replicating those conditions in a wetter, colder year would be a tougher proposition — and the sport knows it.

Under-18 Growth and the Younger Audience

One of the most encouraging data points from 2025 is the growth in young attendees. The RCA reported that 211,447 under-18s were recorded at British racecourses across the year, a 17% increase on 2024. The figure is acknowledged as conservative — not all racecourses count under-18s on the gate, and many young attendees arrive with family groups and are not individually ticketed.

The significance is strategic rather than financial. Under-18s do not bet and they do not pay full admission at most courses. But they represent the next generation of potential racegoers, owners, bettors and industry participants. A sport that fails to recruit young fans risks ageing itself into irrelevance, and the 2025 attendance data suggests racing is at least making inroads.

Family-focused events have been a key driver. Southwell’s programme includes family fun days on Easter Sunday and August Bank Holiday Monday, along with themed events designed to attract non-traditional audiences. The Arena Racing Company reported that its racecourses — including Southwell — saw a “large increase in under-18 tickets” across 2025, contributing to an overall attendance rise of almost 15% across the ARC portfolio.

Outlook and Threats: The Tax Debate

The positive attendance trend runs headlong into a political threat that the industry considers existential. The UK Treasury announced a tax consultation in 2025 proposing to replace the current three online betting and gaming tax rates with a single, potentially higher rate. The racing industry’s #AxeTheRacingTax campaign argues that any increase in gambling taxation would reduce the levy income that funds prize money, which in turn would degrade the quality of the racing product and ultimately drive attendance down.

David Armstrong, Chief Executive of the RCA, was blunt in his assessment: “Government must take note of the popularity of horseracing, and what it stands to lose if irreversible damage is done to our sport.” The Chancellor’s autumn statement spared racing from an immediate tax rise, but the consultation remains open and the threat is not resolved.

The underlying economics are fragile. Attendance is rising, but betting turnover is falling. The levy is at record levels, but that is driven by widening bookmaker margins, not by a growing customer base. If attendance growth stalls — because of weather, economic conditions or a weaker fixture list — while betting revenue continues to decline, the sport faces a squeeze from both sides.

All-weather venues have a particular stake in the attendance conversation. Courses like Southwell, Wolverhampton and Lingfield depend on consistent footfall through the winter months when turf racing is limited. Their floodlit evening cards and year-round programmes are designed to attract a regular, local audience rather than the once-a-year festival crowd. If central marketing budgets are cut because of a tax-driven revenue squeeze, these workhorse courses would feel the effect disproportionately — and so would the bettors who rely on them for the bulk of their all-weather activity.

For now, the 2025 attendance figure is a genuine good-news story for British racing. Five million people chose to spend a day at a racecourse rather than a football match, a theme park or their own sofa. That is a meaningful endorsement. The challenge is turning a good year into a trend rather than a peak.