Cheltenham Festival campaign 2025

Cheltenham is the biggest and most famous meeting of the racing calendar. It’s where participants make a name for themselves and where racing history is made. We wanted to position Racing TV as the go-to TV brand for Cheltenham, the only channel delivering the full viewing experience of the Festival—an experience with absolutely nothing left out.

Racing TV is on air uninterrupted from 10 a.m. to 6 p.m. and shows all 28 races, including 4 exclusives. Although this is 4 fewer exclusive races than the previous year, making the competition that bit more plausible, Racing TV remains the only channel to completely deliver Cheltenham.

Our strategy was to deliver a simple and compelling message that landed the completeness of Racing TV’s coverage. We wanted a platform that was confident and messaging which set up the content was instantly accessible.

“We’ve got the lot” was the idea. A phrase used commonly in sporting parlance, to sum up the completeness of a team or individual. Racing TV “has the lot” for Cheltenham with all the build up, all the analysis, the insights and the tips. And it’s delivered by the best presenters – the ones everyone would prefer to watch given the choice. Perhaps most importantly, Racing TV is the only channel showing every race live, unlike the terrestrial option.

We supported this with a dynamic call to action - “switch on in seconds”. We knew this would help drive subscriptions and allow us to capitalise on the emotion the campaign stirred.

Visually we brought all these different components to life in a stylish montage that could flex in terms of colour and headline to deliver different messages and offers.

The campaign was launched across a range of acquisition media and also used heavily across retention comms, reassuring customers they are with the right brand for this key racing period and promoting content on the channel.

Towards the Festival we added more responsive channels to the mix including a range of specific digital prompts and direct mail. The messaging was also changed across the final 2 days to deliver a more urgent, responsive half-price offer.

Results to follow

Take a look at our other acquisition campaigns for Racing TV