The Winners Circle – Edward Gillespie, Cheltenham

With entries now open for the 2012 Sport Industry Awards, past winners share their memories in the Winners’ Circle. Edward Gillespie, Managing Director of Cheltenham, was awarded the Jaguar Lifetime Achievement Award in 2011.

The past 12 months has been a time for real and dynamic change in the business of horseracing. The conception and birth of the British Champions Series – the UK’s most valuable race day ever, Tony McCoy’s success in the BBC Sports Personality of the Year, the centenary of the Cheltenham Festival, and significant uplifts in TV audiences for racing underpin a robust response to the economic travails that are affecting businesses – sport-related or other – across Europe. 

The innovative approach to their sport illustrated by the management at Cheltenham was rewarded earlier this year at the Sport Industry Awards, with the Jaguar Lifetime Achievement Award presented to Edward Gillespie, Managing Director of Cheltenham for over 30 years. 

‘This award is a recognition of the talented and industrious people with whom I’ve worked at Cheltenham over the last 30 years,’ said Edward at the time. 

But just what makes Cheltenham stand out from the opposition? 

Cheltenham has become the Wembley of the sport; it is no longer a Club competitor with the other courses, but rather a destination that everyone can look up to. Cheltenham, as the sport’s brand leader, has become the aspirational venue where top brands collect and want to be seen. In fact, other racecourses now stage self-professed trials for the Festival’s top events. There is, of course, a role for the other 40 courses which stage Jump racing, many of them staging crucially important races to the sport, not least the John Smith’s Grand National at Aintree. They provide a national footprint for a thriving sport across the UK. But Cheltenham is the racing man’s favourite course, where spectators are the nearest to reaching fan status in a sport where the athletes are not followed with the same loyalty as in team games. 

Much of the success of Cheltenham is based on a resolute focus on the horse, as the supreme athlete around which the business and sport revolves. Constant improvements to the quality of racing surface have brought respect and loyalty from the trainer and rider professionals. Facilities for horse and rider are among the best in Europe. Simon Claisse, Director of Racing, has year on year improved grass growth in mid-winter, was at the forefront of pioneering frost covers to beat inclement weather, and oversaw the widening of the track to enable the fourth day of the Festival to be added in 2005. 

A remarkable escalation in prize money for the Festival, and for all events during the season, has captured market share among owners and trainers of horses across the UK, Ireland and France, all of whom want to share in the financial rewards of a winner at Cheltenham, as well as its more potent glory. There is now simply no such thing as “a small race” at Cheltenham. Peter McNeile, as Director of Sponsorship, has overseen a growth in the overall prize funds for the 110 races each season to over £5m. Even now, in an environment where other sources of revenue to fund prize money, like the betting levy, have reduced by 50% in two years, Cheltenham’s key events have been ring-fenced by a strategy to enable brands to benefit from the Cheltenham halo effect across a six-month campaign. 

Higher prize money and the right conditions for the horsemen create excellent conditions for attracting the best horses, and considerable media interest. And working with media, both as sponsors, and to generate interest, is also important. Newspapers like racing, and especially Cheltenham, because it lifts sales. The Sun’s circulation lifts by circa 90,000 a day during the Festival, and opens up a massive market for advertising from betting companies and other sponsors. Cheltenham itself has also entered this market, lifting its own profile with a colourful outdoor campaign within the middle England between London, Bristol & Birmingham, underpinning by a value admission pricing strategy, without heavy discounting, but delivering pound for pound better value than competitors within and beyond racing. 

‘Let us hope it won’t be another 30 years before a racing personality wins this award again,’ concludes Gillespie of his Sport Industry Award, as he embarks on his 31st road to the Cheltenham Festival.

Entries for the Sport Industry Awards 2012 are open now – click here for more information.

To read the previous Winners’ Circle feature, with Limelight Sports Group’s Craig Dews, click here.