New study: Aintree 6th best racecourse in British Isles

The UK and Ireland’s best loved racecourses

BoyleSports reveals the top 20 most-loved racecourses in the UK and Ireland

Brand new research by BoyleSports reveals the most loved horse racing courses in detailed data index

Ascot is the best-loved racecourse in the UK and Ireland with over 300,000 Instagram posts and 200,000 Facebook likes

Cheltenham is the second most loved, with 27,100 monthly searches

In third place, Chester is the most reviewed racecourse on Trip Advisor

York and Doncaster make up the top five best-loved horse racing locations

In the UK and Ireland, the horse racing calendar is packed with world-famous races held at world-famous racecourses. But which one do the punters love the most?

Bookmaker, BoyleSports, set about finding out. And in turns out the most loved racecourse anywhere in the UK and Ireland is Ascot.

Attended by nearly 600,000 people a year (which accounts for just shy of 10% of all racegoers) and home to Royal Ascot, it’s no surprise to see Ascot in the number one spot. Racing has been held there since 1711, but the punters today love it as much as ever.

BoyleSports looked at a variety of factors to compile the research. First was attendance, looking at the people through the turnstiles for every meeting at each racecourse across the full 2019 season.

Next came each course’s score on Trip Advisor plus the number of reviews, followed by its Google Review score and volume of Google Reviews – key to ascertain if the racegoers are enjoying themselves when going to the races at each different course.

And in today’s racing world with social media playing such an important part, each course was also scored on Facebook likes, Instagram followers and the number of Instagram posts. Finally, volume of people searching for each racecourse through Google and how this is changing year on year.

Top 10 Racecourses in UK & Ireland

Key to Ascot’s success was a Trip Advisor score of 4.5 and over 300,000 Instagram posts and 200,000 Facebook likes. Second in the list of most loved racecourses was Cheltenham – it was the most searched for racecourse on Google with a monthly search volume of 27,100.

Interestingly Chester makes the top three – after all it is the oldest racecourse still in operation in the world. And wow what a setting too. No wonder it’s the most reviewed racecourse on Trip Advisor in the UK and Ireland.

Home of the Grand National – arguably the most well-known horse race in the world – Aintree makes the top 10 at number six, whilst York and Doncaster sneak into the top five. The headquarters of British horseracing, Newmarket, just makes the top 10.

Leon Blanche, Head of Communications at BoyleSports comments: “There’s nothing quite like a day at the races. From the hype around Royal Ascot, to the Instagram coverage and the chance to see the world’s best runners and riders in the flesh, we love it in the UK and Ireland. In fact, we love it so much that just shy of 7 million of us turned out in our finery with our betting slips in hand to get trackside at the races in 2019.

At BoyleSports we wanted to settle the debate once and for all and find out which is the most loved racecourse by racegoers. And to really understand the love, we had to look at a variety of factors. Which course is getting talked about the most on social media, which do the punters rate the most in terms of experience and which is being searched for on Google. All this information enables us to build out a picture of where the love really lives when it comes to our racecourses.”

North of the border, Ayr holds its own at number 19 with close to 30,000 Facebook likes and over 100,000 Instagram likes. Ireland’s highest contender in the top 20 is Leopardstown at 15 (welcoming 175,000 visitors in 2019 and an average monthly search volume of 1300) and Galway at number 20.