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Welcome to a Cheltenham Festival recap from Smarkets following a record-breaking week for the company across its two core products, the Smarkets exchange and SBK sportsbook app.
- Total betting volume on the Smarkets platform (Smarkets and SBK) across the four days of the Festival passed £200m for the first time ever with a grand total of £210m traded.
- This is a significant increase (up 40%) on the previous Cheltenham record set in 2019 (£151m) and up 59% on last year’s total. Betting volume was consistent across the Festival, with all four days surpassing £50m traded. See graphic below for more detail.
- Interestingly, the race with the most betting volume this year was the County Hurdle with £19.9m on Friday. In previous years, the curtain-raising Supreme Novices’ Hurdle has often attracted the most.
- Active users and betting volume on SBK increased by 193% and 833% respectively when compared with last year’s Cheltenham Festival.
- The previous record for the number of total concurrent users on our platform at any one time was also smashed between the first and second races of the Festival on Tuesday, increasing by 47% on the previous best.
- Smarkets CEO/Founder Jason Trost said:
“We had fantastic momentum coming into Cheltenham this year, and to have broken so many records across both the exchange and SBK is a huge achievement. 2021 is going to be a significant year for us, and this is the first of hopefully several big milestones.
“I’m especially pleased with the consistent betting volume across the four days of the Festival and the growth of our sportsbook app SBK. We’ve had lots of good feedback from new customers who were surprised just how much better the odds were with us compared to the bookies this week.”
