OpenBet powers £500m sports bets at Cheltenham Festival

Sports betting platform provider OpenBet processed half a billion sports betting transactions during last week’s Cheltenham Festival.

The four-day festival is one of the biggest horse racing-based meetings in the National Hunt racing calendar in the UK, with Rachel Blackmore riding into the history books after becoming the first female jockey to win the Gold Cup on 3/1 favourite A Plus Tard.

OpenBet said that interest from bettors for the main race was extremely high, with the supplier processing a total of 3.5m bets. Twenty per cent of race bets were placed on Blackmore.

Across the week-long meeting, overall bets taken remained at similar levels to the 2021 event, which experienced exponential growth due to Covid-19 lockdowns and uplift in online activity because of retail betting venue closures.

Overall, total stakes collected by OpenBet’s operator customers (including William Hill, Entain’s Ladbrokes and Coral brands, and Flutter’s Paddy Power, SkyBet and Betfair) rose 23 per cent to £500m compared to 2020’s levels, with a peak of over 60,000 bets per minute.

“Cheltenham Festival delivered a fantastic week of racing entertainment that gripped the attention of bettors across the UK and beyond,” said OpenBet CEO Jordan Levin. “This year’s Gold Cup will live long in the memory as Rachel Blackmore became the first female jockey to win the iconic race. The festival will also be hugely memorable from a betting perspective, with OpenBet’s betting engine processing half a billion sports betting transactions.

“We anticipated a high volume of bets and once again, OpenBet delivered on its vision of delivering safe and responsible experiences to billions of sports fans. And whilst our tech, content and services took pole position, it's the work of our OpenBet pit stop crew who prepare and deliver meticulously through these global events.”

Endeavor Group is currently in the process of acquiring OpenBet from Scientific Games.