In Numbers: Cheltenham Festival 2022

We were blown away by the growth of our sportsbook app SBK

The Cheltenham Festival is often the busiest few days of the year for us at Smarkets and this year it was no different.

Our rapidly growing sportsbook app SBK was hugely popular this year as we offered one of the best sign-up offers in the market, leading to an increase in active users of more than 850% when compared with the 2021 Festival.

Meanwhile, the feature race of the four-day meeting — the Cheltenham Gold Cup — was the most traded race of the Festival on the Smarkets exchange platform, with over £9m in betting volume.

“It was a whirlwind few days at Smarkets HQ during Cheltenham this year. To see SBK so high in the App Store rankings on the final day was incredible — we were blown away by how many people signed up this week.

“We also learned a lot this week as a business. At times it was difficult having so many new customers on board but at the same time it shows that there is a huge appetite out there for a new betting brand; one that prides itself on genuinely providing excellent odds without any gimmicks.” — Smarkets CEO/Founder Jason Trost

Throughout the week, SBK compared its prices with four other leading bookmakers 15 minutes before the scheduled race time. On all 28 races, SBK was best priced, with Coral Cup winner Commander Of Fleet the biggest price difference — a £10 bet on SBK would have won you £1,000, compared to £500 on Bet365, William Hill, Sky Bet, and Paddy Power.

A £10 bet on all 28 Festival winners with SBK would have made you £1,249 more profit compared to the average of the other bookmakers.

SBK is now looking ahead to its sponsorship of next weekend’s Lincoln meeting at Doncaster, the traditional curtain-raiser of the flat racing reason.