Tote offers best ever value for the 2022 Cheltenham Festival

Wednesday 9th March 2022

  • Tote Guarantee available on-course and online

  • Tote+ 10% dividend enhancement for digital customers

  • Tote Ten to Follow Mini Game for the Festival is open to play

  • Transfer Window for 2021/22 Jumps Ten to Follow Competition open between 7th and 15th March

Ahead of the 2022 Cheltenham Festival, the Tote is launching a number of innovations to increase the visibility and showcase the value of the pool betting offering, and ensure an improved customer experience, both on-course and online at tote.co.uk.  

Following its introduction on British racecourses in November 2021, Tote Guarantee will be available to racegoers betting with the Tote on-course at Cheltenham. Tote Guarantee gives you the best of the Tote return or the Starting Price, whichever is bigger. Where the Tote Win price is higher than SP, the customer will be paid at the higher price.  With Tote Guarantee in place, racegoers can have the confidence to bet on any horse with the Tote and get the Best Price Guaranteed on Win bets every time when they bet on a racecourse or at tote.co.uk.

This “Best of Both” guarantee has proven popular with racegoers, seeing Win turnover on racecourses increase by over 40% on participating racecourses since it began in November.

The Tote will be more visible on-course at Cheltenham with clearer and more extensive branding around the racecourse. Wherever you may be on-course you should not be far from a Tote branded kiosk or mobile operator.

Nigel Roddis, Managing Director of britbet which operates the Tote on 55 racecourses in Great Britain, including Cheltenham, said: “With over 200,000 people coming to enjoy four fantastic days of racing at Cheltenham we want to ensure as many racing fans as possible choose to bet with the Tote. With the added value of Tote Guarantee on every Win bet, as well as the chance to bet small and win big with a daily Placepot, Jackpot and other multileg bets, we offer racegoers a broad range of options to enhance their enjoyment of the racing. With a number of short price favourites inevitable, we also provide Exacta and Trifecta betting which can add a different dynamic to those races. We hope racegoers will embrace the new and improved Tote offering. By doing so, they will be directly contributing to the racecourse and the sport itself.”

 
 

For those who can’t make it to the racecourse, the Tote will be offering all online customers a free £1 placepot for every day of the Festival. Across the town and on train routes to Cheltenham, the Tote will be distributing a special edition of the Racing Post to inform and help racegoers with their picks throughout the week.

The Tote’s digital customers (betting on tote.co.uk, via the app or via text betting) will also benefit from Tote+ (Tote Plus) which is a 10% price boost on all bets, underpinned by Tote Guarantee.  As a result of these initiatives, the Tote Win dividend online would have beaten SP 61% of the time over the last three Cheltenham Festivals with an average overpay per £1 bet of £5.59, and it would never have paid less than the SP.

Tote Ten to Follow

For the second year, the Tote has launched a Ten to Follow Mini Game for the Cheltenham Festival. It costs £5 (€5.50) per stable to enter the paid game (entries unlimited), with 60% of the pool going to the winner and prizes down to 10th place. The more people who enter, the bigger the prize pot to be distributed.  The 2021 winner of the Mini Game took home over £10,300, and this year we’re guaranteeing a minimum top prize of £10,000. In the free-to-play game (one free entry per person), the winner will receive two annual members badges to a racecourse of their choice, with £100 for second place and £50 for third to fifth.

Customers score points when one of their horses wins or places, based on the of quality of the race and the price of the horse. The Mini Game has seven bonus races which are worth an additional 25 points for a win and 12 points for finishing second. These races during the Cheltenham Festival are:

  • Arkle Challenge Trophy

  • Champion Hurdle

  • Queen Mother Champion Chase

  • Festival Novices Chase (formerly the RSA Chase)

  • Stayers Hurdle

  • Ryanair Chase

  • Cheltenham Gold Cup 

Players have until 11am on Tuesday 15th March to submit their stables. The full list of eligible horses, scoring system and rules are available on tote.co.uk.

At the same time, Ten to Follow players in the 2021/22 Jumps Season game also have until 11am on Tuesday to make the most of the transfer window to change up to two horses in their stables and be in with a chance of winning the top prize of £39,150, or one of the cash prizes down to 500th place.

Any Tote customer looking for tips for Ten to Follow can listen to the Tote’s new “Pool School” podcast, which is available on YouTube, Spotify, Apple Podcasts and SoundCloud, with the latest trends and stats on Twitter @ToteRacing. This includes insights from Tote Ambassadors Danny Mullins and Richard Johnson.

Alex Frost, UK Tote Group Chief Executive, said: “This feels like one of the most eagerly anticipated Cheltenham Festivals and the Tote’s offering is the best it has ever been. The new Tote’s online Win offering now averages an overround of c.109%, dropping to 103% for the major festivals. This compares very favourably to SP overrounds of c. 117%+ and we expect Placepot pools in the region of £1million each day. With racecourses and the industry directly benefiting from every bet placed with the Tote, both on-course and online, we hope as many racing fans as possible bet with the Tote this Cheltenham week.” 

For more information about the UK Tote Group please visit www.uktotegroup.com and follow us @UKToteGroup and @ToteRacing.

ENDS.

For further information, please contact:

Susannah Gill
Communications and Corporate Affairs Director
UK Tote Group
susannah.gill@uktotegroup.com
07751 870 929

About UK TOTE GROUP

UK Tote Group is the proud owner and steward of the Tote, the UK’s leading pool betting operator.

The Tote has been a core part of British horseracing since 1928 when it was established by Parliament under Winston Churchill as Chancellor of the Exchequer, to provide the public with a safe way to bet and vital funding for the sport.

UK Tote Group is committed to fulfilling Churchill’s founding mission through a revitalised Tote which provides better value and an improved experience to customers, as well as funding for British horseracing. 

The 90-year-old British company is backed by racehorse owners and breeders from around the world. It has an exclusive partnership with British racecourses to provide pool betting services to the six million people who attend race meetings in Great Britain every year, alongside an alliance with Tote Ireland.

The Tote employs 170 people who are based in the Tote’s main office in Wigan and a satellite office in London.