A winning formula
With around 7 million bets placed with FanDuel during this year’s Kentucky Derby Day at Churchill Downs – its busiest single day in US racing history – there is no better time to explore the creative initiatives designed to attract newer audiences to one of the world's oldest sports.
There is a reason the Kentucky Derby is a symbol of excellence in horse racing. Known as “the most exciting two minutes in sport” and watched by 17.7 million people this year, it is the oldest continuously running sporting event in the US, dating back to 1875. More than a sporting fixture, it is a cultural spectacle that brings the excitement of horse racing to the masses.
“The Kentucky Derby is unique,” says Andrew Moore, General Manager of Racing at FanDuel, Flutter’s largest brand and the US market leader in online sports betting and iGaming. “There are 150,000-plus people there, you are rubbing shoulders with politicians, NFL greats and pop stars. There’s nothing else like it.”
The Derby’s ability to reach beyond traditional audiences exemplifies how the sport and the industry surrounding it are changing. Globally, horse racing has been in gradual decline. In the US, more than 40 racetracks have closed in the past 25 years, and the number of races has more than halved since 1989. In the UK, race attendance fell by 15% between 2000 and 2019, and a further 13% since.
Faced with challenges such as too little investment and an aging audience, the industry has had to be proactive and creative. As part of this, online betting providers such as Flutter have launched new initiatives to attract younger and more diverse audiences.
These include affiliations with other sports and their stars, leveraging new digital channels to engage younger demographics, and revamped race cards to cater to both new and existing fans.
One sport, two stories
The most prestigious global racing events demonstrate that the Sport of Kings has staying power. Much like the Kentucky Derby, the English Grand National and Australia’s Melbourne Cup command sizable track attendance, high global TV viewership and remarkable social media reach.
The Kentucky Derby's profile is undoubtedly special. Even though betting on horse racing is a smaller proportion of FanDuel’s online gaming business in the US, when compared to the NFL and NBA (the UK, Ireland and Australia are all much bigger horse-racing markets), the brand successfully uses its mass market popularity to host supporting events that serve as a model for how to reignite interest in the sport.
“Each year we try to learn from the year before, and in a couple of years we have gone from 400,000 customers betting on the Derby to close to 800,000,” says Moore. “That is down to a whole range of promotions and collaborations, like creating a commercial with Rob Gronkowski, one of the most famous NFL players in America, advertising the event and having on-site programming with Kay Adams, a well-known TV personality.”
FanDuel’s “Breakfast at the Kentucky Derby” brought fans closer to the action with special access to live footage, as well as interviews, analysis, and insights from FanDuel TV’s team of expert handicappers.
As part of FanDuel’s preparation for the 151st Run for the Roses, as the race is known, fans were also offered exclusive promotions on its sportsbook, which is the only app where horse racing is fully integrated into a single account and wallet. Live coverage ran on FanDuel TV and star power was also in play, with Grammy-nominated country music star Shaboozey headlining FanDuel’s pre-race Kentucky Derby Party
Tapping into local interests
Wherever horse racing has a history, there is usually one event that embodies it and defines the sport. In Australia, that is the Melbourne Cup – the centerpiece of the Victorian Spring Racing Carnival and known as ”the race that stops the nation.”
“It doesn’t matter where you are,” says Tim Hernadi, General Manager of Shows, Partnerships & Production at Sportsbet, Australia’s number one online betting destination and a core part of Flutter’s International division, “It’s pens down – everyone’s watching the race.” In 2024, 1.15 million customers placed a bet with Sportsbet on the Melbourne Cup with betting volumes peaking at 63K bets per minute.”
While Sportsbet is well-positioned for the biggest event on the Australian racing calendar, as the only national corporate bookmaker offering national racing streaming, the team has also focused on driving engagement at other partnered big race days by leveraging the brand's strength in sport to attract the next generation of customers to the races.
At the 2024 Sportsbet Caulfield Blue Diamond, the team leveraged its partnership with the Australian National Basketball League (NBL) to secure NBA Chicago Bulls legends Scottie Pippen and Horace Grant, who participated in basketball-themed activities on a custom-made court. At the same event in 2025, Sportsbet created an NFL-themed activation headlined by Patriots legend Rob Gronkowski.
Sportsbet was also able to successfully leverage the hype created around the Adelaide Liv Golf tournament by creating a Putt For Dough competition at the Sportsbet Adelaide Racing Carnival, where racegoers were given the chance to sink a notoriously difficult 70-foot putt for a chance to win a share of AUS$100,000.
Big prizes and innovative activations are synonymous with Sportsbet’s recreational brand – and are helping attract the next generation of sports fans to the racetrack. At the Sportsbet Caulfield Blue Diamond in February, Hernadi points out that “what was pretty cool was that of those who registered for general attendance tickets on the day, 87% hadn’t attended races at the venue in the year prior.”
Making racing more accessible
To truly compete with global sports, racing needs to consistently attract viewers and racetrack attendees.
One key to this is accessibility, according to Sebastian Butterworth, Strategic Racing Director for Flutter UK and Ireland. Flutter’s specialist sports content and data provider Timeform has been collaborating with Great British Racing, The Jockey Club and racecourse partnership Britbet to reshape the “race card” – the essential guide for any day’s racing in the UK.
“Race cards haven’t really changed for about 100 years,” says Butterworth. “That’s why we have created a ‘new to racing’ race card where we remove all the advertising and create something that is intelligible, that is educative, so the racegoer can make informed choices.”
This simplified race card forms part of broader efforts to bring the excitement of horse racing to a new generation of sports followers. This includes Flutter’s sponsorship of UK broadcaster ITV’s prime-time docuseries Champions: Full Gallop, which lifts the lid on the world of jump racing and has a second series in production, and funding the David Power Jockeys’ Cup, a new £1.5 million seasonal prize for the most successful jump jockeys that celebrates the life of one of the founders of bookmaker Paddy Power, one of Flutter’s inaugural companies.
Another initiative is the Sky Bet Sunday Series of fixtures. Butterworth says: “This was just grabbing the bull by the horns and saying, look, we’ll put good prize money on, but we want good-quality terrestrially broadcast racing on a Sunday because it is entertainment and so needs to be on when customers can access it, rather than say a Monday afternoon.”
Victoria Gibbins, a paddock analytical expert with Trackside, adds: “The Sky Bet Sunday Series provides an opportunity for new people, old and young, to enjoy racing for the first time.”
Building digital communities
Like every other sport, horse racing is using omnichannel digital touchpoints to connect with fans, but Simon Michaelides, Chief Customer Officer of Great British Racing, admits that horse racing has been slow out of the gate. “We are playing catch-up on the digital front,” he says. “We need to use data better; we need better content; and we need more engaging eGaming.”
Sportsbet’s The Feed is an excellent example of how this can be done. A platform for Sportsbet bettors to view, share and even copy one another’s bets, The Feed is essentially a one-stop-shop for betting inspiration.
Other sports have already discovered that online engagement is an effective way to build communities around sports and major events. FanDuel’s Moore says that’s precisely what horse racing could be doing, and should be doing, by putting digital channels first.
“What horse racing used to give a lot of people was community,” he says. “You would go to the racetrack, you would meet your friends… you would go to the bookies, you would meet your friends. I think probably one of the biggest challenges for horse racing is how we generate that community and build the network effects from it.”
Thinking beyond the track
Flutter has already shown the potential of connection and collaboration by combining the appeal of horse racing with other sports, and Sportbet’s Hernadi has plans to extend the crossover approach to different social interests and activities.
“We’re the biggest brand in the market and have the ability to leverage that customer base,” he says. “But I don’t think horse racing has really explored what that could mean. People aren’t just passionate about the sport, they are also passionate about music, they’re passionate about cooking, they’re passionate about travel. If you can connect the sport to those things, there are huge opportunities for us.”
Of course, these opportunities alone is not enough: capitalizing on it is the real challenge. While horse racing may be nosing its way back out of a period of decline, the race has only just begun.
