Friday view: Apps at the ready for Cheltenham Festival

Ladbrokes, Hills and BetVictor have all geared their mobile products to make the most of next week’s horseracing calendar highlight

With hundreds of millions pounds staked, the Cheltenham Festival is one of the highlights of the UK horseracing calendar and is a tough-fought battleground for egaming operators at the best of times.

And when the Cheltenham Roar sounds on next Tuesday, some UK operators will be watching with bated breath having recently geared their mobile offerings specifically to capture a bigger slice of the wagered amounts.

BetVictor was the first to show, releasing its new sports betting promotions app Instabet last month. The app, available on both iOS and Android, uses push-messaging to promote time sensitive price offers to customers and allows existing customers to place a stake with just one tap.

While the operator first experimented with the new app during the first round of Champions League knock-out ties last month Turlough Lally, director of mobile at BetVictor, told eGR Mobile Intelligence that it would feature heavily in the operator’s Cheltenham strategy.

Meanwhile Ladbrokes has taken an altogether different approach and has sought to appeal to horse racing enthusiasts by making the most of its relationship with the Racing Post. Syndicated content including race overviews, runner spotlights and tips will appear on in-app racecards, while the addition of forecast and tricast bets for the very first time is also likely to please.

Never one to be outdone, Hills chose this week to release its first Android app and boasted it to be the first such app to include both live streams of horseracing and in-play radio coverage, an attractive proposition for bettors out and about during a particular race.

The future could see mobile play an even larger role in such festivals, especially if geolocation technology proves itself beyond its current capabilities. Speaking previously to eGRMI’s sister publication eGaming Review Chris Sheffield, managing director at Betfred.com, said the operator was investigating its potential for such occasions.

“We’ll be using [geolocation] to drive land-based customers to our retail environments within those locations,” Sheffield said. With most bookmakers operating concessions at Cheltenham and other festivals, any advantage is worth investigating.

We’ll have to wait to find out which operator will leave the Gloucestershire racecourse with the broadest smile next Friday, but mobile is set to play an important role in deciding the result.