Attributes & Audiences
Media Exposure
The Jump Racing Experience

The Rationale for Sponsorship

The sponsor’s decision to become involved with Jump Racing will have been influenced by many factors, but the top three reasons given by
sponsors are:



These reasons underline that the sport itself is a strong draw for sponsors and reflects the fact that the majority of sponsorship spend is directed towards particular races and racecourses. However, the impact of newer sponsorship deals – of jockeys and stables – was also evident, with six (6) per cent of respondents saying their involvement was because they wanted to be involved with a successful or up and coming stable; four (4) per cent wanted to become involved with a successful or up and coming jockey and two (2) per cent wanted to become involved with a successful or up and coming horse.

Motivations for sponsorship

If these associations are a major part of the decision making process, what benefits do sponsors expect to gain from their sponsorship activity?

When current sponsors were asked to rank their top five reasons for deciding to sponsor Jump Racing, the most popular responses were:

92% Entertainment opportunities/ corporate hospitality
90% Brand exposure through the media
90% To increase brand awareness
84% Brand exposure through other channels
78% Targeting the right market

These responses give the lie to the assumption that involvement in Jump Racing is solely about corporate hospitality for senior executives. While this in itself can be a key driver in customer acquisition and retention, the other responses indicate a much more holistic benefit from sponsorship that can be applied to B2C and B2B markets and to all levels of the buying process. Further underlining the fact that sponsorship decisions are being made for hard-headed business reasons, the next most popular reasons given were:

76% Opportunities for on-course / experiential marketing
76% To enhance/improve/change brand image and
74% As a sales opportunity
72% As an opportunity for promotional tie-ins
70% As an employee incentive
68% To deliver synergy with other marketing activities

Comparison with other sponsorships

Current sponsors agreed that the industry fares well in comparison with other sports sponsorship offerings. Eighty-four (84) per cent of brand representatives who took part in the online survey were involved in other sports sponsorship opportunities, and hence were well-placed to draw comparisons between sponsorship offerings.

When asked how Jump Racing compares with their other sponsorship involvements, these sponsors felt that it outperforms on a number of key criteria, in particular entertainment opportunities, brand exposure opportunities and media exposure. (See Figure 6.)

There were also positive comments on the value for money that their sponsorships had delivered.

“We have not measured awareness but we have been conscious of our increased sales. Putting a value on it is difficult but I am nonetheless satisfied that our growth has been totally abnormal.”

“If I wasn’t getting good value for money, I wouldn’t carry on sponsoring.”

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The rationale for bookmakers

For bookmakers there is an additional reason for becoming involved in sponsorship of Jump Racing. Bookmakers consider sponsorship an important way to give back to Jump Racing and to demonstrate that they are committed to putting something in to the industry.

“We could be criticised because we are offshore and are not paying the levy. Sponsorship for us is about giving back to the sport and putting money into different racecourses.”

“We are one of the leading bookmakers in the UK so for us to put something back into racing is good for us. The sponsorship is about more than measurable benefits.”

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Who are the key stakeholders in the decision making process?

The research found that the decision to become involved in Jump Racing was usually made at the most senior level, with the Marketing manager or director (46%) or Chief Executive (46%) most likely to be involved in the process.

Perhaps unusually, the company Chairman (26%) was more likely to be involved in making the decision than a specialist Sponsorship manager (22%), although this discrepancy may be explained by the fact that the research did not account for whether companies actually had a Sponsorship manager. Many companies will not have this dedicated position and sponsorship will fall under the remit of the Marketing manager instead.

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Attributes and Audiences

To those sponsors involved in the sport, Jump Racing was considered to be a strong attraction for top-end brands compared with other sports sponsorship offerings, with a third (32%) agreeing that “Jump Racing confers more exclusivity and prestige to our brand than other sports”.

“Top class horses come out of our race and go on for many years. So we get continuity and we get an association with excellence.”

This is only to be expected from a sport sometimes referred to as the “Sport of Kings”. When asked what specific attributes they felt Jump Racing brought to their brand, the prestige of the sport was at the forefront once again, along with the attributes of “exciting” and “heritage”. (See Figure 7.)

These key attributes bring a multitude of intangible benefits to brands involved in Jump Racing sponsorship, primarily enhancements to the brand image; this reflects the fact that brand image is a key rationale in sponsorship decisions. Arguably, these positive attributes lead to increased brand consideration among B2C and B2B audiences and, ultimately, a potential upturn in purchase / use of products and services.

Of course, attributes are only part of the equation. The audience has to be of a significant size and receptive to those attributes for them to be of significant benefit. In this respect, the sport provides access to a huge consumer audience both on-course and via media coverage and plentiful opportunities to work business to business.

This is another reason why Jump Racing is an attractive proposition for many diverse brands – each year, over two million people attend a race meeting and many fall into the coveted ABC1 demographic.

As noted above, 78% of sponsors cited reaching their target audience as being a key motivation behind their decision to enter into Jump Racing sponsorship.

“Probably the most important part of our Jump Racing sponsorship is that we know that the sport is very popular amongst our target audience.”

“The reason we entered into the sponsorship is that we identified
it as a sport that our core customer would be interested in and identify with.”

And for B2B businesses, a key advantage is the size of the racing fraternity that attend and the ability to meet prospects or existing customers in person.

“Sponsorship gives us awareness amongst racing people. It gives us an opportunity to showcase our name time and time again in front of owners and trainers, unlike a consumer brand that is targeting race-goers through the turnstile. We want to get at the people directly involved in the business. We benefit from the chance to talk to our prospective clients at race meetings.”

“A lot of our business is about dealing with owners and trainers
and I think you tend to get to meet and talk to a lot of national hunt owners. The owners tend to go if they have a runner in national hunt.”

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Media Exposure

According to the research conducted for this report, ninety (90) per cent of sponsors are drawn to Jump Racing because of the opportunity for media exposure and 46% think Jump Racing is more effective in this regard than other sponsorship opportunities. It is easy to see why that is the case; the extensive free-to-air coverage over the BBC channels and Channel 4 increases the sport’s ability to reach a large, wide-ranging audience. Indeed, across the Jump Racing season the sport has the fourth highest amount of terrestrial TV coverage, after football, snooker and motor racing. (See Figure 8.)

The amount of coverage dedicated to football is self-explanatory – it is the UK’s most popular sport. Motor racing is a global sport where many fans watch coverage on television because they are unable to travel round the world to actual races so TV coverage needs to meet that need. In spite of having only four terrestrially televised events during the season, snooker generates high levels of coverage due to long hours of broadcast coverage on a daily basis during those events.

In comparison, Jump Racing benefits from more regular programmes during the course of the season. For example, Channel 4 is currently under contract to provide around 80 days of racing, representing approximately 200 Jump races. The regularity of Jump Racing’s TV coverage is its trump card, allowing sponsors access to a loyal viewership. From October 2009 to April 2010, that terrestrial audience was estimated at over 37 million viewers.

Indeed, horse racing remains one of the last sports with regular live terrestrial coverage on Saturday afternoons and is second only to football in terms of hours of coverage during Saturday broadcasts. (See Figure 9.)

Saturday viewing makes up 73% of the sport’s cumulative audience, accounting for 27 million viewers in the period from October 2009 to April 2010. What’s more, the core terrestrial audience during the period when most Jump races are broadcast, between 1pm–4pm on a Saturday, delivers a comparatively high proportion of ABC1 viewers. (See Figure 10.)

The highest profile races can account for a significant proportion of audience share in their timeslots. The Grand National leads the way in this regard, with a 52.3% share of the TV audience in 2010. The second most popular race was the Gold Cup, which as a mid-week race does not benefit from Saturday audiences. Nevertheless, it enjoyed a market share of 20.5% in 2010.

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Specialist programmes and channels

Specialist, dedicated programmes and channels add another aspect to Jump Racing’s media profile and allow a sponsor to target a specific audience. The Morning Line has a six-figure average programme audience, with a cumulative audience over the course of the 2009–2010 season of 8.3 million viewers. The programme ordinarily airs around breakfast time on a Saturday morning, but additional programmes are also broadcast during the weekdays of the Cheltenham Festival. The programme is broadcast from inside a racecourse, where it previews and reviews key races for avid racing fans. This offers meeting and race title sponsors additional exposure. In fact, exposure from The Morning Line can contribute 18% of a meeting or race title sponsor’s total TV exposure, primarily from on screen accreditation such as race previews and reviews, horse form analysis and menus of upcoming coverage. In addition, The Morning Line is a discussion programme, so there can be a high proportion of verbal mentions for sponsors from perceived experts in the field. As such, The Morning Line can contribute 11% of a meeting or race title sponsor’s total TV media value. The 7% differential between exposure and value is accounted for by the fact that The Morning Line has a smaller TV audience, on average, compared with a live racing programme.

RacingUK is a multi-platform media outlet, with 50,000 TV subscribers in the UK and Ireland. In addition, it has 80,000 unique monthly online users, 56,000 subscribers to its iPhone and Android apps for smartphones, and 350,000 streams per week over eleven (11) UK bookmakers’ websites.

In addition to this, At The Races registered 6.2 million people viewing at least one minute of coverage during the course of 2010, while Sky Sports News provided an hour of racing coverage per week, on average.

Exposure efficiency

The TV coverage that Jump Racing offers is also strong in exposure efficiency for the brands involved. In other words, brands enjoy a good level of exposure per minute of coverage. For every one (1) minute of exposure, a horseracing meeting title sponsor will appear on screen for 14.5 seconds. This is the equivalent to 24% of the length of a programme, which represents an excellent return and outperforms title sponsors for other popular sporting competitions. High audience levels on terrestrial TV will also maximise the efficiency of horseracing in terms of delivery of media value. (See Figure 11.)

Share of exposure is determined by the type of sponsorship acquired, with a meeting title sponsor typically expecting to return an average of 6 times as much exposure than a single race sponsor. (See Figure 12.)

A meeting title sponsor will normally gain exclusivity on screen credits and presentation backdrops and can enjoy high levels of signage both on and off-course. In addition, the meeting title sponsor benefits from high impact verbal references as the brand name may be mentioned for every race on the card, as well as for the meeting itself. This means a meeting title sponsor can expect an average of 24 verbal mentions, as opposed to an average of five (5) mentions for single race sponsor. This opportunity may be spread in the case of a meeting title sponsor that uses the multiple races as an opportunity to communicate its different brands, products or services. Or it may be leveraged further; a single race sponsor may gain additional exposure from on-course signage during other races televised from that racecourse. (See Figure 13.)

Sponsors are generally happy with their return on investment from a media exposure standpoint:

“Racing generally has fantastic TV coverage.”

“Given that our purpose was to get the maximum out of what we could afford to spend, to have three events on terrestrial television
is a huge thing for us.”

Furthermore, efforts to bring some structure to the Jump Racing season such as creating “Road To Cheltenham” race series have given sponsors longevity rather than a one-off event to leverage.

“The races at the Festival have become the climax to a racing series so that sponsors can invest in a run of three or four televised races over a sustained period, giving a period of time in which we can implement our activation programme.”

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Media: Press

Press exposure also yields a return, in national and local newspapers and in other sources, thanks to regular coverage of horseracing.
Key horseracing publications determined by level of coverage to a large audience

Primarily this coverage will be race cards and results, potentially delivering exposure for meeting or race sponsors. Additional editorial stories will take place for the more high profile meetings. Horseracing sponsors in the press are driven by text mentions, weighted in favour of race card / results listings. Pictorial images deliver exposure with greater impact than text mentions and are commonly worth 9% of value from 2% of exposure. (See Figure 14.)

Unlike TV coverage, jockey and stable sponsors perform relatively well from pictorial sightings. Photographs of racing action will tend to deliver well for meeting/race sponsors through their fence branding. These images, along with post-race shots, can carry clear images of the branding from the jockeys’ silks and breeches.
(See Figure 15.)

Sponsors often focus on broadcast or newspaper coverage, but trade magazines may also be a highly useful source of coverage:

“We have been surprised by the amount of comments in trade magazines.”

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Online Media

Online media has become increasingly important. Many newspapers have had to reduce the amount of print content for financial reasons (not just for sport or horseracing), so horseracing coverage in daily newspapers is reduced to mainly race cards and fixtures. However, these publications have generally expanded their online coverage instead, using their online portals to carry more editorial pieces and related horseracing news stories. Interestingly, when looking at online media content, race cards lie deeper into the horseracing section than news stories and so prove less valuable than their print media equivalent.

Around 46% of horseracing fans say they regularly follow racing online through news and general sports websites. IFM Sports Marketing Surveys used its online evaluation methodology alongside audited online media figures from ABCe. This analysis would suggest that around 96,000 avid horseracing fans access content on the BBC Sports website on a daily basis, while 60,000 access the horseracing pages on SkySports on a daily basis. On average, pictorial exposures in online media stories are worth three times as much text mentions, with photographs generally appearing at the top of an online article. (See Figure 16.)

The Jump Racing Experience

Sponsors are united in their opinion that Jump Racing has particular strengths that set it apart from other sporting events and that comes down to the experience of the Jump Racing itself. In particular, the research illustrated four key USPs for racing that tick every box for any prospective sponsor. Sponsors appreciate the unique atmosphere of a Jumps event; the passion of the people involved in horseracing and those who watch it; the ability to get close to the action; and the fact there is very useful periods of dwell between races, when race goers can be targeted by marketers.

A unique atmosphere

“Racing is entertainment at the end of the day. You’ve got the sporting element but it is actually about having fun and a great day out and that’s one of the best things about it. The social side is very important, so if you’ve got a brand that can slot into that and the product fits, then it is a great opportunity.”

Passion

The passion and excitement experienced on race day are in part borne out of the close-knit Jump Racing fraternity and offer something special to sponsors. The community is very ready to share its enthusiasm and is open to bringing sponsors into the fold to share in the excitement. The sport also generates great passion amongst its supporters. Spectators really do follow trainers, jockeys and most commonly, horses. Desert Orchid had an enormous fan club and more recently, over 15,000 people turned up to see Kauto Star attempt a record-breaking fifth consecutive King George VI Chase at Kempton, despite the original race having been abandoned due to bad weather on Boxing Day.

For spectators, there are so many elements that go into winning a race it is a much less predictable result than is the case in many other sports. Both jockey and horse have to be at the top of their game, the ground must suit the horse, the combination of horse and jockey must avoid any accidents involving other horses and ensure they do not put a step wrong along the course. It is little wonder many spectators watch with baited breath and pounding hearts. The halo effect of being associated with such passionate sentiments can be hugely beneficial to brands.

“The owners and participants are so passionate about what they do. People want their products to be associated with a deep-felt passion. There’s an excitement and a warm feeling to what they are doing with Jump Racing, from the participants to the spectators to the owners. I don’t think you get that in most other sports.”

“It’s like being part of a big family and that is what I enjoy.”

“It comes down to passion and excitement. You tend to get the owners there and they will be involved in what we do and you get some great scenes. National Hunt jockeys are the same – they are far more prepared to be involved. So I think Jump Racing does pretty well in terms of what it gives sponsors at the moment.”

The ability to get close to the action

Racecourses have recognised the value in the ‘money can’t buy’ experiences that they can offer to race-goers and by extension sponsors. Opportunities to get up close and personal make Jump Racing an unforgettable day out and give it an edge that many other sports are unable to match. Sponsors can arrange for customers to meet trainers, riders and owners without encumbrance, providing a unique opportunity to engage and impress their own target market. For example, Guinness invites customers to judge awards for the Best Turned Out horse in the paddock at the Cheltenham Festival every year, providing an up close and personal view of the competitors to ordinary spectators that they cannot buy on their own.

“Jump Racing is about the opportunity to entertain clients in a sport where they feel they are very close to the action and can interact with some of the participants. I’m thinking of trophy presentations and getting them into the parade ring where they are right at the heart of the action. The clients feel they are more involved rather than sitting in a box at Stamford Bridge miles away with no interaction with the people performing in front of them.”

An extended period for brand exposure and engagement

Jump Racing also gives its sponsors the opportunity to enjoy the experience and engage with its audience, whether it is consumer or business to business, over a length of time. During the course of a day at the races there are significant periods before, between and after races that can be used to explore the race course facilities, including trade stands, shopping areas, catering areas and so on. This amount of dwell offers sponsors an opportunity to engage with consumers in an energetic, positive and relaxed environment.

And of course, sponsors can take comfort in the surrounding media noise of the event, before, during and after, allowing additional time for brand engagement and exposure. Bringing the brand to life in this way is – or should be – a key part of every sponsorship strategy.

“There is a huge audience across the year and once they are there they are a captive audience. It’s brilliant from that point of view. At a football match, for example, someone either arrives 15 minutes before the game or gets taken straight to their hospitality box. There’s a short half time and they leave at the end. There is little time to engage with your audience.”

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