On Track: Nottingham Come Racing For £9 at Nottingham Racecourse
On Track is the RCA’s monthly column sharing ideas and best practice from across its membership of British racecourses.
“Come racing for £9”, that’s what the team at Nottingham Racecourse are inviting people to do throughout the 2025 season. This bold value messaging aims to re-engage the people of Nottingham with their local racecourse and encourage those that haven’t visited before to give it a go and have a great day at the races.
The latest data from the Office for National Statistics, Opinions and Lifestyle Survey shows that 86% of adults in Great Britain consider the cost of living to be an important issue facing the UK today, and this increases to 89% amongst younger adults aged 16 to 29.
The challenging socio-economic climate shows little sign of abating, meaning it is more important than ever for sports and leisure venues to offer value to consumers.
Whilst the offer of £9 tickets may seem simple, the idea is the result of robust market research and community engagement efforts from the on-course team. When Rachel Squires took on the role of General Manager at Nottingham Racecourse she quickly established that the course had a dedicated core of regular racegoers, but that it lacked presence and visibility amongst the residents of the city. Being just two miles from the city centre meant this represented a huge opportunity for the racecourse.
Squires said: “We wanted to establish why locals weren’t aware of their racecourse and the barriers that were stopping them from attending. To do this we actually went out into the city and asked them, and the clear message we got back was that they didn’t think we offered value for money. This was also something we were hearing from our existing customers through our post-event surveys so we knew we had to do something to address it.”
The team understood that a strong value message was the hook they needed to get locals racing, and to deliver this they turned to an initiative that had already proved popular at other Jockey Club venues. Leanne Mandall, Senior Marketing Executive – Small Courses, explained: “Being part of the Jockey Club group allows us to take learnings and insight from our other courses. £5 Fridays have been very effective at some of our other tracks, so we decided to trial one at Nottingham. We had no additional marketing budget to promote the day beyond our existing channels, but in spite of this the day was a huge success with over 1,000 paying customers in attendance, more than double what we’d had at previous equivalent fixtures.”
With the feedback gathered, and a successful trial completed, the team had the understanding and insight they needed to develop a longer-term engagement strategy, and as a result the come racing for £9 initiative was born, meaning you can go racing at Nottingham for just £9 at all their non-feature racedays in 2025.
Launched earlier this year the initial feedback has been overwhelming positive on social media, attracting praise from racing fans and personalities alike. Crucially, early sales have also been strong with pre-sales up significantly year-on-year, moving the racecourse’s sales curve left and growing the addressable database.
On the initiative Squires said: “As a sports venue operating in a city which has so much choice in terms of leisure activities, we constantly review our pricing and the racegoer experience.
“We are delighted to be offering £9 tickets for the majority of our racedays in 2025, which represents fantastic value and will hopefully encourage existing racegoers and newcomers to the sport to join us this season.”
Find out more about the initiative and book your £9 tickets on Nottingham’s website here.