Member Spotlight: Ascot Racecourse

What’s your name and position within the organisation?

I’m Matt Powell, Sponsorship Account and Sales Manager for Ascot Racecourse. We are an independent racecourse, most famous for Royal Ascot, which is held every June. Last year we welcomed over 600,000 people through the gates over our 26 racedays.

How did Ascot Racecourse come to work with your current sponsors?

We have a simple sponsorship model here, with Official Partners forming our top tier and then Official Sponsors beneath, all of whom receive rights across all fixtures and represent various sectors e.g. food & beverage, finance, automotive, retail. We have a great balance of brands who have been here for several years, even before this structure was formed five years ago, and then there are the more recent additions to the fold. We also look after approximately 80 individual race sponsors.

What “bigger picture” do these relationships seek to meet?

We are always striving to improve our customer experience and engagement on and off site and many of the brands we work with help us achieve that. At the heart of everything we do is the racing. Ascot doesn’t have shareholders, so profits are reinvested into our racing programme and facilities.

How is the effectiveness of the relationship(s) measured? What metrics do you use?

The key is to make sure that results inform planning and decision making.

Working with a diverse range of brands with different objectives, there isn’t a one size fits all approach to evaluation as most will know. It is, however, becoming increasingly important that we are in a position to effectively track and evaluate the various touch points between our audience and sponsors – whether that is sales, sampling product on site, reach and engagement on digital channels, media valuation, or PR coverage, to name just a few. The key is to make sure that results inform planning and decision making.

What’s your rights holder USP?

Ascot has a rich heritage and our Royal associations give us a unique positioning as a sporting venue. Although Royal Ascot is very much the jewel in the crown, we have 21 other days of racing throughout the year, with a highly engaged and passionate customer base. We are a sporting venue first and foremost, but Ascot is equally famous for fashion, pageantry and fine dining. This gives our sponsors a wide variety of themes on which to base their activations.

What are the current trends within your business area, and how are they affecting how you work and how you deliver on strategy?

Rather than just deliver eyeballs, we need to act as a media owner in many ways to compete with other sponsorship properties and more traditional media buys.

The consumer remains at the core of the sponsorship proposition, and, as we continue to build a deeper understanding of who our customers are, we now have greater capacity to engage and connect with them. Sponsorship is now about quality not quantity – we have to offer meaningful insight into consumer behaviour and make sure our partners are communicating to the right people at the right time. Rather than just deliver eyeballs, we need to act as a media owner in many ways to compete with other sponsorship properties and more traditional media buys.

There is also a trend across the board towards ensuring an authentic purpose, whether environmental, societal or cause-related, is at the core of business activity.

There is also a trend across the board towards ensuring an authentic purpose, whether environmental, societal or cause-related, is at the core of business activity. It is, of course, the right thing to do and modern consumers now expect it. We work with many sponsors and charities across the year to meet shared objectives. Two of our racedays this year – The Property Raceday and The Prince’s Countryside Fund Raceday are dedicated to raising money for charities and are great opportunities for us and our sponsors to deliver CSR strategies.

How has sponsorship changed in your industry over the past few years? And how do you think it’s going to change in the next five years?

For us, the introduction of Official Partners who receive subtle on course branding at Royal Ascot, has been a big change in recent years, as the event was traditionally ‘sponsor free’. Despite this, there is no ambition to seek race sponsors for the Royal Meeting as the tradition and heritage of the event are key USPs.

We announced our first digital only sponsorship this year with Cunard, who supported the Royal Ascot Style Guide – our best-performing content series. The sponsorship reflects the long-term investment we have made into understanding our audience and engaging them through our digital channels, and the opportunity that presents to brands. Our ambition is to successfully and subtly commercialise our digital assets moving forward.

As an industry, I think there is an opportunity for racecourses to work together on sponsorship to offer brands a broader platform from which to activate.

As an industry, I think there is an opportunity for racecourses to work together on sponsorship to offer brands a broader platform from which to activate. Horseracing provided four of the top ten best-attended sporting events in the UK in 2017. We are beginning to see this on an international level already with the creation of World Horse Racing – a digital platform which tells the stories and celebrates four of the world’s biggest racing festivals. We are in partnership with The Breeders’ Cup (USA), Victoria Racing Club (AUS) and Goodwood (UK) on this project.

How are you harnessing and executing on digital strategy, and what problems / opportunities has this created?

We are moving into the next phase, as we modernise our approach to digital activations with partners – the Cunard sponsorship being a good example. Most brands are moving away from producing content in the style of five years ago, whereby they expected two tweets and a Facebook post. This change is for the better.

We are moving into the next phase, as we modernise our approach to digital activations with partners – the Cunard sponsorship being a good example. Most brands are moving away from producing content in the style of five years ago, whereby they expected two tweets and a Facebook post. This change is for the better. What we’re trying to show our partners now is how we as a racecourse and they as a sponsor can work together to maximise our joint output. The challenge is in creating quality content that is relevant to both of our audiences.

Working with our sponsors and their ambassadors has enabled us to create content that helps us reach new markets that might not have been open beforehand, particularly Asia and America.

What challenges have you encountered, and how have they been overcome?

Horse racing is not a tribal sport like Football or Rugby, which means we must work harder to encourage people to consider us. In many respects, as a sport, we position ourselves as an entertainment experience.

Horse racing is not a tribal sport like Football or Rugby, which means we must work harder to encourage people to consider us. In many respects, as a sport, we position ourselves as an entertainment experience.

To attract a wider audience and sponsors, we build other events around the racing. Racedays lend themselves to this approach because the action on the track can last for just 20 minutes a day. We host food and wine festivals, a beer festival, a fireworks night, a Christmas shopping village and family days.

These events present great opportunities for sponsors and it is important that we make people aware of what we do outside of Royal Ascot.

Contact Matt:
e: Matt.Powell@ascot.co.uk
https://www.ascot.co.uk/