The Cheltenham Festival’s ‘ring of steel’ costs the force 66 pence a racegoer – less than the £1.33 per punter at Aintree’s Grand National, a study has found. Visitors to the famous four-day festival in Gloucestershire are greeted with stewards, bag searches and normal event security – but armed police also patrol the crowd.
In recent years race meetings have attracted a number of protests, culminating most famously in 2023 when over 100 animal rights activists stormed the Aintree course on Merseyside – disrupting the start of the Grand National. Police arrested 118 Animal Rising protestors and the delay to the big race was later blamed by connections to tragic horse Hill Sixteen for his fatal, first-fence fall.
Now the true cost of hosting the Cheltenham Festival has been revealed in a new Freedom of Information request sent to Gloucestershire Constabulary.
The FOI request, from racing betting tips, news and predictions site, The Winners Enclosure, is part of a campaign to find the safest racecourses in the UK – with data on police costs, the number of arrests and the number of drug confiscations.
At the 2024 Cheltenham Festival, Gloucestershire Constabulary sent 460 police officers to cover the four-day event, and it succeeded, with just five arrests taking place despite 229,999 people officially attending, representing only 0.002 per cent of attendees being arrested for a crime.
This came at a cost of £153,764 to the force – or 66 pence per punter.
In comparison, Merseyside Police spent £200,548 to police the 150,000 attendees at the Grand National festival, although the force made it clear that this did not come at an extra cost to the taxpayer.
Between 2019 and 2024, 13 arrests have taken place at Cheltenham racecourse, which was much lower than the likes of Aintree (146), York (38), Chester (33) and Ascot (30).
However, the Aintree figures are ballooned by the 118 Animal Rising protestors – so these numbers are not typical of the normally lively but safe Merseyside event.
In the centre of Cheltenham, a total of 30 arrests were made between the 12th and 15th of March 2024, which was just 7.5 per day of the festival, showing how well it was policed to prevent more serious levels of crime.
Gloucestershire Constabulary declined to reveal that data on drug confiscation, stating that it would be too time-consuming to total up and review the nearly 3,000 records in Cheltenham.
The force wrote: « Unfortunately there is no way to retrieve this information by way of electronic searches. We can identify the area of ‘Cheltenham’ but we cannot extract data specifically for Cheltenham Racecourse.
« The only way of trying to determine whether any relevant information is held and to retrieve that information would be to manually review each Stop and Search record where the location is Cheltenham.
« This would involve the review of nearly 3,000 records and would therefore take far longer than the 18 hours prescribed by the Freedom of Information Act. »
The worst racecourse for crime was Aintree, where 118 of the 146 arrests took place during the infamous 2023 Grand National event with the Animal Rights protestors delaying the event.
A spokesperson for The Winners Enclosure commented on the study: « The Cheltenham Festival is one of the biggest events across the UK, not just in horse racing, and the police play a vital role in keeping attendees safe from crime.
« The figure for Gloucestershire Constabulary to police the four-day event is astronomical, with it being one of the most protected events in the country.
« It’s great to see that this is reflected in much lower crime rates at Cheltenham compared to other major racecourses, meaning it is one of the safest that racegoers can attend. »
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