The Cheltenham Festival, often hailed as the ‘Olympics’ of jump racing, is fast approaching, and recent data has brought to light the prize money awarded for the prestigious Gold Cup—an amount that may surprise many.
The Gold Cup serves as the grand finale of Festival week and is scheduled for 4 PM on Friday, March 13 this year. Over a challenging three miles and two furlongs, the finest jump racing champions vie for glory and the coveted trophy.
Despite the race’s intensity and prestige, the prize money falls short when compared to winnings in other major sports tournaments. According to data from Irishracing.com, the Cheltenham Gold Cup winner receives £363,999. While substantial, this amount ranks the Festival only 20th among events with the highest prize money globally.
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To put this in perspective, the Gold Cup’s prize is just 0.2% of the £174.9 million awarded to the Premier League winning football team and only 0.35% of the £106.3 million payout for the winning Formula One team. Other top-tier sporting events boast far larger sums: the FIFA World Cup awards £36.7 million to its champions, the Rugby World Cup £4.8 million, and Wimbledon £3 million to its singles winner.
Remarkably, even within horse racing, Cheltenham’s prize is overshadowed by events like The Grand National, which offers £500,000 to the winner, and the King George VI and QE Stakes at Ascot, where the prize reaches £850,650.
An Irish Racing spokesperson commented, “The Cheltenham Gold Cup is the ultimate test of a horse’s bravery, and carries a prestige that money can’t buy. However, when you look at the raw data, it’s clear that horse racing’s biggest prizes are becoming a drop in the ocean compared to the multi-million-pound payouts in F1, football, and even tennis.”