Multi Million Euro Pools In Store for Leopardstown

The Longines Irish Champion Stakes Day will be a World Pool event for the first time this weekend, a move that could generate pool sizes in the tens of millions of Euro.

Through collaboration between the Hong Kong Jockey Club, Tote, Horse Racing Ireland, and Racecourse Media Group, for the first day of the festival, which takes place at Leopardstown Racecourse on Saturday 11th September, racing fans from around the world will have the opportunity to bet into a single pool, ensuring larger and deeper pools, differentiated pricing, and the opportunity for unequalled value for Tote customers.

Created and hosted by the Hong Kong Jockey Club since 2018, over 20 leading racing nations, including Ireland, the UK, Hong Kong, Australia, Singapore, South Africa, and the US have been part of the World Pool to date.

Tote Ireland entered into a strategic alliance with the UK Tote Group in 2020. One of the benefits of this alliance, along with developing joint product and value improvements for tote.ie and tote.co.uk, is the delivery of the first World Pool for Irish racing.

In total, over €372 million has been bet into World Pool on 15 British race days in 2021 at the QIPCO 2000 Guineas Day, Cazoo Derby Day, Royal Ascot, Coral-Eclipse Day, QIPCO King George Diamond Day, the Qatar Goodwood Festival, and Welcome to Yorkshire Ebor Festival.

The pool size at this year’s Cazoo Epsom Derby swelled from 1.9 million last year to over €30 million in 2021.

Brian Kavanagh, Chief Executive of Horse Racing Ireland, which owns Tote Ireland, said: “We are delighted that the Hong Kong Jockey Club have made Irish Champion Stakes Day at Leopardstown a World Pool event for the first time. This is both great news for Irish Tote bettors and for Leopardstown, underlining the benefits of Tote operators around the world coming together to provide bigger pools and better value. We look forward to continuing work with the Hong Kong Jockey Club and all involved in World Pool as it continues to grow and develop.”

Having a slice of the global betting market in a pool betting operation where there is no bookmaker dividend has huge potential for the sport here and the quality of racing over the weekend is at the right level to attract the global dollars, yen and all the rest.