The Mitsubishi Motors Badminton Horse Trials and the Land Rover Burghley Horse Trials both finished in the top ten of UK sporting events, as published in Deloitte’s Sports Events Report 2017*
Wimbledon outstripped the other UK sporting events with an attendance of 473,000 while Badminton is in seventh place (179,000) and Burghley is in eighth place (166,000). Attendance increased for both events in comparison to 2016 when Badminton recorded 160,000 attendees and Burghley 155,000; Burghley has also moved up one place from ninth in 2016 while Badminton remained in eighth place
Horse racing fixtures feature heavily in the Top 10 with four events named; Royal Ascot (3rd), Cheltenham Festival (4th), Epsom Derby Festival (9th) and Aintree Grand National (10th).
Grouped together in this report, horse racing and equestrian attracted a total attendance of 7.5 million. This puts them into second place of the overall sporting attendances in 2017, behind football with a whopping 47.6 million
Despite much talk of technological advances affecting methods of audience participation, live sporting events seem to be on the up. Paid attendances at professional sports events in the UK totalled 74.5m in 2017, an increase of 7% on 2016 with football attendances accounting for over 60% of the total.
Dan Jones, partner in the Sports Business Group at Deloitte, commented, “2017 has proven to be a stellar year for live professional sport in the UK, with total attendances just shy of 2012’s record year. Despite rising inflation, limited real wage growth and squeezed household incomes, the fact that the UK public is continuing to show strong appetite for watching live sport is reassuring to see”
*excludes free sporting events
View full Deloitte Infographic here
