Better Collective Spotlight: Preparing for the biggest week in horse racing

Having described the Cheltenham Festival as “the biggest week in horse racing”, leading igaming affiliate Better Collective will provide its tipster community on bettingexpert.com with the best advice on which horses to bet on, where to bet and how to enjoy the action live.

On the eve of the Festival, Joe Ryan, Video Production Lead for Better Collective, breaks down the company’s creative strategies both leading up to and during the week.

In this article, the latest in the Better Collective Spotlight series, Ryan highlights the importance of video – the “medium of choice” for users to gain knowledge about the Festival – as he explains why everyone watching needs a Daily Nap (not like that), as well as some pointers for best value bets and a few dark horses to watch out for.

The Nap (our best bet of the Festival)

The content that our audience craves the most is betting tips on each day of the Cheltenham Festival, so in the 48 hours or so leading up to it we create full daily preview videos.

Our Racing Editor (and professional punter) Stephen Harris talks through the card and casts an expert eye over any late developments or market movements. In 2018, our daily video previews amassed over 15,000 views – numbers we expect to surpass in 2019.

The Value Bet

Once our community are armed with the information and insight provided from Stephen, it’s time for us to present where we see the best value for punters at the Festival.

Almost every bookmaker you can think of provides customers with an incentive to bet with them during the Festival, all of which are clearly documented on the bettingexpert website in text format.

To help condense the offers into a digestible format, we create a video of our top 5 offers for the week. This is published around 48 hours before the Festival begins, and allows our community time to make sense of the offers and go through the account registration process at the relevant bookmakers.

We also create versions specific to each day of the Festival as bookmakers provide offers for specific races on specific days. The price boosts on the Gold Cup are usually the most popular, and with good reason.

The Dark Horse

After all the analysis and preparation, one question remains: How to watch the Cheltenham Festival? Of course, for UK audiences terrestrial television is an option, but the bettingexpert community is global, so we also create a guide on the best bookmakers that are providing Live Streaming of the event and how to access the streams.

This year, we also plan to innovate by providing the bettingexpert community with a daily weather report from a location overlooking Cheltenham racecourse. The conditions are a key factor when considering which horse to bet on, so we want to be on the ground in Gloucestershire to bring our audience closer to the Festival and keep them up to date throughout the week.