Published on 23rd March 2016 by Becky Mosley

When it comes to horse racing the Cheltenham Festival, along with its showpiece Gold Cup race, is arguably the most important event of the year. Annually millions are wagered on the races that take place across the weekend, with it delivering minute-by-minute excitement. Sadly, this year’s Cheltenham Festival did not run quite as smoothly as events in years gone by, as technical issues hampered key sports betting websites due to high-demand.

Couldn’t Manage The Strain

As most would expect, when the Gold Cup dawns the sports betting action intensifies, the problem is that for UK punters it seems that several leading bookmakers couldn’t handle the strain. According to reports issued by Capacitas, several major sports betting websites suffered notable slow downs in the build-up to the big race. Looking at the sites that were most effected. William Hill’s loading times were delayed by almost three seconds, Bet365 experienced a two second delay, while Betfair’s load delay clocked in at 1.7 seconds.

Websites Operating Slowly

To most, a mere few second delay may not seem like a lot, but it can actually be pivotal when it comes to customer conversion. Speaking on what load delays often relate to Danny Quilton (Capacitas Director) said, “When a website slows or even crashes, it loses customers to its rivals – especially for time-sensitive events like horse races.” Discussing the Cheltenham Festival issues in particular, he followed up by saying; “Our monitoring found that three of the leading bookies had websites that were operating slowly because of the increase in demand during Friday’s Cheltenham Gold Cup.”According to data issued from noted sports betting website Bettingexpert.com, with website delays in mind, several bookmakers had an all-round rough time at Cheltenham Festival. However, as has been said before, a bad day for the bookies is a good day for the punters!