Ascot Racecourse Announces Record Prize Money for 2023

• Ascot increases prize money offering by £1.33 million
• The Royal meeting will be worth £9.52m in 2023, up from £8.62 million in 2022.

Ascot Racecourse announced that it would offer record prize money in 2023 across the Flat and Jumps racing programme.

While much of the increase aims to preserve the grandeur of the Royal meeting, which attracts celebrities and royals alike, other meetings held at Ascot Racecourse will also receive more prize money.

According to Ascot, £17M will be on offer in 2023 – an increase of £1.36M on 2022 values, and significantly higher than the £8M offered in 2021 and 2020’s £3.61M purse.

The only meeting that this year’s prize money does not cover is QIPCO British Champions Day due to the event being an industry partnership.

Royal Ascot, which takes place between June 20th – 24th this year and will be aired live on Sky Sports Racing, ITV and ITV 4.

Royal Ascot is the racecourse’s most lucrative event, offering the best will help attract and maintain international investment.

Each race at Royal Ascot will now be worth no less than £100,000, while the opening day, which features three Group One races – Queen Anne Stakes (£750,000), King’s Stand Stakes (£500,000) and St James’s Horse Stakes (£500,000) – will be worth almost £2M!

It’s a first for the Royal meeting, with officials hoping to up the stakes further by offering at least £600,000 (up from £500,000) for each of the nine Group 1 races held over the five-day event.

Elsewhere, the Dubai Duty-Free Shergar Cup, held on August 12th 2023, features a total of eight races, with the prize money increasing by 15% to a grand total of £80,000. Stable prizes will also be offered on top of this, with the prizes worth a grand total of £25,000. The QIPCO King George Diamond Weekend will also offer stable prizes, which will be worth the same amount.

Ascot’s Director of Racing and Public Affairs Nick Smith stated:

“We are delighted to have reached the £17 million prize money mark for the first time. It’s never been so important to focus on the top end of the British programme with competition for the best horses so intense internationally.

“Against a backdrop of reduced central funding, an increase of more than £1.1 million or almost 14% in Executive Contribution has been required to get to this figure. That represents a significant investment and whilst many of the headline increases are at Royal Ascot, there are also boosts to Class 2 and Class 3 Handicaps on the Flat driven by the welcome increase to Minimum Values in this area.

“We have focused again on raising the profile of the Dubai Duty Free Shergar Cup which attracts international jockey talent from around the world and are delighted that each of the eight races will be worth £80,000.

“We are also pleased to improve returns for developmental races including two high value maidens on the Flat, while over Jumps our five Saturday meetings will all feature at least one £100,000 handicap.”

Current Group 1 races held at Royal Ascot:

• Tuesday – G1 Queen Anne Stakes
• Tuesday – G1 King’s Stand Stakes
• Tuesday – G1 St James’s Palace Stakes
• Wednesday – G1 Prince of Wales’s Stakes
• Thursday – G1 Gold Cup
• Friday – G1 Commonwealth Cup
• Friday – G1 Coronation Stakes
• Saturday – G1 Platinum Jubilee Stakes (originally the Diamond Jubilee Stakes)