Cheltenham vs Grand National Betting Offers: How the Two Festivals Compare for Punters

Two Spring Festivals, Two Different Offer Landscapes

Every April I field the same question: “Should I save my sign-up offer for the Grand National instead of using it at Cheltenham?” The answer depends on what kind of bettor you are, but the reasoning behind it reveals something important about how the two events differ – not just in racing terms, but in the structure and value of the promotions they generate.

Cheltenham is a four-day, 28-race programme. The Grand National meeting at Aintree runs over three days, but in promotional terms it is effectively a single-race event – the Grand National itself dominates the marketing, the offers and the public’s attention. All 28 Cheltenham races ranked in the top 31 UK races by betting turnover in 2025. The Grand National was in that list too, alongside the Derby and the Scottish National, but as a single fixture rather than a block of 28. The difference in scale is the fundamental reason the offer landscapes diverge.

Twenty-Eight Races vs One: Why Cheltenham Offers Spread Wider

The quantity of Cheltenham races creates a promotional ecosystem that the Grand National cannot replicate. At Cheltenham, operators run day-specific offers on Tuesday, Wednesday, Thursday and Friday. They run race-specific offers on the Champion Hurdle, the Queen Mother Champion Chase, the Stayers’ Hurdle and the Gold Cup. They run bet-type-specific offers on accumulators, each-way bets and Lucky 15s. They run existing-customer offers that refresh daily. The 28-race card provides 28 separate hooks for promotional activity, and operators use all of them.

The Grand National compresses that activity into a single race. The welcome offers for the Grand National are comparable in headline size to Cheltenham’s – sometimes slightly larger, because the race draws an even broader casual audience. But the race-specific promotions are fewer in number, because there is one race to build around rather than 28. There are no day-specific promotions (the supporting races on National day generate far less promotional interest), and the existing-customer offers tend to be one-shot deals rather than rolling daily specials.

William Hill projects approximately £450 million in wagers across the four Cheltenham days. The Grand National generates enormous single-race turnover, but the total meeting turnover across three days does not match Cheltenham’s four-day number. This volume gap means Cheltenham attracts more promotional spend in aggregate, even if the Grand National’s single-race peak is higher.

For the punter who wants to maximise the total number of promotional opportunities, Cheltenham is the clear winner. You can claim a welcome offer, deploy tokens across multiple days, take advantage of daily specials, and layer race-specific promotions on top. At the Grand National, you claim the welcome offer, use the tokens on one or two races, and the promotional calendar is essentially complete by Saturday evening.

Offer Types That Appear at Cheltenham but Not the Grand National

Certain promotional mechanics only work when the card supports them, and Cheltenham’s structure supports mechanics that a single race cannot.

Daily acca insurance requires multiple races on the same day to construct an accumulator. At Cheltenham, you can build a four-fold from the day’s seven-race card and trigger acca insurance. At the Grand National meeting, the supporting card is thinner and the promotional focus is too narrow to generate meaningful acca insurance offers tied to the event.

Rolling daily specials – a “money back on a loser” that covers a different race each day, or a daily price boost that refreshes with the morning card – only function at multi-day events. Cheltenham’s four-day structure gives operators four opportunities to run the same mechanic with different content. The Grand National meeting technically spans three days, but the promotional attention is so concentrated on Saturday that the Friday and Thursday cards are promotional afterthoughts.

Day-of-Festival promotions – “Opening Day Free Bet,” “Ladies Day Special,” “Gold Cup Friday Deal” – are unique to events with distinct daily identities. Each Cheltenham day has a character that operators can build a narrative around. The Grand National meeting does not have the same day-by-day identity; it has National Day and “the other days.”

Each-way extra places at Cheltenham apply across multiple big-field handicaps throughout the week. The Grand National itself is a natural candidate for extended places (40 runners make it the biggest field of the year), but it is one race. Cheltenham offers extended places on the County Hurdle, the Coral Cup, the Grand Annual and others – multiple opportunities across four days. The cumulative each-way value at Cheltenham substantially exceeds what a single race, however large, can offer.

There is one area where the Grand National holds an advantage: simplicity. If you are a once-a-year bettor who wants to place a single bet on a single race with minimal decisions, the Grand National’s focused promotional landscape is easier to navigate. Cheltenham’s richness can be overwhelming for someone who does not want to spend the week evaluating offers. For that audience, the Grand National’s “claim the bonus, pick a horse, watch one race” experience is genuinely more accessible.

For punters who engage with both events, the optimal approach is to use them sequentially. Claim a welcome offer at one operator for Cheltenham, use the tokens across the four-day programme, and then claim a separate welcome offer at a different operator for the Grand National three weeks later. There is no rule preventing you from holding accounts with multiple firms, and doing so lets you extract value from both events without having to choose between them. The Cheltenham betting deals guide covers the full Festival promotional landscape for those who want to maximise their Cheltenham engagement before turning attention to Aintree.

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