The partnership that racing has grown with ITV after they took over the rights to show racing on terrestrial TV has gone from strength to strength.

We’ve seen the addition of regular Sunday coverage, night racing covered, multiple channels being used, and now we have another change that further emphasises how good this relationship is.

ITV Racing has announced that they will increase their coverage of the 2025 Cheltenham Festival, the flagship week in jumps racing. They will show an additional race on each of the four days of the meeting, taking coverage to six races per day, meaning 24 of the 28 races will be covered on free-to-air television.

In terms of the timing of coverage, this now means that live racing from Cheltenham will be broadcast for over four hours per day, all live on the main ITV channel. This covers the live action each afternoon, while on top of this, there will also be an extended version of The Opening Show each morning, which will broadcast for a further 90 minutes.

Racing Strengthens Broadcasting Partnership on Key Week

One of the two biggest weeks of the year, there’s a lot of eyes on racing during Cheltenham week, so this move can only be seen as a positive.

With ITV enhancing their coverage of Royal Ascot a few years back, showing every single race of the meeting, Cheltenham is moving close to following in the footsteps, with the addition of a further four races as part of the new coverage plans.

While racing takes place every day, I’m a firm believer that racing will thrive if the big events are a success. This is how people are going to be attracted to the sport and become fans, punters, and potentially even owners.

Having free to air TV coverage of more races at arguably the biggest event on the calendar is going to allow more eyes onto the big product, and that can only be a good thing.

One company that will suffer a little, though, is Racing TV. They put a lot of focus on driving sign ups during key events like the Cheltenham Festival. But all they can offer now is one additional race per day, and that’s likely to have an impact on the numbers they can attract during that week.

New TV Structure Brings Cheltenham Timetable Change

We’ve already seen race changes at Cheltenham 2025, and now we have been given the new race timetable, which has been changed due to the new TV coverage.

Racing will begin 10 minutes earlier than usual, with the first race on each of the four days now taking place at 1:20 pm. However, the most significant change is that the feature race on each day will move back to one slot, making them the fifth race on the card rather than the fourth.

This also means a later start time, so those four big races, the Champion Hurdle, Champion Chase, Stayers Hurdle and Gold Cup, will all now start at 4 pm.

A break of 40 minutes between races will remain, so there should be plenty of time for good analysis on TV, which will help punters at home. On course, trying to move around is not easy, so the more time between races, the better for anyone attending.

This is a positive story in racing, more racing on ITV, the better for me, and when it comes on a big week, then that’s an even bigger positive to see.

It appears as though ITV is fully behind its coverage of horse racing, and this new deal further cements that belief.