Improving customer experience bearing fruit says Chester chief but challenges persist as May festival crowds appear flat

Crowd numbers appear to have matched recent years at Chester, but chief executive Louise Stewart warned that courses cannot be complacent in the face of a challenging economic climate.

She believes the efforts the track has made in improving the visitor experience helped secure decent attendances at last week's May meeting. 

There were a total of 33,849 racegoers at the three-day fixture in 2023 and 33,593 in 2022, both some way shy of the 53,414 who were on course for the last pre-pandemic festival in 2019.