Mastering Your Bets: A Comprehensive Guide to Wagering on Cheltenham Festival 2025
The greatest show on turf is just around the corner, and we have put together a guide on how to bet on Cheltenham to help give you the best chance of landing some profits.
Table of Contents:
- Understanding the Cheltenham Festival
- Welcome Offer - Up to $200 Matched Free Bet!
- Types of Bets Available
- Horses to Watch for 2025
Understanding the Cheltenham Festival
Originating in 1860, the Cheltenham Festival is considered one of the biggest racing events in the world. The 2025 festival will run from 11th - 15th March with a championship race on each of the four days, culminating in the Gold Cup on Friday 14th.
The Cheltenham Festival is one of the highlights in the racing calendar, and LeoVegas is the perfect place to experience the thrills and spills of all the drama.
Here is the schedule for the 2025 festival:
Day One - The Champion Hurdle: After last year’s absence, can the legendary Constitution Hill bring it home again for Nicky Henderson?
Day Two - The BetMGM Queen Mother Champion Steeple Chase: Jonbon is the outright favourite for Wednesday’s feature race. Can anyone stop him?
Day Three - The Stayers Hurdle: Gordon Elliot’s Teahupoo is the big favourite in Day 3’s standout race.
Day Four - Gold Cup: Galopin Des Champs looks to win the flagship race for the third consecutive year.
Welcome Offer - Up to $200 Matched Free Bet!
To sign up to LeoVegas for Cheltenham, and claim your fantastic Welcome Offer, follow these steps:
- Step 1: Sign up and choose the Sports Welcome Offer.
- Step 2: Claim the offer in ‘My Offers’.
- Step 3: Place a Qualifying Bet of up to $200 on any market with combination odds of 1.80 or higher.
- Step 4: After your Qualifying Bet settles, receive a Free Bet matching your stake, valid on any event with combination odds of 1.80 or higher. CHECK OUT THE OFFER
Types of Bets Available
There are several different Cheltenham betting markets at LeoVegas, but understanding the terminology is critical to ensuring an enjoyable experience.
Some examples of the types of bets available are:
Ante-post: An Ante-post bet is one that is placed before the final list of runners is confirmed.
Win bet: Here, you are backing the horse to be first past the post. If your horse wins, your bet wins. Each way bet: The total stake is divided into one half for the Win Part of the bet and the other used for the Place Part. The Place Part will return winnings according to the predefined odds calculation. For example, betting on a horse $5 each way (total stake $10) at odds of 5/1 with a 1/5 pre-race definition will return $10. If it wins, you will win $40 in total.
Boxed bet: This bet involves all the horses you select in a specific race to finish in any order. To win, your horses must cross the line in first, second, and third, regardless of the order.
Accumulator bet: An accumulator bet is also known as an acca or a combination bet. It involves combining multiple individual bets into a single bet - all selections in an accumulator bet must be successful for the bet to win.
Lucky 15: This is 15 bets across four different selections. The bets are: 4 single bets, 6 doubles, 4 trebles, and 1 four-fold accumulator. Because single bets are included, just one selection needs to win to result in a payout.
Horses to watch for 2025
Having missed last year’s Cheltenham Festival with a respiratory infection, Nicky Henderson’s Constitution Hill returns to run the Champion Hurdle, which he won in 2023. He will go off favourite, but expect Lossiemouth to challenge, though Constitution Hill got the better of him at Kempton on Boxing Day.
Jonbon also missed last year’s festival and will be hoping 2025 is his year. He won the Tingle Creek Chase for the second year in a row back in December under Nico de Boinville and is the odds-on favourite for the BetMGM Queen Mother Champion Chase. Il Est Francais, Gaelic Warrior and Energumene will all have hopes, but Nicky Henderson will be hoping Jonbon can bring it home.
We can’t look at horses to watch without mentioning Galopin Des Champs. Willie Mullins is targeting the hat trick having seen this horse win in 2023 and 2024 - he is favourite to do so again but it is a huge task, and only four horses (Golden Miller, Cottage Rake, Arkle and Best Mate) have ever won three Gold Cups in a row.