2015 Melbourne Cup

YouGov
November 01, 2015, 9:49 AM GMT+0

The Melbourne Cup is Australia's most prestigious Thoroughbred horse race. Being generally perceived as "the race that stops a nation", how Australians are going to engage themselves with Melbourne Cup this year? YouGov has polled 670 panelists in Australia from 23rd to 28th October 2015 to investigate what Aussies like to do during Melbourne Cup and how they would choose a horse to back on. Key findings from the survey are as follow:

The top 5 activities Australians will do to engage themselves with Melbourne Cup:

  1. Take part in a sweepstake (38%)
  2. Watch the race live on TV (38%)
  3. Watch with friends / colleagues (24%)
  4. Place a bet with a bookmaker (23%)
  5. Follow the news online / social media (13%)

While 51% of respondents don’t want to participate in any Melbourne Cup activities.

Male respondents tend to take more part in sweepstake than female respondents (44% male vs. 33% female). The same trends can be seen in “Watch the race live on TV”, where male respondents are more eager to take parts compared to female respondents (45% vs. 31% female).

For people who want to take parts in Melbourne Cup activities this year, the top 5 reasons are:

  1. I have previously enjoyed participating in Melbourne Cup (69%)
  2. It's a national event and everyone should join in (62%)
  3. It's a good excuse for me to get together with friends and family and have fun (47%)
  4. To try and win some money (41%)
  5. Everyone around me is participating and I feel I should as well (32%)

As for people who don’t want to take parts in any Melbourne Cup activities, top 3 reasons include: they don’t like watching horse racing (47%), they don’t want to spend money on Melbourne Cup related activities (24%), and that they don’t have time to participate (10%).

Among the people who choose to participate in Melbourne Cup activities, they choose a horse to back on Melbourne Cup based on their feeling (39%), just randomly select a horse (30%), its previous racing performance (28%), based on tips from experts (24%), and based on the study of information about the horse (21%).

For those who will place a bet on Melbourne Cup, most of the respondents (58%) are willing to bet AUD$25 or below. 32% of them tend to bet online, the other 23% likes to bet offline, while the other 45% likes to bet both online and offline.

From the people who bet online, 70% says they don’t have any specific betting apps, while 39% mainly uses TAB, and 36% mainly using Sportsbet for betting. A quarter (25%) of Australians admits that they use the betting apps to place their bets just once a year, while 23% uses it once every few months.

Top 5 brands that are associated with Melbourne Cup:

  1. Emirates (73%)
  2. Myer (34%)
  3. Crown (29%)
  4. Yellowglen (18%)
  5. AAMI, Lexus (15%)

Click here to download the infographic.