Sky Bet Sunday Series: £200,000 in bonuses includes more money for stable staff

The £600,000 Sky Bet Sunday Series – which takes in three fixtures at Musselburgh, Haydock Park, Sandown Park later this summer – will see an extra £200,000 worth of bonus prizes up for grabs, including £10,000 to the stable staff from the yard that sends out the most winners across the series and boosted best-turned-out prizes to three horses in each race.

The Sunday Series Bonus will see £100,000 paid to the owners of any horse which wins a race at each of the three fixtures, with the bonus being split equally should there be more than one winner.

There is also a Sunday Series Bonus of £100,000 for any jockey who rides a total of seven winners across the three fixtures.

Trainer George Boughey said: “I fully support new initiatives such as the Sky Bet Sunday Series, which is boosting prizemoney, as well as facilitating better Sunday fixtures. I definitely have some candidates for the £100,000 Sunday Series Bonus and we will be trying our hardest to win races at all three of these fixtures.”

Two-time champion jockey Paul Hanagan said: “Sunday racing is a real opportunity to get more people interested in racing and it’s great to see the industry all working together on the Sky Bet Sunday Series.

“The £600,000 prizemoney across the Series is extremely welcome, as are the bonuses. It’s going to be a big ask to ride seven winners at the three fixtures, but it’s not beyond the realms of possibility, and you can be sure a £100,000 bonus will concentrate the minds of us jockeys!”

The Sky Bet Sunday Series is an industry-wide collaboration between ITV, Sky Bet, Racecourse Media Group, Musselburgh, Haydock Park and Sandown Park, which will showcase the sport in a twilight slot on terrestrial television this summer.

The three seven-race cards – most with 25-minute gaps between races – will be showcased in their entirety on ITV, and prize money has been significantly increased to £600,000 (from c. £150,000) across the three Sunday fixtures.