Royal Ascot next season have added £765,000 to their prize pots for the races with now two of the events over the five days set to hold a purse of over £1 million with a record £8,095,000 on offer across the whole of the meeting.
The two races that will now see a seven figure purse up for grabs is the Grade One feature Prince Of Wales Stakes that was won by Crystal Ocean and last seasons meeting and also the Diamond Jubilee Stakes which Godolphin's Blue Point.
Ascot are looking to entice more international runners to boost the track's income from overseas betting and the media and data rights which go with that and with this push of money into the festival there is no reason why it won't have the desired effect.
16 of the 30 races across the five days have seen an increase of the prize money on offer with no race over the entire Royal meeting being run for less than £95,000.
(Credit Racing Post) Ascot's chief executive Guy Henderson said: "Royal Ascot plays an important role for the industry in maintaining international investment in British racing.
"The progress we have made with our international commercial rights, our debt financing programme and our business as a whole means that we are now able to start to implement our long-held aspiration to increase the prize fund for our flagship and internationally relevant Group 1 races at Royal Ascot to £1m, beginning with the Prince of Wales’s Stakes and the Diamond Jubilee Stakes.
“These two races, which historically appeal to international horsemen, have been selected first as being likely to produce increased income from overseas betting and associated media/data rights. Equally, there are so many six, and now seven-figure races staged around the world over these distances that we must be conscious of options open to our own locally trained star horses."