Submitted by Ask The Impossible

Betfair's Stable Cinema

Influencer Marketing

Ask The Impossible built the Betfair Stable Cinema at a racecourse for Betfair, staging a movie premiere around Rachael Blackmore and a challenge to raise up to £250,000.

£250,000charity fundraising target

Case in 60 seconds

Betfair needed a way to celebrate champion jockey Rachael Blackmore and showcase her career while launching her Injured Jockeys Fund, and the brief was framed as creating a space rather than a campaign message.

The campaign appears to turn on the racecourse itself as the ground racing audiences already gather on, so a premiere staged in the stables reads as tribute paid where Blackmore's career was made rather than borrowed glamour.

The organizing thesis was to turn stables into a cinema and hold what the agency describes as the world's first movie premiere at a racecourse, with the screening carrying Betfair's challenge to Blackmore.

Ask The Impossible handled concept, creative direction, project management, fabrication, delivery and event management, building the Betfair Stable Cinema at the racecourse and hosting the premiere there, with the full film pointed to on Betfair.com.

The agency's own page records the Stable Cinema as built and the premiere as held, with the challenge to Blackmore framed as raising up to £250,000 for the Injured Jockeys Fund and Irish Injured Jockeys.

Strategy Breakdown

The primary strategy-learning section — interpretation, not a press-release summary.

Based on the available evidence, the work sits on the distance between racing's celebration of its horses and the recognition given to the jockeys who ride them, which the page answers by making Blackmore's career the subject of a premiere.
Betfair takes the role of the party issuing the challenge and funding what it is worth, so the brand is present through the fundraising mechanism and the built cinema rather than through advertising bought around the race.
The challenge is settled by winners ridden, which reads as tying donations to something racing audiences are already watching, so following Blackmore's races becomes the way supporters track the fund.

Creative & Execution System

Partners

  • Ask The Impossible (lead_agency), Pitch (unspecified)

Creator role

  • Rachael Blackmore — creator

Results & Evidence

MetricValueResult type
charity fundraising targetTo launch Betfair's challenge to racing ambassador Rachael Blackmore, to raise up to £250,000 for the Injured Jockeys Fund and Irish Injured Jockeys, by simply riding winners, we built the Betfair Stable Cinema... to host the world's first movie premiere at a racecourse.creators_count

Why Ask The Impossible's strategy worked

  1. 1

    A challenge that converts sporting performance into charity money gives an ambassador a reason to be celebrated on her own terms, because the sum rises with winners ridden rather than with content published.

  2. 2

    Building a venue inside the category's own home ground, in this case stables at a racecourse, appears to earn attention through the novelty of the place rather than through media weight behind it.

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