Derby Day: what one race meeting is worth to the rest of Epsom's businesses
On Derby Day a crowd many times Epsom's usual size arrives in town, but it comes for the racing, so for most of the town's businesses it brings in little in sales. It arrives and leaves on the racecourse's timetable, and most of it has no reason to go anywhere near the high street.
The Derby has been run at Epsom Downs since 1780. The businesses that gain are the ones closest to the course, selling what a racegoer needs that day: food, drink and somewhere to park. A shop further into town, selling something unrelated, is chasing a small and distracted slice of that crowd.
What every business in town does get is warning. Most rushes arrive without any, but this one falls on a fixed, published date, and has done for a very long time, so stock, staff and opening hours can all be planned weeks ahead around a day that won't move. Our page for businesses in Surrey and South West London lists the racecourse's published dates alongside the town's markets.
Any small place that hosts one huge event sees the same split between the venue and the high street, and Castle Cary on Glastonbury weekend is the Somerset version. In Epsom, the same question of who a crowd is really for runs through the markets and Go Epsom, the partnership the town centre's businesses pay into.
Nobody publishes reliable, current figures for how many people come into the town itself on Derby Day, or what they spend, as opposed to attendance at the course, and I'd rather leave a gap than fill it with a number nobody can stand behind.
What I can describe is the feel of it. From early morning until late at night the town has a buzz about it. People are dressed up and looking glamorous, there's the smell of food, and sometimes drink, in the air, and the crowds are happy. It feels more like a festival than a race meeting. That's an impression rather than a figure, and it's the mood a business in town trades in that day.
So Derby Day is worth planning for, and not worth banking on.
I founded oXo Creatives, an independent marketing agency and consultancy, in 2013 and run it full-time. Until 2026 I ran it alongside senior in-house marketing roles at Google, PlayStation and King, partner management at Meta, and digital product at NatWest.
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