Michael O’Leary, the chief executive of Ryanair, had two reasons to be cheerful after the Irish Champion Hurdle at the Dublin Racing Festival (DRF) at Leopardstown on Sunday. His seven-year-old mare, Brighterdaysahead, had just won the feature race and she was cheered back to the winner’s enclosure by a sellout crowd that included several thousand visiting racegoers from Britain.

“The Dublin Racing Festival has been a great success and certainly it’s the first time you’ve seen a lot of English people coming over for the racing,” O’Leary said. “It’s a great festival in its own right and they’re all very welcome. I hope they flew Ryanair.”

Since his airline has nearly two-thirds of the market for flights between the UK and Ireland it was more of a certainty than a hope. For decades, the Prix de l’Arc de Triomphe, in Paris in early October, was British racegoers’ big weekend abroad and reckoned to be the second-biggest annual exodus of British fans for a sporting event, with only the Le Mans 24-hour race drawing more. Less than a decade into its existence, the DRF is coming up fast on the Arc’s inside.

Before its launch in 2018 as a two-day weekend meeting, the Irish Gold Cup and Irish Champion Hurdle were staged on Sundays, a couple of weeks apart, in late January and early February.

“Whoever’s idea it was to have a Dublin Racing Festival, it’s an absolute masterstroke,” said Mark Clayton, Leopardstown’s new chief executive. “More than half of our races will be Grade Ones and, for me, this is where legends are born, with how things are now with Irish bloodstock dominating on both sides of the water.

“There’s a clear depth to the quality and that’s a big part of the reason why Brits are coming – that and the value that’s on offer. The weekend tickets went on sale for €75 [£65] so you can come to a major city, get great hospitality and two quality days of racing for €75.”

Clayton’s estimate a few days beforehand was that “nearly 30% of the crowd will be over from the UK, so around six thousand people”. Value was a word that came up time and again in the packed enclosures on Sunday, as British fans explained what had drawn them to Dublin and, in some cases, driven them away from Cheltenham’s big festival meeting in March.

Cheltenham has had an alarming slide in crowd numbers over the past three seasons, losing nearly a quarter of its attendance since 2022, and there were plenty of punters here who see the DRF not as an addition to an annual trip to the Cotswolds, but an alternative.

“This is my second time here,” said Phil, one of a party of nine from Birmingham. “I’ve stopped going to Cheltenham, it’s got so expensive. The tickets here are cheaper, accommodation’s not too expensive and the beer is even a bit cheaper, too.”

Simon Boxcer, the organiser of an 11-strong group from Southend, was similarly impressed by the DRF experience. “I love the place, it’s so welcoming and the racing is brilliant,” he said.

“I’ve got a box at Cheltenham for all four days for entertaining clients, but I prefer it here. It was €75 for the weekend, we all flew Ryanair from Stansted and when I changed my flight to go back on Monday night [after the Saturday card was postponed for 48 hours], it cost £20. Where are you going to get value like that in England?”

As Clayton points out, Dublin’s festival has some intrinsic advantages over Cheltenham as a sporting destination. “Cheltenham is the home of jump racing and I love the festival,” he said. “They have challenges we don’t face, a big part of it around accommodation. It’s in the Cotswolds and a relatively small spa town against the metropolis that is a capital city like Dublin. Chuck into that Michael O’Leary’s generosity in his pricing and flights across the water are very cheap, as little as £15 single depending on when you fly.”

One of the plus points of Leopardstown’s metropolitan location was evident on Saturday when the 7am postponement of the opening-day card due to waterlogging left thousands at a loose end in the self-proclaimed pub capital of the world. Leopardstown’s loss was Temple Bar’s gain and while many were booked to fly home after Sunday’s meeting Boxcer was far from alone in staying put for the rescheduled Gold Cup card.

As Willie Mullins’s Fact To File recorded a decisive success in Ireland’s most prestigious chase on Monday, 48 hours later than planned, the ninth running of the DRF had demonstrated not just its qualities, but also its resilience. Many of the travelling fans will be back next year for an event that remains on a steep upward curve.

“Some [British fans] will be looking for an alternative [to Cheltenham] and some will be attending both,” Clayton said. “But the value is the message and it’s hitting home with the British audience.”