E-tickets sent to Outlook and Hotmail addresses were held up by Friday's Microsoft outage. The racecourse says staff on course will help and tickets are on sale at the gate.

Racegoers whose e-tickets for the November Meeting have not arrived have been told to get to Cheltenham Racecourse in plenty of time. A Microsoft outage on Friday held up tickets sent to Microsoft-hosted email addresses.

The racecourse posted the advice on its November Meeting page on the opening day, Friday 13 November. It said: “If you have purchased a ticket using an account associated with Microsoft and are yet to download your e-tickets, please arrive at the racecourse in plenty of time and our team on course will be able to assist.”

Overview

Updated 15 November: the racecourse’s notice about the Microsoft issue was still on its November Meeting page on Sunday 15 November, the last day of the meeting.

  • E-tickets sent to Microsoft-hosted email addresses were delayed by the outage on Friday 13 November.
  • The racecourse says the tickets will arrive “immediately upon service restoration”.
  • Its team on course will help anyone who has not been able to download their tickets.
  • Tickets could still be bought at the gate on Friday.

What the racecourse said

A notice across the racecourse website said the outage “is delaying ticket delivery to all Microsoft-hosted email addresses”. It added: “You will receive your tickets immediately upon service restoration. If you are attending racing today, you can pick up your tickets from any entrance on the racecourse.”

Microsoft-hosted addresses usually means Outlook, Hotmail, Live and MSN accounts, and work email run on Microsoft 365.

On Friday afternoon, Microsoft’s service status page still showed “service degradation” on Microsoft 365 and its consumer products. It said users “may be unable to connect to multiple Microsoft 365 services”.

What it means for you

The meeting continues with Super Saturday on 14 November, featuring the Paddy Power Gold Cup, and Carnival Sunday on 15 November. As of Friday afternoon, the racecourse had not posted separate advice for the weekend.

If you are going on Saturday or Sunday and booked with a Microsoft email address:

  • check your inbox, and your junk folder, for the tickets before you set off
  • if they have not come, leave extra time and go to any entrance, where the racecourse said staff would help on Friday
  • check the November Meeting page on the morning for any update

The council and police are also running extra patrols and taxi checks in town on the Friday and Saturday of the meeting.