Free race night race card and sponsorship sheet maker

Prints on A4. In the print box, untick "headers and footers" for a cleaner page. On a phone, use Share, then Print, or save as a PDF.

How to use it

1. Fill in your night. Name, venue, date and the time of the first race. Fifteen minutes between races suits a pub with a busy bar. The tool works out every race time and slots in the interval.
2. Add race names and sponsors. If the butcher is paying to sponsor race 2, put "The Butcher's Sprint" as the name and the business as the sponsor. It goes on the card.
3. Choose blank or funny horse names. Blank leaves a space on every line for the owner's horse name. Funny fills every horse with a made-up name from our list, so you can print and go.
4. Make it, check it, print it. You get two pages: the race card for the tables and the sponsorship sheet for behind the bar.

What goes on a race night race card

A race card is the programme for the night. People read it at the table, pick their favourite names and argue about which horse looks fastest. A good one has:

• The name of the night, the venue, the date and the cause if it's a fundraiser.
• Every race with its time, its name and its sponsor.
• The horses in each race, numbered, with their names and owners.
• When the interval is, so people know when food's coming.

Sponsors like seeing their name in print, and it's one of the things you can offer them. PTA UK's race night guide says race cards can carry sponsors' details, and mentions one PTA that charged local businesses £25 to sponsor a race, with the sponsors read out by the host and listed in the programme.

How the sponsorship sheet works

The sponsorship sheet is the page that sits on the bar in the weeks before the night. One line per horse: race, horse number, horse name, owner, phone number and a paid tick. People sign up for a horse, name it, pay, and you tick it off. When the sheet's full, you've sold every horse.

A few tips from doing it behind a bar:

• Keep it in one place. One sheet, one pen, behind the bar. Not three copies on three tables.
• Take the money when they sign. "I'll pay on the night" means half of them won't.
• Set a naming deadline. A couple of days before the night, so you can print the final race cards with the real names.
• Read every name out loud. Some will try it on. Our list of 150 funny race night horse names has clean ones to swap in.

What to charge

It depends on your crowd and what the money is for. As a guide, PTA UK's race night page suggests £5 a horse and £3 a jockey, and mentions £25 to sponsor a race. racenight.me.uk puts horse sponsorship at £30 to £100 a horse. A pub night with regulars will sit at the lower end. A big charity night with local businesses can aim higher, especially for race sponsorship.

If anyone is paying to own a horse and there's a prize for the winner, the gambling rules depend on where the money goes. Read are pub race nights legal? before the sheet goes on the bar. For the full run of the night, see how to run a race night in a pub, and for themes, food and prizes, our race night ideas.

Rather skip the paper?

StockTap TV has a free race night for pub TVs. Everyone picks a horse on their phone, the race plays on every screen and the results go up straight after. There's no money and no stakes in it, so there's no sheet to fill or cash tin to count. See how it works.

Race card questions

Sources

• PTA UK: Step by step: race night
• racenight.me.uk: What is a race night?