GallopTV was built for TV, then squeezed onto a phone. The content was good, getting to it was the problem. I redesigned the navigation and home screen around what users actually expect on race day.
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GallopTV’s audience is not a casual streaming demographic. They arrive with intent, on race day, under time pressure, on their phone. Before touching a single screen, I conducted user interviews and a competitive audit to define exactly who I was designing for and what they needed in the first 10 seconds.
“I watch every Saturday. By the time I open the app the race is about to start, I don’t have time to search for it.”
Profile: Siphamandla, 47, Inanda. Follows horse racing closely, bets on Hollywoodbets, watches most of the races per Saturday on mobile.
“I place my bets on the app and then want to watch the race immediately. Switching between apps kills the experience.”
Profile: Lethabo, 33, Pretoria. Bets on 2–3 races per session, discovery-driven, often arrives via Hollywoodbets app deep-link rather than GallopTV directly.
The original GallopTV home looked like a news site. Articles at the top, the stream buried underneath. The thing people came for was not the first thing they saw. I rebuilt the page around what the product actually is.
Live races own the top of the screen now. One card, real-time status, one tap to play. Upcoming races below. On a Saturday morning, you open the app and you are already there.
The old nav was a hamburger menu that seemed to hold everything. I replaced it with a bottom bar showing the five things GallopTV users have come to expect and then the secondary functuions in a structured burger menu.
Home. Schedule. Live. Content. Account. Always on screen, labelled. A racing fan on a Saturday morning should never have to think about where to tap.
The old FAQs page was a wall of plain text. Questions and answers stacked in a list, no visual structure, no way to scan quickly. I redesigned it as a card-based accordion system.
Each question is a card. Tap to open it. The answer inside is whatever format actually explains the thing best, a paragraph, an image, a video. Not everything needs to be text. next is a suggested related FAQ, so readers who need more context can keep going naturally, limitting dead ends.
Not every racing fan can watch a screen. I introduced an audio-only mode that lets users switch from video stream to live race commentary, turning GallopTV into a radio experience.
This works for fans at work, on a commute, driving, or anyone who cannot always look at a screen. The display dims, a minimal audio player takes over, and the race keeps going.
Hollywoodbets works with a network of content creators, racing analysts, and podcasters. That content existed so we had to make it accessible.
The Content section brings it all together; podcasts, creator videos. Something worth opening on a Tuesday, not just Saturdays. just something you open when a race is live.
