Backing favourites at racetracks is normal betting practise for Joe Public, but doing so randomly will result in long term losses, and quite considerable ones at that.
So is it possible to profit from backing favourites?
By being very selective it is possible to profit, and the table below clearly shows the racecourses over the last 3 years that have done so.
Course | Runners | Winners | Win S/R | P/L Exc | ROI Exc | P/L to SP | ROI to SP |
Musselburgh | 495 | 169 | 34.14 | £46.21 | 9.33 | £20.26 | 4.09 |
Limerick | 366 | 131 | 35.79 | £37.30 | 10.19 | £9.80 | 2.68 |
Haydock | 655 | 214 | 32.67 | £35.57 | 5.43 | £3.23 | 0.49 |
Leicester | 562 | 196 | 34.88 | £31.55 | 5.61 | £4.32 | 0.77 |
Redcar | 407 | 134 | 32.92 | £28.23 | 6.94 | £5.07 | 1.24 |
Ripon | 338 | 111 | 32.84 | £26.36 | 7.8 | £8.34 | 2.47 |
Cartmel | 160 | 59 | 36.88 | £25.00 | 15.62 | £16.40 | 10.25 |
Listowel | 227 | 76 | 33.48 | £14.62 | 6.44 | £6.25 | 2.76 |
Ludlow | 258 | 103 | 39.92 | £13.29 | 5.15 | £6.03 | 2.34 |
Kilbeggan | 178 | 58 | 32.58 | £13.24 | 7.44 | £7.58 | 4.26 |
Totals | £271.37 | £87.28 |
*All Betfair prices include 5% commission deducted.
You can see that after I have filtered out the losing data, very few tracks are actually left. All races include joint favourites, handicaps, NH, Flat and AW. I filtered out the racecourses that show losses at betting exchange SP, SP, those with exchange ROI%’s less than 3%, and finally those that showed no profit over 5 years of data.
Surprisingly to me the list contains 3 Irish tracks as racing in the Emerald Isle tends to be more competitive with bigger fields. Musselburgh is top of the list, another surprise as the track can have big swings in going throughout a season.
It is very clear that using an exchange SP shows more than 3X the profit over the long term.
Free Horseracing System Rules:
Back all the favourites, or joint favourites at the tracks mentioned above.