THE LINK BETWEEN HORSE RACING AND SPREAD BETTING

THE LINK BETWEEN HORSE RACING AND SPREAD BETTING

Horse racing is a fascinating sport to follow, bearing witness to the finest horses from across the land battling it out for glory. But when you have money riding on a horse the spectacle becomes one of the most exhilarating experiences imaginable. You shouldn’t have to settle for a limited number of markets when punting on the racing, and that is where horse racing spread betting comes in. Spread betting on Horse Racing really ramps up the excitement and offers a vast array of different markets for you to enjoy.

Imagine the excitement you experience when placing a standard, fixed odds bet on a race, then dial it up several dozen notches and you’ll begin to understand the wonderful world of sports spread betting.

INTRODUCING HORSE RACING SPREAD BETTING

Sporting Index offers a wide range of horse racing markets for you to choose from, so you are bound to find something that appeals. The beauty of spread betting on horse racing is that you do not have to pick the winner of a particular race.

Sometimes a race may look really tight and you end up choosing not to place a bet as you cannot decide who will win. In those cases, Sporting Index have you covered. You can bet on winning distances, jockeys’ performances, starting prices and much more, allowing you to wager on a race or an entire meeting without having to worry about deciding the winner.

So how does this all work?

Our traders will make a number of predictions about different events and scenarios within a particular race or meeting. You will see a range of spread indexes, and each one will have two prices: a buy price and a sell price. The sell price is always the lower figure and the buy price is the higher one. If you believe our traders have pitched the quote too high, you can sell at the lower price and if you think it is too low you buy at the higher price. This makes things a lot more exciting than simple fixed odds betting, as your returns are never set in stone and instead of a binary win or lose option the possibilities are near limitless.

INDIVIDUAL RACE INDEX

As an example, you might want to bet on a particular race in which there are 12 runners. We will assign 50 points to the winner, 30 points to the runner up, 20 to the third placed horse and 10 to the horse that finishes fourth. All other runners receive zero points. You will see a spread affixed to each runner, depending on how strong we determine it to be compared to its rivals. Let’s say you fancy Tiger Roll to do well and you see a spread of 11-14 on his performance. You would then buy at 14 for a stake of your choosing, for example £2. If he then won the race and gained 50 points, you would make a profit of £72 as the market would settle 36 points over the price at which you bought (50 – 14 = 36 and 36 x £2 = £72). If he finished second you would still be 16 over and make a £32 profit. This allows for greater returns when finishing in place positions than with fixed odds betting where all places return the same odds.

Like all forms of betting, you just have to be wary that you could also lose, and if Tiger Roll finished outside the top four places and gained zero points, you would be down £28, as the market would have settled 14 points below the price you bought at.

If you thought perhaps Tiger Roll would struggle in the race, you could sell at 11. If you sold at 11 for £5 and he finished outside the top four, you would make £55. However, if he finished third and gained 20 points, you would lose nine times your stake. There are various permutations, and this really adds to the excitement you feel when watching a horse race.

WINNING DISTANCES SPREAD

A great way to have an interest in every single race at a meeting, without having to study the form for each one, is to bet on the Winning Distances. We will assign a point for every length the winner of a particular race wins by, up to a maximum of 12 lengths for Flat races and 30 lengths for National Hunt. A short head counts as 0.1, a head is 0.2, a neck is 0.3, half a length is 0.5 and three-quarters of a length is 0.75. You might then see a Winning Distances spread of 70-75 at a four-day meeting like the Cheltenham Festival.

If you think the total will go over 75, you buy at that price. If you think it will go under you can sell at 70. You can look at historical data and check out how long and how fiercely contested each race is set to be. If you buy at 75 for £20 and the winning distance points ends up at 84, you would make a profit of £180 (84 – 75 = 9 and 9 x £20 = £180). However, if the total distances only came in at say 73, the same bet would have lost you two times your stake for having settled two points under the price at which you bought.

This is an exciting option because it means you are just as interested in the listed handicap at the end of the day as you are in the prestigious Grade 1 Cheltenham Gold Cup.

WHAT OTHER OPTIONS ARE THERE WHEN IT COMES TO HORSE RACING SPREAD BETTING?

Sporting Index has many more horse racing markets similar to the Winning Distances market, such as the Favourites Index, where you wager on how well the favourites will perform at a particular meeting.

You can also bet on how well your favourite jockey will do in our Jockey Index, as we will assign him or her a spread for a meeting and give 25 points for each win, 10 points per runner-up finish and five points for a third-placed finish.

There have been many famous clashes in racing, such as the famous Gold Cup rivalry between stable mates Denman and Kauto Star, and another great option to look at is match bets between two particular horses in a race, wagering on who will come out on top without worrying about whether one of them wins the actual race.

Find out more about our most popular horse racing spread betting markets in our Sports Spread Betting Training Centre.