Can You Make Money Backing Favourites?

Probable impossibilities are to be preferred to improbable possibilities – Aristotle

A great many people base their horse racing betting strategy on backing favourites. How sound is this methodology?

Let’s do some digging…

All Favourites
Looking at all horse races in Great Britain and Ireland for the ten year period between 2010 and 2019 there were 136,972 races and 45,091 favourites won, a strike rate of 32.92%.

That means over 67% of races are won by horses other than the starting price (SP) favourite.

Looking further into those figures, to level £1 stakes after backing almost 137,000 favourites you would have an SP loss of £9,827.86 which is a return on investment of -7.08% or in layman’s terms 93p return for every pound invested.

We have now established that backing favourites blind is a direct route to the poor house but hey you can brag to your friends that you get plenty of winners, it’s easy to gloss over the losers if your pockets are deep and are blinkered to the fact that you are losing a grand a year.

Now begs the question, “Can a profit be made from backing favourites?”

Further analysis is required to find out.

Handicap vs Non-Handicap
The next step was to split the handicaps from the non-handicaps

As you can see from the above non-handicap favourites have performed much better than handicap favourites but still an unacceptable loss.

The path to follow though is clear, less than 59% of non-handicap races are won by a horse other than the favourite but in handicaps that figure jumps to nearly 73%.

By concentrating on non-handicaps, you do benefit from an increased strike rate and more bragging rights down the pub but you are still showing a loss.

Remove joint and co-favourites
Let us look at those non-handicap races. Among those are a fair number of races with joint-favourites and co-favourites, this means the strategy of backing the favourite is going to be skewed in one of two ways:

1. You are having two or more bets in those events.
2. In the case of backing the un-named favourite, the money is riding on the one with the lowest racecard number which reduces the chance of being on the right one.

Both scenarios are totally unacceptable,so lets get those joint and co-favs filtered out.  

As you can see the number of runners has dropped by over five and a half thousand, but the winner’s column reveals a mere 1,494 less.

Race Type
At this stage, a look at the type of races these winning favourites are coming from seems in order.

As you can see the massive fly in the ointment on the Return On Investment front are the National Hunt Flat races, who are siphoning off over 12p in the pound. They need to go.

Now we have a clearer picture of how each type of race is performing, research could be done individually on each sector, but for now, we will carry on with all types, less the now eliminated bumpers.

Official Rating
Drilling down the data revealed that a far superior strike rate was produced by horses with an official rating rank of between 1 and 3, where 1 is top-rated, 2 is second top and 3 third top.    

That strike rate has vastly improved, but by backing these blind you are still losing over 4p out of every £1 staked. 

Running Style
How many times do you feel your money has been done by the tactics employed in the race? 

How often do you feel your horse should have been ridden with less restraint?

If your answer to these questions is a resounding “Too many times!!” then you will know where I am coming from!

Delving into the stats, a massive 7,193 of the horses were held up on their previous run, and they were responsible for £446.70 of that £817.50 loss to £1 stakes – an unacceptable 51.3% of the total!

Here are the new figures with just horses that either led or raced prominently last time.

Racecourses 
For a variety of reasons some racecourses have a better strike rate for non-handicap favourites and over the last ten years, taking into account all the filters above, the extremes have been:

Galway: 64 runners, 22 winners – 34.38% Strike Rate
Warwick: 126 runners, 75 winners – 59.52% Strike Rate

Every other course in Britain and Ireland is somewhere in between, so I have made a list of the top 51 which again helps eliminate a fair few losers.

 
Figures wise just looking at these 51 courses we are getting tantalizingly close to breaking even:

Close, but no cigar.. yet!

Headgear
I have for a long time been of the opinion that the better horses perform well without the aid of any headgear.

This includes blinkers, hoods, cheekpieces, eye shields and visors.

Think about it – if you see an unraced two-year-old in first-time blinkers, it quite often proves to be a bit of a dodge pot.

By removing all horses who have some kind of appliance added we get the following figures:

Eureka! Finally, we are ahead, all be it only just.

Betting Forecast Rank
As it is starting price favourites we are looking for it makes sense to look at what the industry tissue price, also known as the betting forecast.

We will, for purposes of this analysis look at the first two in the betting forecast, ie the two horses with the shortest odds.

Fear not – we haven’t just started backing an extra horse in each race, as we are still concentrating on the starting price favourite only.

Here are our final figures:

It has been hard work getting here, but finally we are up to 1.5% ROI with a 52.03% strike rate.

More than half our horses are now winners, good for the bragging rights if you are that way inclined.

If you back each horse to a percentage of the bank rather than to level stakes, the profits achievable will be compounded. 

Conclusion
Backing favourites blind is one of the fastest routes to the poor house. 

The trick to backing favourites for profit is to back the right favourites.

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