The creaky old starting price mechanism should be under fresh scrutiny following Saturday’s Grand National, when the SP over-round (which shows the notional profit margin built into the collective odds) came to 163%. That is only slightly less than the 165% of 2015 that provoked fears of once-a-year punters being ripped off and led to a lengthy review, which waved away those fears in a complacent-sounding report.
And so, what a surprise, here we are again with identical concerns and no official body inclined to do anything about them. Sophisticated punters, such as you, dear reader, do not take the starting price when having a bet on National day in the shops but many still do. I’m told that about half of betting shop bets on the National are made at SP, so a huge number of people are getting short-changed on their return on what may be their only point of contact with racing in the entire year. Do we want these people to have a good experience that might draw them back or are we content to leave them feeling they have not been well treated?
It’s a tricky problem but one way forward is surely to encourage newbies to take the odds at the time of placing their bet. High street bookmakers may say they do this to some extent but, as one insider told me, their efforts amount to “half-hearted whispers, akin to Theresa May saying: ‘We are eager to compromise’.”
I don’t claim that off-course bookies are driving down prices at the track. Anecdotal evidence from multiple sources is that hedging (off-course firms offloading their liabilities onto bookies at the track) does not go on like it used to. But of course high street firms know from experience that prices on course will tend to keep shortening as race-time approaches, especially about the horses in the top half of the betting.
A bookmaker who was at the track explained his experience. “There are 15 or 20 horses we can’t seem to get any money for,” he said, suggesting that the electronic boards, with the favourites at the top, don’t help. “So liability forces you to shorten the first 10 or 12 in the market. I try not to use the machine [for hedging through the exchanges] but on Saturday the internet wasn’t working well, so many of the bookies would just shorten them because they couldn’t hedge back.
“My expenses for the meeting were £4,500 and I won £2,930 on Saturday but lost £1,300 over the three days after expenses. The on-course [bookies] get a lot of unfair criticism but the expenses are a major problem.” He added that bookmakers in his area didn’t go over 150%, suggesting that bookmakers in the SP sample did less of a job offering value to bettors.
The Horseracing Bettors Forum (HBF) tells me it is “concerned by the extremely high over-round … HBF encourages bettors to ‘shop around’ for better value.” Brian Chappell of Justice For Punters said: “Yet again, bookmakers took advantage of once-a -year punters with this huge over-round. Tiger Roll did many of them a favour, but this type of SP ‘margin’ is unacceptable practice.”
I’d like to see the British Horseracing Authority getting involved in this subject. Grand National punters are racing’s audience and we need them to feel valued.
Mondays’ best bets, by Greg Wood
The three runnings of the Brocklesby Stakes since The Last Lion, the subsequent Middle Park Stakes winner, landed the first juvenile event of the turf season at Doncaster have seen a reversion to the mean, with the form amounting to very little by the end of April. The signs are a little more promising for this year’s Brocklesby, however, with the four subsequent starters managing a win and three places between them so far.
Neither Show Me Show Me, the winner, nor runner-up Strong Power has been back to the track as yet, but Dorchester Dom (2.50), a son of Starspangledbanner who was starting to run on well in the closing stages of the Brocklesby, is the likely favourite for the second race at Windsor and should be the latest runner from Doncaster to frank the form.
There are 15 races on the Flat on Monday in all as both Redcar and Windsor launch their 2019 season, and all but two have double-figure fields, which could make for a trappy afternoon. Duke Of Alba (4.30) should run well when he returns from a six-week break at Redcar, however. He was on the upgrade on the all-weather over the winter and both the winner and the fourth horse home when he was narrowly beaten last time were winners next time up.
Champagne Rules (5.00) should also go well on the same card, while Pilot Wings (3.50) is another one to consider at Windsor. He has not run since Boxing Day but showed enough last year to suggest his mark is workable and he is quite strong in the betting this morning. Sporting Press (4.10) has an obvious chance on the jumps card at Kelso, where Charlie Snow Angel (3.10) should also go well.
Redcar
2.00 Great Dame 2.30 Private Secretary 3.00 International Man 3.30 Sameem 4.00 Reloaded 4.30 Duke Of Alba (nap) 5.00 Champagne Rules
5.30 Paradise Papers
Kelso
2.10 Elvis Mail 2.40 Benny’s Secret 3.10 Charlie Snow Angel 3.40 Another Venture 4.10 Sporting Press (nb) 4.40 Hardrock Davis 5.10 Royal Reserve
Windsor
2.20 The Defiant 2.50 Dorchester Dom 3.20 Days Of Glory 3.50 Pilot Wings 4.20 Beyond Equal 4.50 Nezar 5.20 Lethal Missile