\n1995<\/td>\n | 120.57%<\/td>\n<\/tr>\n<\/tbody>\n<\/table>\n<\/div>\n As you can see, the average trend is very much downwards.<\/p>\n This means that bookmakers are offering better value odds now than they were 30 years ago, and by a fair margin too (that pun was very much intentional).<\/p>\n In fact, margins were lower in 2022 than they had ever been, coming down some 8.08% from their peak in 2001.<\/p>\n So why is this happening; are bookmakers just feeling more charitable? Highly unlikely.<\/p>\n Why are Margins on Horse Racing Coming Down?<\/h2>\n<\/p>\n You might think that all the law changes around horse racing and betting in general would have pushed margins up, in order for the bookies to cover these extra costs.<\/p>\n After all, they have to pay 10% of gross profits on horse racing to the Horse Racing Betting Levy; the nation\u2019s tax laws on gambling as a whole changed to a point of consumption tax in 2014 meaning they couldn\u2019t save as much money by being based offshore; and this amount then went up from 15% to 21% in 2019.<\/p>\n Well, if you look at the total overround in the corresponding years to these changes there is a bit of a spike, so it looks like the bookies did have a go at clawing back some of these extra costs through slightly higher margins, but they always came down again.<\/p>\n This simply must be down to the level of competition within the betting industry.<\/p>\n Punters aren\u2019t stupid, anyone who bets often knows that finding value bets is the key to long term success, and even those who bet infrequently can figure out how to shop around for better odds.<\/p>\n The rise of online betting created a swathe of new online betting websites, all wanting the steal a slice of the pie for themselves, and therefore having to find ways to stay competitive and attract punters.<\/p>\n This began in the early 2000s when telephone betting was also a big thing, just after the betting laws changed for the first time in decades in 2001, which also happens to be the year when margins were at their highest. Probably not a coincidence.<\/p>\n Between 2002 and 2003 the average margin on horse racing dropped like a stone from 20.73% to 17.63%, the biggest downwards movement in a single year on record. This also happens to be when Betfair\u2019s betting exchange became a big deal so bookies had that to deal with, on top of online betting in general growing at pace.<\/p>\n The economic climate also played its part in bringing the bookmaker\u2019s average margins down on horse racing though.<\/p>\n There was a spike in average margins in 2007, but the following year the country went into recession, bringing margins right back down again.<\/p>\n The bookies were creeping margins back up steadily between 2017 and 2019, going from 15.48% to 17.14% in 3 years, but what happened in 2020? Covid. And so back down came the bookies margin and it kept coming down as we entered a cost-of-living crisis.<\/p>\n Essentially, the bookmakers will try and increase their margins where they can get away with it, but they need people to bet to make money, so in many ways, the direction of their margins represents the direction of the country at that point in time.<\/p>\n Are Bookmaker Margins Higher for Jumps or Flat Racing?<\/h2>\n<\/p>\n The difference in average margin or overround between jump and flat racing can be surprising.<\/p>\n The gap was widest in 1997, when the average overround on jump racing was 118.69% for an 18.69% margin, compared with a 123.8% overround for a 23.8% margin on the flat \u2013 a difference of 5.11%.<\/p>\n This gap has closed a great deal since the early 2000s however, with little more than 2% between the two disciplines in many of the more recent years.<\/p>\n We showed you a table for the total bookmakers overround on horse racing in the section above, and here is that same information, but split between jump and flat racing:<\/p>\n \n\n\nYear<\/th>\n | Jump<\/th>\n | Flat<\/th>\n<\/tr>\n<\/thead>\n | \n\n2022<\/td>\n | 113.39%<\/td>\n | 115.43%<\/td>\n<\/tr>\n | \n2021<\/td>\n | 114.9%<\/td>\n | 115.12%<\/td>\n<\/tr>\n | \n2020<\/td>\n | 116.01%<\/td>\n | 115.5%<\/td>\n<\/tr>\n | \n2019<\/td>\n | 116.57%<\/td>\n | 117.47%<\/td>\n<\/tr>\n | \n2018<\/td>\n | 115.56%<\/td>\n | 116.72%<\/td>\n<\/tr>\n | \n2017<\/td>\n | 114.67%<\/td>\n | 115.97%<\/td>\n<\/tr>\n | \n2016<\/td>\n | 114.93%<\/td>\n | 115.94%<\/td>\n<\/tr>\n | \n2015<\/td>\n | 114.37%<\/td>\n | 115.78%<\/td>\n<\/tr>\n | \n2014<\/td>\n | 113.98%<\/td>\n | 115.65%<\/td>\n<\/tr>\n | \n2013<\/td>\n | 115.11%<\/td>\n | 115.89%<\/td>\n<\/tr>\n | \n2012<\/td>\n | 114.78%<\/td>\n | 116.16%<\/td>\n<\/tr>\n | \n2011<\/td>\n | 114.37%<\/td>\n | 115.4%<\/td>\n<\/tr>\n | \n2010<\/td>\n | 115.22%<\/td>\n | 115.85%<\/td>\n<\/tr>\n | \n2009<\/td>\n | 116.22%<\/td>\n | 117.15%<\/td>\n<\/tr>\n | \n2008<\/td>\n | 117.84%<\/td>\n | 118.32%<\/td>\n<\/tr>\n | \n2007<\/td>\n | 117.45%<\/td>\n | 118.81%<\/td>\n<\/tr>\n | \n2006<\/td>\n | 115.9%<\/td>\n | 117.05%<\/td>\n<\/tr>\n | \n2005<\/td>\n | 115.4%<\/td>\n | 117.67%<\/td>\n<\/tr>\n | \n2004<\/td>\n | 115.53%<\/td>\n | 118.21%<\/td>\n<\/tr>\n | \n2003<\/td>\n | 116.02%<\/td>\n | 118.74%<\/td>\n<\/tr>\n | \n2002<\/td>\n | 118.45%<\/td>\n | 122.29%<\/td>\n<\/tr>\n | \n2001<\/td>\n | 120.65%<\/td>\n | 124.01%<\/td>\n<\/tr>\n | \n2000<\/td>\n | 119.02%<\/td>\n | 124.12%<\/td>\n<\/tr>\n | \n1999<\/td>\n | 118.12%<\/td>\n | 122.81%<\/td>\n<\/tr>\n | \n1998<\/td>\n | 120.14%<\/td>\n | 123.89%<\/td>\n<\/tr>\n | \n1997<\/td>\n | 118.69%<\/td>\n | 123.8%<\/td>\n<\/tr>\n | \n1996<\/td>\n | 120.54%<\/td>\n | 122.75%<\/td>\n<\/tr>\n | \n1995<\/td>\n | 118.48%<\/td>\n | 122.06%<\/td>\n<\/tr>\n<\/tbody>\n<\/table>\n In all but 1 of the years between 1995 and 2022, the margin on flat racing was higher than the margin on jump racing, and which year were things the other way around?<\/p>\n It was 2020. Covid year. So it\u2019s not really a reliable reflection of the way bookies are pricing their books and should probably be ignored.<\/p>\n For clarity then, flat racing carries a higher margin than jump racing on average every time.<\/p>\n The reason behind this is probably because there are typically more runners in a flat race than a jump race, and bookies tend to aim for around a 2% margin per runner as a rough guide.<\/p>\n In the example race we looked at towards the start of this article, there were 7 runners and the margin was 15%.<\/p>\n \n- 7 x 2% = 14%<\/strong><\/li>\n<\/ul>\n
Pretty close.<\/p>\n We changed the names of the horses but the odds were from a real race, which goes to emphasise this point. Alright, so the margin here was a little more, working out around 2.14% per horse, but it\u2019s never going to be bang on.<\/p>\n It stands to reason then that a race with more runners will have a higher overround and margin than a race with fewer runners, which will push the average up over a large number of races and cause the disparity between jumps and flat races.<\/p>\n The average field size for jump races in 2022 was 7.73 compared with 8.9 on the flat, therefore, the margin is bound to be higher for flat races than jumps.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":" Put simply, the lower the bookmaker\u2019s margin, the better value you are getting as a punter. It\u2019s just the same<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":5,"featured_media":0,"parent":212,"menu_order":0,"comment_status":"closed","ping_status":"closed","template":"","meta":{"_acf_changed":false,"footnotes":""},"page_type":[],"acf":[],"aioseo_notices":[],"publishpress_future_action":{"enabled":false,"date":"2024-05-16 02:56:00","action":"change-status","newStatus":"draft","terms":[],"taxonomy":"page_type"},"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.bettingwebsites.org.uk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/pages\/8441"}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.bettingwebsites.org.uk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/pages"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.bettingwebsites.org.uk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/page"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.bettingwebsites.org.uk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/5"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.bettingwebsites.org.uk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=8441"}],"version-history":[{"count":9,"href":"https:\/\/www.bettingwebsites.org.uk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/pages\/8441\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":8456,"href":"https:\/\/www.bettingwebsites.org.uk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/pages\/8441\/revisions\/8456"}],"up":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.bettingwebsites.org.uk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/pages\/212"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.bettingwebsites.org.uk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=8441"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"page_type","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.bettingwebsites.org.uk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/page_type?post=8441"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}} | |