Horse Racing Offers Explained
Betting on horse racing is extremely popular here in the UK. Because of that, the bookies regularly run promotions on horse racing.
As shrewd Matched Bettors, we can turn horse racing offers into tax-free cash!
In this guide, we'll explain the different ways that you can start making money from horse racing offers!
Content List
The Best Times For Offers
Horse Racing runs practically every single day in the UK.
There are 10+ major horse racing tracks across the UK, such as Lingfield, Southwell, Ayr, Wolverhampton, Kempton Park, Sandown and many more.
Every day, at least 3 tracks will host up to 10 races each, providing around 30 UK races each day. Each track will usually start their racing at around 1pm to 2pm with races running about every 30 minutes.
Whilst horse racing occurs daily, the majority of horse racing offers are on Saturdays. ITV televise racing on Saturday afternoons and these are the best races to bet on. Usually there will be 6-9 races shown between 1pm-5pm.
As well as offers on ITV Racing, the bookies will put on additional offers during major racing festivals. The most popular festivals are:
- Cheltenham Festival: Mid March
- Grand National: Early April
- Royal Ascot: Mid to late June
- Glorious Goodwood: Late July
The bookmakers will run particularly generous offers during these periods!
How To Bet On Horse Racing
Matched Betting on horse racing is extremely similar to Matched Betting on football or any other sport.
We can place a back and lay bet to ensure we cover all outcomes of an event.
For each horse race, there will be bookmaker back odds, like so:
And there will be lay odds at the betting exchanges:
Like with any other matched bet, our goal is to find bets where the back odds and lay odds are quite closely matched. This allows us to minimise our trigger bet losses, and maximise our free bet returns.
The best way to do this is using an Oddsmatcher - I highly recommend the one from Outplayed. Grab a 14 day Outplayed trial here.
Alternatively, we can compare the odds at the bookies and the exchanges manually to find our horse racing bets.
Once you choose the bet you want to place, open up the Matched Betting Calculator. Fill in the bet details, like stake, back and lay odds and lay commission.
It will then tell you how much to lay, and the profit or loss from your Matched Bet.
Place the back bet at the bookmaker, and the lay bet at the exchange, and that's it. A matched bet on a horse race done!
Refund Offers
Refund offers are a popular type of promotion that run regularly on horse racing. Taking advantage of refund offers can be a great way to earn free bets and grow your profits.
The idea is that a bookie will 'refund' your bet in the form of a free bet if a certain event happens in the race.
For example get a £10 free bet if your horse finishes second or third in the race.
Because there is a chance we don't get the refund, these offers are not completely risk free. But, by minimising our qualifying losses, these can be very profitable in the long run!
When To Start Refund Offers
We'd first recommend profiting from easy sports offers such as the Weekly Bet Clubs and Price Boosts.
Once familiar with these, introducing refund offers can be a brilliant way to earn regular profits.
Types Of Refund Offer
There are various formats of refund offer. The most common are:
Refund If Your Horse Loses - the most profitable racing refund offer. This type of offer is quite rare, and you'll only usually find it on big horse racing festivals. Simply back and lay a horse for a small trigger bet loss and hope it loses. By choosing a high odds horse, most of the time it will! Alternatively you can use the matched betting calculator in refund mode to guarantee a profit regardless of whether your horse wins or loses.
Refund If Your Horse Is Second (Or Second + Third) - This is another great type of offer that bookmakers run, especially when there aren't many horses running in the race. Again, back and lay a horse for a small trigger bet loss and hope it comes 2nd! It's usually best to choose the horse with the lowest qualifying loss for this offer.
Refund If Horse 2nd To SP Favourite - This offer means that both:
- Your horse needs to come 2nd
- The SP favourite needs to win the race
The SP favourite is the horse that is the favourite to win when the race starts. For this reason, you never back the favourite as you would never receive the refund. Given both criteria need to happen, this is a low profit offer, so I'd only recommend it if you were a very regular matched bettor. For this offer, it is best to only choose races where there is a clear favourite, and aim for very small trigger bet losses.
Checking Your Results
Two handy resources for checking the results of races are: Sportinglife and AtTheRaces (click on Fast Results on the left menu).
Both websites show the results of the races almost instantly after the race is over. Both websites show a version of the results called the “Fast results”, where only the top few positions are displayed.
To see more positions, you’d have to wait for the “Full results” version, which will be displayed usually around 10 minutes after the race.
Popular Refund Offers
At the time of writing, the below offers are the most popular/profitable horse racing refund offers currently available.
Click on each of the links below to reveal our explanation of the offer.
Most Saturdays, and during popular horse racing festival, Skybet run a “Money Back If 2nd Or 3rd” (sometimes even 4th) promotion on a certain race that day.
If you place a £10 bet on a horse and if it finishes 2nd, 3rd, or 4th (depending on how many places they say) you’ll get your stake back as cash, up to £10.
This offer is very simple to complete.
Just place a £10 matched bet on a horse in the eligible race for a small qualifying loss. Ideally we want to aim for a qualifying loss below £1, and prioritise a horse with shorter odds (a horse with odds of 3.0-5.0 is probably more likely to finish 2nd-3rd than a horse with 8.0-10.0 odd).
If your horse fails to finish 2nd or 3rd (or however many places are stated), you will incur a small loss.
But when your does finish 2nd or 3rd, you’ll get your stake back as cash within 24 hours.
When this happens, your profit will be £10 minus your original qualifying loss (so typically £9+ profit).
This offer is very similar to the Sky Bet one above, however, Paddy Power's version will always be a refund for 2nd/3rd/4th place. The refund will also be a free bet rather than cash.
You'll need to back and lay your free bet refund in Free Bet SNR mode on the calculator.
Price Boosts
The bookies regularly offer price boosts on horse racing.
Where the price boost's odds exceed the lay odds at the betting exchange, we can place a matched bet for a guaranteed profit.
You could take advantage of horse racing price boosts just as you would football price boosts, by placing a normal back and lay bet using the matched betting calculator.
To learn more about how you could make consistent tax-free profits from price boosts, check out our guide: Price Boosts Explained.
Extra Place Offers
Extra places is an advanced Matched Betting offer that runs each day on horse racing. It's not available on every single race, but it can be very profitable.
Due to the advanced nature of extra places, we only recommend this offer to experienced matched bettors. We would recommend you first focus on price boosts, weekly bet clubs, refund offers and casino offers, before considering extra places.
For more information on extra places, check out our guide: How To Make Money From Extra Place Offers.
Best Odds Guaranteed And Rule 4
Best Odds Guaranteed And Rule 4 are two concepts in horse racing that can impact the odds and payouts of your bets.
It's important to understand how these work, and we explain this here.
Just click on each link below to reveal our explanation.
Most bookies run a promotion called 'Best Odds Guaranteed' (BOG) on horse racing. It can be very profitable when it goes your way!
Odds for horses do not stay still - they go up and down all the time (especially right before the start of a race).
BOG is where the bookies will pay out higher winnings on your bet if the horse starts the race with higher odds than you backed.
How Do You Benefit When Matched Betting?
You place a bet on a horse at odds of 4.0, and the starting price is actually 6.0. Your back bet will be paid at 6.0 instead of 4.0! If the starting price had dropped to say 3.25, the bookmaker would still pay out at 4.0
If you've already backed and layed a bet, you know what your qualifying loss is. But, if you get paid out at higher odds, then you will make some extra profit on your normal horse racing bets.
Matched Betting Example
Let's say you are trying to qualifying for a horse racing refund. You place:
- A £10 bet on a horse to win at odds of 2.0
- A £10 lay bet on the horse not to win at odds of 2.0
If the starting price for the horse goes up to 3.0, the bookie will pay you £20 profit instead of £10 because of Best Odds Guaranteed.
However, you still lose the same £10 at the exchange.
So overall, you have made a £10 net profit from this bet.
Which Bookmakers Offer BOG?
Lots of bookmakers offer BOG, but many bookies only offer BOG when you place bets after a certain time.
You can find a full list of the bookmakers offering BOG and the various terms and conditions here.
How Can You Check BOG Winnings?
The bookie will normally state the extra money you have won in your settled bets. An example is shown in this screenshot from Sky Bet.
In this example, my £20 back stake was placed at odds of 6.0 but the starting price odds were 9.0. Rather than a £120 payout, I received £180! If I'd already backed and layed a horse for an offer, then I would have made £60 PROFIT - money I was not expecting to make!
Could You Just Focus On BOG?
Best Odds Guaranteed should be just a nice bonus on top of doing other horse racing refund offers, as it's hard to find a zero loss match, and even when you do you have to hope the horse's odds goes up AND it wins.
If the odds of a horse go up, qualifying you for a Best Odds Guaranteed, it normally means that the chances of that horse winning are getting lower.
Some people do target BOG offers though - if you have an account that's pretty dormant and you find a zero loss match then why not throw some cash at it in hope that you hit a BOG?
Sometimes horses can be withdrawn before a race starts. When this happens, any bets on the horse will be voided and refunded.
The remaining horses will have a higher probability of winning. To reflect this, bookies will apply what we call a "Rule 4".
A Rule 4 reduces the odds on all remaining horses in the race.
The Rule 4 reduces the odds by a certain percentage, even if you placed your bet before the withdrawal.
The reduction percentage is based upon the odds of the horse that withdrew. The lower the odds of the withdrawn horse, the bigger the reduction percentage.
Why Are They Allowed To Reduce The Odds?
Let's look at an extreme example. There's a 3 horse race, and one horse is a MASSIVE favourite at odds of 1.05. The other two horses have odds of 25.0 and 26.0.
You bet £10 on the horse that is 25.0 to win the race. Before the off, news comes in that the favourite can no longer race!
Now it's a two horse race. But clearly you can't get paid out at 25.0 if your horse wins, as that would be massively unfair on the bookmakers. You could have bet £10 on the 25.0 horse and £10 on the 26.0 horse and be guaranteed over £200 profit. For this reason, the bookmakers have to apply rule 4.
What To Do If Your Odds Are Reduced?
If you had placed a bet on a race that has a horse withdrawn, don’t worry!
Exchanges
The betting exchanges will have the same Rule 4 applied on the race as well. They will reduce the odds of the horse you layed.
Both exchanges and the bookies will usually reduce the odds by a similar amount.
You don’t have to do anything; the exchange will automatically reduce the odds of your horse.
Example
In the screenshot above, you can see that I layed Good Luck Charm at odds of 8.0.
But, after rule 4, the odds are now 7.112 (reduction of 11.1%).
The bookie will have the odds of Good Luck Charm reduced by a similar percentage.
But, if you took a qualifying loss while placing the bet, the qualifying loss may not be the same after Rule 4.
Sometimes, instead of taking a small 30p loss, you may now take 60p loss after Rule 4. But, the changes will usually be small, and sometimes you may even get a small profit out of Rule 4.
So, if you had placed a bet on a race that had a horse withdrawn, you don’t have to do anything. And the changes in qualifying losses will be minimal.
Checking Actual Payout After Rule 4
After Rule 4 is applied, you can see the reduced odds of your horse on your bet history on your bookie and exchange.
Bookmaker
As the above screenshot shows, I placed a bet on Rufus King at odds of 3.75. After Rule 4 is applied, the odds of Rufus King had dropped to 3.06, shown by the bookie. “Rule 4 applied” is also shown. Your payout will also be based on the reduced odds, not the odds you took when placing the bet, even if your bet was placed before a horse has withdrawn.
Exchange
On Smarkets, I had layed Rufus King at 3.65, which after Rule 4, became 3.02.
Where To Find Horse Racing Offers
Our Reload Offers Page
Every lunchtime, we post a selection of the day's best reload offers on our Reload Offers page. These offers are picked for being quick and easy, with a high chance of making a profit. Often, you will find some horse racing offers listed here.
Outplayed
The offers listed on our reload offers page are just a snapshot of the total offers available.
To keep up to date with all the horse racing offers available, I'd strongly recommend that you make use of Outplayed.
They have a daily offers calendar which shows you how to complete all of the best offers each and every day! It provides a real-time feed of all the reload offers (not just horse racing offers) and it's an invaluable tool for Matched Bettors!
Outplayed also provide a variety of amazing tools, like an Oddsmatcher, perfect for finding your horse racing trigger bets!
Got Questions?
There are 3 easy ways to get help:
Facebook Group - ask over 30,000 fellow matched bettors (including the Team!) any questions you may have. [Join The Group]
[email protected] - We aim to respond to all emails within 24 hours
Live Chat - Chat with one of us any time we're online. See the chat module at the bottom right of site.