Are Same-Race Bet Builders the Next Step for Horse Racing Betting?

A football match contains two teams and a relatively limited set of core outcomes. That means even when you combine multiple same game selections, the bookmaker only has to model one contained event.

Horse racing is almost never an actual 2 horse race. UK races, on average, have about 8 horses in them^[1]. Major races can have upwards of 20 or even 30 runners. From the outset, this becomes much more confusing to model. But, we’re far from finished!

Each of those horses has ground, distance, headgear, weight, even jockey preferences - and they’re an animal too, for an extra dash of unpredictability.

The remainder of the model is actually quite similar. Same-game football bet builders have options like:

• X player to score first
• X team to win by 1.5+ goals
• X team to receive first red card

A hypothetical same-race builder could include:

• Horse A to win
• Horse B to not place
• Winning distance over to lengths

In both of these scenarios, the selections are correlated. However, the variables involved in horse racing, as well as the sheer size of the market means that the pricing challenge is exponentially more complicated.

Horse racing carries many layers of settlement complexity that football generally doesn’t. Just some of horse racing’s more unique issues include:

• Non-runners and late withdrawals: This can lead to rule 4 deductions and changing each-way place terms
• Dead heats: Needless to say, nobody is backing a dead heat in the same way they would a ‘draw’ in football
• Stewards enquiries: Places can change post-race, potentially making legs void
• Abandoned races: Ground conditions, visibility, problems on track, or extreme weather

Football in this respect, is not as complex as racing. We have a draw market for dead heats, we have VAR for ‘stewards enquiries’, but these work quickly and routinely - and we certainly don’t have non-runners!