The Favourite Wins a Third of the Time. Why Do I Still Lose?

Both things are true at once, and holding them together is the single most useful thing on this page.

The favourite wins 35% of races. Backing every favourite, level stakes, across 29,286 races has returned -8.91%. It is the best-performing straightforward way of betting we have tested, and it still loses.

The reason is not that the favourite is a bad horse or that the price is wrong. It is that winning a third of the time is worth a certain amount of money, and the price you are paid is slightly less than that amount. Every time.

Put it in pennies. For every £100 staked on favourites in our sample, £91.09 came back. You lose about 8.9p in the pound. Not dramatic, not a swindle, and absolutely relentless.

Where the money actually goes

A favourite is short because plenty of people think it will win, and mostly they are right. The trouble is what you are paid for being right.

Say a favourite is 2/1 and wins a third of the time. Back it a hundred times for a tenner. It wins about thirty-three of them, each returning three tenners, and you finish just short of the thousand pounds you staked. You were correct about the horse's chance. You still finished down, because 2/1 does not quite pay for a one-in-three shot once the charge is in the price.

Now widen the lens. Across our whole sample the favourite wins wins 35% and returns -8.91%. The second favourite returns -11.96%, and the outsider of the field -34.66%. Picking a horse at random returns -21.32%.

That ordering matters. Backing favourites is genuinely better than backing anything else we have measured. It is the least-bad option in a set where every option loses, and the gap between the best and the worst is very large.

So the honest version is not "backing favourites does not work". It is "backing favourites loses slowest".

The idea that the favourite is the safe bet

This belief is everywhere, and it is half right, which is what makes it durable.

It is right about frequency. If you want to see your horse win often, back favourites and you will see it roughly a third of the time, against about one in eight for a horse picked at random. That is a real difference in how an afternoon feels.

It is wrong about money. Frequency and profit are separate questions, and short prices pay for their reliability. You win more often and win less when you do, and the second effect is slightly larger than the first.

There is also a version worth watching for: stacking favourites into an accumulator because each leg looks solid. Four favourites in a fourfold each need to win, and a small deficit on each leg multiplies rather than averages. We will come to multiples later in the month.

Tomorrow: how often you would actually need to be right just to break even.

Research, not tips. The figures above describe 29,286 races that have already been run.

A word on all of this

None of these pages is a tip, and none of them describes a way to win. They describe what betting costs, which is a different and more reliable subject. If your betting has stopped being fun, BeGambleAware has free, confidential help, and the National Gambling Helpline is on 0808 8020 133.

Common questions

How often does the favourite win in horse racing?

It wins 35% across our sample of 29,286 British races. It varies by code and by field size, and it is much higher in small fields than in big handicaps.

Does backing the favourite make money?

No. Level stakes to starting price it returns -8.91%, so roughly 8.9p lost per pound staked. It is the strongest simple approach we have measured and it still loses.

Is backing favourites each-way better?

Slightly, on our numbers: -8.65% against places 62%. Still a loss, and the difference is small enough not to build a plan on.

What about only backing odds-on favourites?

That returns -5.23%, the narrowest loss of anything on our board, on a much smaller sample. Narrower is not positive.

So what does make money?

Nothing we have tested. 24 approaches across 29,286 races, 0 in profit, best at -5p in the pound. We publish the losers as prominently as anything else, which is the only way that number stays honest.