Is Backing the Favourite Really the Safe Bet?

Safe in the sense of frequent. Not safe in the sense of profitable. Those are different claims and the word "safe" quietly does both jobs.

The favourite wins 35% of races. Nothing else you can pick without study comes close: a horse chosen at random wins around one time in eight. If what you want is to see your selection come first reasonably often, backing favourites delivers that.

Across 29,687 races, backing every favourite at level stakes has returned -8.98%, which is about 9.0p lost in the pound.

We have a deep page that works through this in detail, with the year-by-year figures and the breakdowns by code and field size: Does Backing the Favourite Make Money? This piece is the short answer, in the words people actually use when they ask.

Best of a losing set

The useful way to hold this is as a ranking rather than a verdict.

Every row loses. The spread between the top and the bottom is enormous, roughly twenty-six points, which is far larger than any difference you are likely to create by studying form.

So "the favourite is the safe bet" is not wrong so much as incomplete. It is the least expensive of the simple approaches, by a distance, and it is still an expensive one.

The thing that would change the picture is not a better selection method. It is a smaller charge, and that is set by the race you choose rather than the horse.

Where favourites do best, and the one to be careful with

The pattern is not uniform. Favourites in small fields win far more often than favourites in big handicaps, which is what you would expect: fewer rivals, fewer ways to be beaten.

One line on our board deserves a caution. Backing the favourite in fields of sixteen or more shows -6.92%, which is the narrowest loss of any conditioned system we hold. It is also on only 669 races, and its confidence interval is [-18.7,5.9], which straddles zero.

That means we cannot say from this data whether that approach loses slightly, breaks even, or edges ahead. The honest reading is that we do not know yet, and the sample would have to grow a great deal before we did. We flag it rather than bury it, and we are not going to dress an interval like that up as a finding.

The other half of the arithmetic, why the favourite winning a third of the time still leaves you losing, is worth reading alongside this.

A word on all of this

None of these pages is a tip, and none 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?

It wins 35% across 29,687 British races, higher in small fields and lower in big handicaps.

Is backing the favourite profitable?

No. It returns -8.98% at level stakes to starting price, roughly 9.0p in the pound.

What about backing the second favourite instead?

Worse, at -11.90%. The ordering across the market is consistent: the shorter the price, the smaller the loss.

Is the favourite ever the safe bet?

If safe means frequent, yes. If safe means your money is protected, no bet on a horse is safe, and the arithmetic here is against you before the race starts.

What about the top-rated horse on official ratings?

-15.51%, and wins 19%. Worse than simply backing the favourite, which is a useful thing to know about ratings.