Is the Grand National a Worse Bet Than an Ordinary Tuesday?

On price alone, yes, and it is not close.

The National has the biggest field in British racing. Field size is the single strongest driver of what a bookmaker charges, and the relationship is close to mechanical: across 269 festival races this summer, the biggest-field bracket carried nearly three times the charge of the smallest.

So the one race that a very large number of people bet on each year, and often the only race they bet on, is structurally the most expensive race on the calendar to have an opinion about.

That is worth knowing. It is not, on its own, a reason to skip it.

The arithmetic of a forty-runner field

Our biggest-field bracket starts at sixteen runners. The National has around forty, which is well beyond anything in that table, so if anything it understates the case.

Every one of those forty horses needs a price. Perhaps eight of them are seriously fancied. The rest sit at 50/1, 66/1, 100/1 and longer, and horses at those prices win considerably less often than the prices suggest: across 218,437 British runners, a 100/1 shot came in 1 in 391 runs against an implied 0.7%. Multiply a shortfall like that across thirty runners and the total charge climbs.

The dearest single race we measured all summer was a thirty-runner handicap at Royal Ascot, at nearly half as much again as a fair book. The National's shape is the same, only more so.

What to do with that

If the National is your one bet of the year, the honest advice is to enjoy it and not think about any of this too hard. On a fiver the difference between the dearest race of the year and an average one is well under a pound. We wrote a whole piece on why the maths barely matters at that scale, and we meant it.

If you have a few bets across a Saturday, the useful move is different: take the National, by all means, and put the rest of your interest in the small-field races on the same card. Those are the ones where the charge is a third of what the big handicap takes.

And if you back forty-runner handicaps regularly, this is the piece to sit with. That is the most expensive habit in racing, and it is expensive by structure rather than by luck.

None of that touches which horse might win. We have no idea, and neither does anyone else with a system: 24 approaches tested over 29,483 races, 0 of them in profit.

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

Is the Grand National good value?

On the charge built into the prices, it is at the expensive end, because it has the largest field of the year and field size drives the charge.

How much does that cost me on a fiver?

Roughly a pound and a half of the stake, against something nearer fifty pence in a small-field race. In absolute money, a small difference for one bet a year.

Are the ante-post prices better?

They can be, because the book on a future race is often set differently, but they carry their own risk since a non-runner usually means a lost stake unless the firm offers a concession.

Should I back a big price in the National?

Long prices are the least generous part of any card on our measurements: a 100/1 shot wins 1 in 391 runs against an implied 0.7%. That is a statement about averages, not about any particular horse.

Which races are cheapest on National day?

The small-field races elsewhere on the card. Fewer runners is the most reliable signal of a cheaper book we have found.