With the football season over for the summer, you might be feeling a little disheartened, especially if you’re relatively new to Matched Betting.
Suddenly, there’s a gap in your Matched Betting calendar, and it’s easy to conclude that your profits will be minimal until the football starts up again in the Autumn.
But that’s not the case at all! Horse racing still has a huge amount to offer matched bettors – and if you work out the right strategy, you can still make steady, reliable profits all summer from horse racing.
In this guide, we’ll take you through all you need to know to use horse racing to your advantage over the summer, covering the best offers to focus on and the benefits of horse racing for matched bettors.
We’ll also give you some handy hints as to how to combine your horse racing matched bets with a BetConnect account to maximise your profits even further
Horse Racing In The Summer
Horse racing goes on year round, but there are a few key racing fixtures that take place in the summer. For each of these, you can expect to find particularly generous bookie offers, so make sure to keep your eye out for promotions you can profit from!
- Royal Ascot – 17th – 21st June
- Coral Summer Festival [Sandown] – 5th July
- Newmarket July Festival – 10th – 12th July
- Glorious Goodwood Festival – 29th July – 2nd August
- York Ebor Festival – 20th – 23rd August
How To Take Advantage Of Horse Racing With Matched Betting
The great thing about horse racing is that most bookies will have at least an offer or two available every single day. We’ll talk you through the most common offers you’ll encounter for horse racing, and how you can take advantage of them with matched betting.
Bet & Get
Bet & Get offers are a staple of matched betting, and it’s common to find this kind of promotion for horse racing. It’s most common to receive a free bet when you bet a certain amount (e.g. ‘bet £5 and get a £5 free bet’), but some bookies will reward you differently, for example with free spins or a casino bonus (e.g. ‘bet £20 to get 20 free spins’).
It’s important to be aware that free spins and casino bonuses won’t guarantee you a profit from this type of offer, so you’ll want to consider the level of risk versus the potential reward before starting an offer.
If you can keep your qualifying loss low, we’d generally recommend completing this kind of offer, as on average you can usually expect to make more in profit than you lose from your qualifying bet. And if you can find a 100% match with BetConnect using the Bog Matcher, there’s no qualifying loss at all, making this a risk-free option!
Price Boosts
Price boosts are one of the easiest ways to make money from matched bets on horse racing. If a price boost takes the odds of your back bet higher than the available lay odds, you can place a single matched bet and make an immediate profit.
Keep an eye out for price boosts on horse racing, and make use of daily boosts from bookies, and you’ll have no trouble in making daily profits from horse racing.
Racing Refunds
These offers are a little more complicated, but it’s well worth learning how to take advantage of them. With this kind of promotion, you place a bet on a horse to win, and if your horse hits a certain place (often 2rd or 3rd, but sometimes 2rd, 3rd or 4th) you’ll receive a refund in the form of a free bet, or occasionally as cash.
It’s possible to use these offers to make profits in a couple of different ways – check out our dedicated guide to horse racing refunds to find out more.
Extra Places
Many bookies will offer extra paid places on certain races each day. These give canny bettors the chance to snag a profit by placing an each-way bet on an extra place race with the bookie and laying the original number of places with a betting exchange. If the horse hits the extra place, both your back bet and your lay bet will win, resulting in a fantastic profit!
If you’re an OddsMonkey Premium member, you get access to the Extra Place Matcher, which makes it even easier to take advantage of Extra Place offers by tracking down the best horses in extra place races for you, saving you tons of time.
Best Odds Guaranteed
Many bookies offer ‘best odds guaranteed’ on a large number of races – which means that, if the starting price when the race begins is better than the odds you bet at, you’ll be paid out at the starting price if your bet wins.
This isn’t exactly a common occurrence, so for a long time it was very difficult to make any profit from this offer. However, the OddsMonkey BOG Matcher combined with a BetConnect account makes it possible to capitalise on this offer to make a profit.
This tool highlights racing bets that are 100% matched with BetConnect, meaning that you lose nothing if your bet is paid out at the original odds, but you stand to make a profit if your bet benefits from Best Odds Guaranteed.
Value Betting
For confident matched bettors keen to take things to the next level, it’s worth considering trying our value betting tools. The Lucky Finder EV and Extra Place EV tools allow you to make fantastic ongoing profits through value betting strategies.
It’s worth noting that these techniques aren’t risk free, and we’d recommend that only advanced, confident matched bettors with a substantial bankroll embark on value betting. If that applies to you, though, value betting could be the perfect way to take your profits from horse racing to the next level.
The Benefits Of Horse Racing For Matched Bettors
Horse racing offers a few chief benefits for matched bettors, which can be summed up as follows:
- Plenty of offers. There are always lots of offers running across a number of bookies every single week, and especially at weekends. These will include racing refunds, extra place races, and often bet & get offers. With many sports, offers can be pretty inconsistent, but you can count on horse racing offers to run frequently.
- Plenty of events. There’ll never be a shortage of races! Most days, there are multiple races running across several racecourses – so if you’re keen to take advantage of an offer with a bet on horse racing, you’re sure to find a race to bet on.
- Year round racing. Most sports have a season – but that’s not the case with horse racing. While it is usual for flat racing to run from April to October and jump racing from October to April each year, these seasons aren’t set in stone. Whether they’re flats or jumps, races will be held all through the year, giving matched bettors plenty of opportunities for profit.
How BetConnect Makes Matched Betting On Racing Even Better
You might already have a BetConnect account – but if not, you’re missing out on tons of potential profit!
BetConnect is a betting exchange that allows you to lay your matched bets just like Matchbook, Smarkets or Betfair, but it also has a few crucial advantages that make it a hugely profitable account for matched bettors.
- Your BetConnect account can be integrated into your OddsMonkey account, allowing you to lay your bet directly from the OddsMonkey OddsMatcher.
- Lay odds can be locked for 60 seconds, allowing you time to double check the details of your bet without risking the liquidity vanishing before you can complete it.
- BetConnect reliably offers some of the best lay odds around for horse racing, making it incredibly easy to find good value matches for your back bets. The lay odds you see will be available with at least one bookmaker, making it possible to find 100% matches for your bets and resulting in zero qualifying loss. Place your bets between 10am and 2pm to find the very best liquidity and maximise your horse racing profits.
- 0% commission. As an OddsMonkey member, you pay 0% commission on your exchange bets – meaning more of your profit stays in your pocket.
- You Lay We Pay. Not only do you have 0% commission to pay your bets, you’ll actually earn money by laying with Betconnect. For every £1000 you lay with BetConnect in a calendar month through the integrated tool in your OddsMonkey account, you’ll receive £5 cash, up to a maximum of £30 (based on £6000 of lay stakes) per month.
This might sound like a large amount, but lay stakes add up quickly, and it won’t be difficult to hit £1000 in lay stakes for most matched bettors.
Summary
In short, there’s no need to worry about your summer matched betting profits just because the football season’s over. Horse racing is more than enough to keep you going, especially with a BetConnect account to help you along!
Between Bet & Get offers, Racing Refunds, Extra Places and Best Odds Guaranteed promotions, you’ll find plenty to keep you occupied, particularly with high profile events such as Royal Ascot, Glorious Goodwood and the Newmarket July Festival on their way.
And if you haven’t already signed up for a BetConnect account, what are you waiting for? You can integrate it directly into your OddsMonkey account, enjoy 0% commission, and find the best available lay odds on horse racing, making it easy and efficient to profit from matched betting.
