Horse racing is one of the most popular sports to bet on in the UK and the vast majority of the top UK bookies offering betting on races taking place around the world every day, you’re not short on choice as to where to place your bets.
Betting on horse racing, as with all sports, is about getting value and there are a number of factors to consider to ensure that you are getting maximum value from every racing bet that you place. Factors such as odds, racing offers such as Best Odds Guaranteed and Extra Places, the choice of betting markets and others can all play their part in how big your returns are and if you are getting value in the long term from your bets.
Below, we have listed some of the best bookmakers to use for betting on horse racing and our reasons why. If you’re looking for more top racing bookies, head on over to WhichBookie where you’ll be able to choose from a range of the best horse racing bookmakers.
SBK – Best Odds
SBK is a bookmaker which was launched relatively recently towards the end of 2019 and differs from other betting sites in a number of ways.
Firstly, SBK is only accessible via the SBK app with no desktop website currently being available. As the majority of bets are now placed via mobile devices, this may not be an issue for most punters but some may prefer the option of a website.
SBK often offers the best odds on horse racing and in fact, most other sports. You’ll regularly find SBK at the top of the list on odds comparison sites beating the prices of top racing bookies such as Bet365, Boylesports and Betfair. This is because SBK was developed by the online betting exchange Smarkets and uses their odds which allows them to offer prices with a lower margin compared to traditional bookmakers.
If you’re always searching for the best odds for your racing bets, SBK is a great account to have.
Betfred / SkyBet / Paddy Power – Best Betting Offers
We couldn’t choose between the three bookies above for the Best Betting Offers category as all of them have racing offers available on a daily basis. As well as Best Odds Guaranteed being available on all UK & Irish races, you’ll find regular Extra Places, Refund on Loss and Money Back if 2nd offers available along with daily price boosts.
There are other bookmakers who also have excellent racing offers available such as Bet365 who have been running their ITV 4/1 offer for several years which has proved to be one of the most popular racing offers out there.
Paddy Power – Best Live Streaming
Several bookmakers offer live streaming of horse races and the vast majority of them are very good with excellent quality streams of UK, Irish & worldwide races that can be accessed both on a desktop or mobile.
The reason we have selected Paddy Power as the best in this category is because where most bookies require you to place a bet on a race in order to access the stream, Paddy Power don’t. At least not for UK & Irish races. Being able to watch races without having to place a qualifying bet is an excellent feature from Paddy that allows customers to increase their knowledge of the sport, horses and jockeys by watching more races.
Worthy Mentions
There are also other bookmakers which haven’t been mentioned above that are great for betting on horse racing for various reasons.
For example, Betfair offer their ‘Each Way Edge’ betting feature that allows you to alter the place terms of your each way bets. This means that you can increase the number of places which will shorten the price offered or remove places which will result in a bigger price. It’s a great feature that can be very useful in certain circumstances.
Online bookmaker Parimatch, which has been in operation since 1994 but only entered the UK market in 2020, offers a nice racing feature named ‘Lengthen The Odds’. With this feature, you can select a horse to win but choose from a various winning distances also. If you are confident a horse will win by some distance, you can apply this to your bet by selecting say ‘to win by 4 lengths or more’ which will give the standard odds a big boost.
With any bookmaker that you choose to bet on horse racing with, make sure that they are fully licensed and regulated by the UK Gambling Commission to ensure that they operate in a fair and legal manner.
