Any racing crowd on a Saturday afternoon splits into two camps. One lot are studying the runners, looking for the horse they think will win. The other lot have a betting exchange open on their phone, looking for the horse they think will lose. Same race, same information, two very different bets.
The thinking goes that laying is the smarter game. Most horses lose, so picking a loser must be easier than picking a winner. A strike rate (the share of bets that win) of 60% or 70% sounds far more comforting than the 30% or so a backer is working with.
It is a popular idea, and it can be an expensive one. This guide looks at why, using the favourite as the test case.
Is backing or laying horse racing more profitable?
On the evidence below, neither blanket backing nor blanket laying looks like a route to profit. The strike rate is not the real question. What matters is the shape of the wins against the shape of the losses.
Take the Betfair SP favourite (Betfair SP is the exchange starting price). Across 167,257 races in Great Britain and Ireland, from 1 July 2013 to 14 October 2026, favourites won 34.4% of the time. That means they lost 65.6% of the time, so a blanket layer would have won two bets in three.
Backing every one of those favourites at Betfair SP, one point level stakes, after 2% commission, returned minus 1.4% of total stakes. Fallers and pulled-up horses count as losers.
These figures describe that stretch of racing. They are a record of what happened, and the next thirteen years will not repeat them exactly.
Why many people think laying is easier (and where that logic breaks)
The case for laying sounds solid on first hearing. In any race only one horse wins, so the layer starts with the whole field on their side and only has to avoid one outcome. The backer has to find the one runner that beats everything else.
That captures something real. It also leaves out the number that matters most.
When you lay a horse, you take the other side of someone else’s back bet, a bit like being the bookmaker. If you lay £10 at 3.4, you are offering the backer 2.4 to 1 on their stake. If the horse wins, you owe £24. If it loses, you keep their £10, minus 2% commission.
That amount you stand to owe is called your liability. It is the reason the strike rate argument is incomplete. The layer wins small and loses big. The backer loses small and wins big. The arithmetic is not symmetrical, and the market prices it that way.
What 13 years of racing says about favourites
The favourite is the most-backed horse in any race, and the runner with a strike rate high enough to make a blanket approach look tempting on either side. That makes it a fair place to test the question.
The A/E ratio compares how often horses actually won (Actual) with how often their prices said they would (Expected). A figure of 1.00 means the two matched. For the Betfair SP favourite the A/E was 1.00. The exchange price was, on average, a fair reflection of how often favourites won. There was no obvious slack for either side to exploit. If you want the full explanation, see what A/E means.
With a fair price on the table, the cost of doing business is the 2% commission. The backer paid it on winnings and finished a small way below break-even. The layer would pay it on their winnings too, so the same commission works against them. A market that prices a horse about right leaves little for either side, and the commission tips the balance the wrong way.
Two other signals tell a similar story. Our VDW Rank 1 (one of our own rating systems) was the top-rated horse in 153,920 races. It won 21.6% with an A/E of 0.99 and a return of minus 3.8%. The Race Predictor top horse (our own model) covered 167,314 runners, won 25.5% with an A/E of 1.01 and returned 0.0%. The Race Predictor top horse is also the favourite about 41% of the time, and VDW Rank 1 about 31%, so these are not wholly separate from the market.
Again, the numbers describe that period only. Different years would give a different picture, and none of this is a promise about what comes next.
Backing vs laying: the liability trade-off in plain English
Here is a worked example. It is an illustration with round numbers, not a measured result.
Suppose a favourite is priced at 3.0 on the exchange and wins exactly one race in three, which is what that price implies. You lay it 90 times, risking £20 each time to win £10.
- You win 60 of the 90 bets. After 2% commission each pays £9.80, which is £588.
- You lose 30 of the 90 bets. Each costs £20, which is £600.
- Net result: £12 down, which is exactly the commission.
You can vary the inputs. Laying only shorter-priced favourites reduces the liability, but the price moves with it, so the sums stay in the same shape. A fair price leaves the layer paying commission for the privilege of being right about as often as the market says they should be.
The same holds on the back side. A fair price and a commission leaves you a little behind on a blanket basis. In both directions, profit has to come from picking spots where the price is wrong, not from choosing a side.
When laying may have an edge (and when it can quietly hurt)
None of this says laying has no place. It becomes viable in the same way back betting does, through selectivity rather than through the sheer volume of losers.
Two pointers from an earlier analysis of UK favourites, with the sample sizes given so you can judge the weight.
- Heavy ground. Favourites in heavy going (10,567 runners) won 37.7% of the time. A layer who assumes soft conditions make favourites easier to beat may be wrong.
- Drifters. Favourites whose Betfair SP was at least 10% longer than the bookmaker starting price (62,830 runners) won 26.3%. They win less often, but whether the longer price fully allowed for that is the thing to test. Being a weaker favourite is not automatically a good lay.
For the lay side, the honest summary is that blanket rules look unpromising and any selective approach has to be tested before it is trusted. If you want to see how to do that properly, read how to test a system live.
How to decide whether to back or lay
The question is a little off. Backing and laying are two sides of the same book, not two strategies. The strategy lives in what you bet on, and the direction follows from that.
That said, there are practical reasons many people start on the back side.
- Liability is intuitive. Back £5 and you can lose £5. Lay £5 at 3.4 and you can lose £12. Bankroll mistakes on the lay side grow faster and tend to arrive quietly.
- Losing runs feel different. The longest losing run for the Betfair SP favourite in the data above was 28 races. For VDW Rank 1 it was 59, and for the Race Predictor top horse 36. Backers expect runs like these. Layers can face a run of losses that each cost far more than the average win, so losing runs deserve some thought before you pick a side.
- Bookmakers carry an overround. That is the built-in margin that makes prices add up to more than 100%. It makes blanket backing at the high street harder, and it also creates gaps selective backing can find. The exchange replaces it with a 2% commission, which is leaner. For more on this see bookies vs Betfair.
- There is more public method on the back side. Ratings, pace, trainer patterns and the draw have been written about for years. Much lay content leans on the strike rate and skips liability.
Laying is not a wrong choice, only a different one. People who do well on the lay side generally do it the way good backers do. They look for horses the market has overrated, check that with ratings, pace and condition, and only lay at a price that pays for the liability they take on. This is a rule of thumb, not something these figures prove.
One way to find out which side suits you is to look at the same race with both questions in mind. Which horse should win, and at what price? Which horse looks too short for what it is, and what would the liability be? Whichever you can answer more clearly, more often, is a good place to start. The aim is to form and test your own view of the price, not to borrow someone else’s selections or lay rules. Whichever side you pick, set your stake sizes first with bankroll management.
If you want to try both questions on a live card, you can open today’s race cards and look at a few races with a backer’s eye and then a layer’s.
