The favourite gets all the attention. The third pick gets the each-way crowd. And in between sits a horse most people glance past and most system sellers can’t leave alone… the second favourite.
You can see why it tempts people. The prices are short enough to feel safe, and about one in five wins. So does a second favourite system make money?
Not blind. In my data, backing every UK second favourite at Betfair SP since 2013 wins 20.3% of the time and loses a few per cent of every pound staked after commission. The only places it edges ahead are small slices, and I’d treat those as ideas to test, not a system.
The short version
- Backed blind at Betfair SP, the second favourite is priced fairly (A/E 0.99) and loses about 3% of stakes after commission.
- Backed at bookmaker SP, it loses about 13%. Bookmaker margin is a likely reason for most of that gap.
- Two slices edge above 1.00. Both are small and I found them by cutting one result into pieces, so they need a fresh test before you bet them.
Does a 2nd favourite horse racing system make money?
Across 158,746 second favourites in UK racing from July 2013 to March 2026, the win rate is 20.3% and the A/E ratio at Betfair SP is 0.99. A/E compares actual winners with the winners the odds said to expect, so 0.99 means the market priced them almost exactly right. At level stakes, which just means one unit on every bet, that’s a net loss of about 4,800 units after the exchange’s 2% commission on net winnings. These are results from those 13 years, and they don’t say what any future season will do.
How often does the second favourite win?
One in five. Of the 158,746 second favourites, 32,239 won. That’s 20.3%, against 34.0% for the favourite in the same sample.
| Position in the betting | A/E at Betfair SP |
|---|---|
| Favourite | 1.00 |
| Second favourite | 0.99 |
| Third pick | 0.99 |
Whichever rank you pull off the market, the A/E sits within a whisker of 1.00. The market is doing its job. Moving from the favourite to the second favourite trades about 14 percentage points of strike rate for bigger prices, and the bigger prices roughly cover it.
Why do most second favourite systems quietly lose?
Mostly because of where the bet is placed, and a couple of things people leave out.
Bookmaker or exchange. Backing every second favourite at bookmaker SP returns an A/E of 0.88 and a loss of about 13% of stakes. The same bets at Betfair SP, after 2% commission, run at A/E 0.99 and lose about 3%. That’s a gap of roughly ten points of return. I haven’t isolated the cause, but bookmaker margin is the likely main contributor, and it bites hardest on short-priced bets that win one time in five.
Field size. The win rate falls as fields get bigger, but the A/E barely moves:
| Field size | Second favourite win rate | A/E at Betfair SP |
|---|---|---|
| 4 to 7 runners (51,570 bets) | 24.0% | 1.00 |
| 8 to 10 runners | 19.8% | 0.98 |
| 15 or more runners | 15.5% | 0.98 |
So field size changes how often the second favourite wins, and the price adjusts to match.
Race type. Second favourites in hurdle races on turf and in National Hunt flat races run at A/E 0.97 and 0.96, with losses of about 5% and 6% to Betfair SP. Flat turf, flat all-weather and chases on turf all sit at 1.00. Those two jumps types are the ones with a shortfall in this sample.
Where does any edge sit?
Two slices come out above 1.00:
| Slice | Runners | A/E | ROI after commission |
|---|---|---|---|
| Flat all-weather, 11 to 14 runners | 13,472 | 1.05 | +2.72% |
| Chases on turf, 4 to 7 runners | 11,224 | 1.02 | +1.05% |
ROI is the profit as a percentage of the money staked. The chase slice also wins 24.8% of the time, with short prices, so the edge is small in pounds even where it exists.
I’d be careful here. Both slices came from cutting one result into pieces, which is how you find patterns that don’t last. They’re a reason to test the idea on fresh races, the way I describe here, and not a reason to bet it. Outside these two, the second favourite is a fair price.
How could I use the second favourite in practice?
This is my judgement, not something I’ve tested. I’d treat the second favourite as a shortlist and not a system. Take it, then check whether the rest of the profile (class, pace, ground, days since the last run) lines up with the price. If the market has it second and your own reading has it second too, the market has done your work for you and there’s nothing to find. If the evidence makes the second favourite the strongest horse in the race, that’s the one situation where I’d take a second look at the race instead of just accepting the favourite.
Whatever you do, bet at Betfair SP and not bookmaker SP. For a short-priced runner that wins one time in five, that ten-point gap decides whether you’re even close. And before you put money on any filter, test it on races it hasn’t seen. The betting systems guide goes through the wider picture.
What this doesn’t tell you
Everything here is UK racing from July 2013 to March 2026, priced at Betfair SP. It says the second favourite on its own is a fair price, not that no edge exists anywhere. And the two slices above haven’t been tested on fresh races.
If you’d like to try the shortlist idea on a real card, the racecards show two of my ratings, PR and VDW, plus the pace maps. PR is my estimate of each horse’s chance of winning, VDW leans on consistency and class, and the pace map shows how the race may be run, so you can check them against the price yourself. They don’t hand you a pick. See today’s racecards.
