The Racing Post is by far the most well known racing newspaper in the UK. It’s the go to resource for thousands of punters and that means, their tipsters are the go to tipsters for thousands of punters.
But… nowhere does the Racing Post say whether their tipsters make a profit or not.
So we decided to do some investigating for you.
There are eight tipsters provided throughout the Racing Post and these are:
- Lambourn
- Newmarket
- Postdata
- RP Ratings
- Spotlight
- The Edge
- The North
- West Country
We’re going to go through each one’s figures to determine which, if any, you should be considering using.
All the following results are from the entire of 2014, are based on betting to Betfair SP and take into account 5% commission.
1. Lambourn
Over the last year Lambourn had 333 bets, almost one per day. 100 of these bets won giving a healthy strike rate of 30%.
The profit over the year was 30.67 units and the ROI a pleasant 9%.
2. Newmarket
Just 165 bets were offered by Newmarket, just under one selection every two days. From these bets 52 won for a healthy strike rate of 32%. But…
…only a profit of 2.74 units was made.
That’s a low 2% ROI.
3. Postdata
Postdata comes back to a similar quantity of bets as Lambourn with 323 selections recommended over 2014.
This time however, the strike rate was a lower 16% with much higher average odds.
But it paid off to the tune of 20.36 units profit and a pretty decent 6% ROI.
4. RP Ratings
326 bets come from the RP Ratings and the first big disappointment from the Racing Post with a loss of -31.57 units.
95 winning bets from these selections gave a strong strike rate of 29%. But a -10% ROI clearly shows that these are not the selections to be following.
5. Spotlight
It goes from bad to worse with the Spotlight selections. From 330 selection a loss of -54.98 units was made over 2014.
Again the strike rate was a strong 32%, which shows that finding winners without value in the odds isn’t enough.
The ROI for these selections is a worrying -17%.
6. The Edge
Bringing a bit of hope back, The Edge produced a small profit of 7.47 units throughout 2014. This came from 321 selections and achieved a 23% strike rate.
Although the ROI is a very low 2%, the fact that it’s above 0% beats the previous two services.
7. The North
Bringing things back to form, The North found 70 winners from 326 selections, a 21% strike rate, and made a profit of 18.07 units. The ROI was a decent 6%.
Half way through the year the profit was 83.54 units, the majority of which was sadly lost once the winter season kicked in.
8. West Country
A low 139 bets were provided by West Country, and 33% of them won. However, as mentioned above, winning isn’t enough and there was no value in these selections that resulted in a loss of -4.99 units.
In fact, this service was only in profit for the first ten bets of 2014 and then never managed to recover.
Looking at the stats for the Racing Post tipsters has certainly provided us some good insight. The first thing that we learned is not to follow the RP Ratings or Spotlight.
That’s not because they can’t pick the winners, they clearly can, but because there is no value in the odds. This is likely to be largely due to the sheer number of people who follow them as they’re the most easily accessible selections on the website.
However… laying the selections will produce a small profit from the RP Ratings and pretty good profit of 34.75 units from Spotlight. There’s unlikely to be any change in the quantity of people using these selections, which means there’s no reason to assume this shouldn’t continue in 2015.
If you want to follow the selections as-is then you should be focusing on Lambourn and The North.
However, Newmarket and The Edge both provide pretty much break-even selections. These can be used as a starting point and analysed further to remove the runners that are reducing the profit.
In fact, this can also be done to improve the profit on the selections from Lambourn and The North.
So when we ask ourselves the question: Can the Racing Post tipsters make a profit?
The answer is a resounding yes. But we have to be careful to choose the tipsters whose selections are buried deeper than the others and so used by the general public less.
But, my recommendation would be to take them as a shortlist and analyse them further. With just a few weeks practice you will significantly increase the strike rate of the selections and with it the profit.
Hi Michael, what do you classify as a tip please?
Is it actually a nap, as taken from the naps table OR is it every single tip the correspondent has put up.
With respect, I would have thought Postdata would have had more than 1 “tip” per day, today they will have about 12 I would have thought.
Please quantify.
Thanks for the comment Paul. This is based on their naps.
hi Michael
yes, completely agree with Paul….you have, I assume, left out the phrase ” Nap selections” otherwise these stats don’t make any sense
and what about their main bragging tipster Price-Wise….I would think his figures are low along with those other Festival/big meeting tipsters such as Gerald Delamere….any records for either of these two by chance
would be a help to know where they fit in the great scheme of things
Hi Norman, it is based on their naps. I can only get the data for the ones that I’ve posted in this article.
PAUL makes a valid point. I assume it is”NAPS” that the survey was done on,this brings in difficulties. I had my own ratings for many years going back to the 60’s, so I know some of the drawbacks. First of all, to provide a
NAP each day, you will not have a consistency of races e.g. days you will have a lot of small field races with
Horses well clear on figures. In general horses that have a lot in hand on figures are often poor value. A better
way in my opinion, is to find races where every horse is rated and has had at least 3 runs or more. Then we have to consider what is “Value”. I personally would never bother with tips,naps,etc prefer to study the form
and make my own selections,but for people not so inclined when post data’s selection is top or joint top on RP
ratings in the type of races I mentioned you have a starting point. Then all you have to do is decide if it is
value for money odds.
Going back two years 4/3/13 to 4/3/15 excluding rp ratings and Spotlight the profit is just over 190 points bsp less 5%. The total loss for spotlight and rp ratings is over 220 points so laying these and backing the other 6 should lead to a profit exceeding 300 points.this is a long term excercise as the results over the last 100 days are rp and Spotlight 43 points loss,the other six 50 points loss.how do you suggest tweaking the selections to improve profit form ,prices ,ratings or what.
I’m not sure whether laying would work on the Spotlight and RP Ratings or not, often it doesn’t work that well due to commission and the difference in odds. However, as you say, you could use the selections as a starting point and then analyse them yourself to determine if they have enough merit and almost certainly increase the profits.
Ive followed both timeform top rated and RP verdict, each are both pretty pathetic in terms of both ROI and certainly strike rate, I havnt studies in great detail but can honestly say out of 28 races the other Sunday timeform only predicted 3 winners…shocking!! The following days figures were similar out of 42 races they only produced 7 winners…most of these were 3/1 and under. Yesterday I noted down all the RP verdict selections on 28 races…4 winners, two of them at odds on!! There really must be a laying system there for the taking as most of these selections have low odds, I ran the RP selections through a 1 point lay staking plan, for a ÂŁ2 lay stake this would have produced a ÂŁ35 profit yesterday, I am sure they will have better days but not by much looking at the early figures. Timeform and RP are a service but they also are tipsters and pretty awful tipsters at that.
Did you ever find out how the RP tipsters did in later years at BSP?
Hi Alastair, Unfortunately, we didn’t find out as the data is not readily available. However, I’m pretty sure it will show a loss as it’s so very public! Anything, that is made public to masses will likely decrease any value in the price!