Royal Ascot Betting Odds
Find the latest betting and odds for all the races at the Royal Ascot. Quickly compare the odds from the biggest bookmakers
Royal Ascot Odds Comparison
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Royal Ascot Betting Guide
Shop around for best prices and offers
Royal Ascot is one of the biggest betting events of the year for bookmakers and they will be falling over themselves to offer incentives and free bets to punters. Take advantage of this competition among the layers by shopping around for the best prices, each-way terms and free bet offers. In the big handicaps such as the Wokingham and the Royal Hunt Cup, for example, each-way punters can usually get seven places rather than the standard four if they take the time to shop around.
Pay attention to the preliminaries
Be sure to watch the runners going down to post before the race. Telling signs such as sweating and immaturity can be signs that a horse is distracted or worked up ahead of the race. This is common in the two-year-old divisions where the horses may lack experience and maturity, and especially at Royal Ascot where the field size is usually bigger than usual.
Back the best horse
This may sound like an overly simplistic approach, but the point is that Royal Ascot is among the first of the big British meetings to be run at a truly conventional track. Many of the form lines up to this point have come from more idiosyncratic tracks such as Newmarket, Chester or Epsom and they may not translate perfectly. Put an additional emphasis on class when undertaking your form study and it will often pay dividends.
Go short in the Group 1s
40 of the last 48 Group 1s at Royal Ascot have been won by horses sent off at 6-1 or shorter. Big shocks are rare, although Accidental Agent did buck the trend with a 33-1 success in the Queen Anne Stakes (2018) as did Watch Me at 20-1 in the Coronation Stakes (2019). Subjectivist was the biggest-priced winner at the meeting in 2021 when he won the Gold Cup at 13-2.
Look for course form
Stradivarius completed a hat-trick in the Gold Cup while, in the handicaps, Dark Vision had previously finished eighth in the Britannia but went on to win the Royal Hunt Cup. Fujaira Prince was another who had been beaten at Royal Ascot in the past. He had finished third in the 2019 Duke of Edinburgh and improved on that when landing the 2020 Copper Horse Handicap. On last year’s roll of honour, Juan Elcano and Stratum had been soundly beaten at the meeting before getting their landmark success. Those are just a few examples and course form, particularly at the royal meeting, often proves vital.
Take two in the big handicaps
With up to 30 runners in the Britannia, Royal Hunt Cup and Wokingham, finding the winner with a single selection is no easy task. With the effect of the draw often being hard to predict in these big-field handicaps, a common tactic is to split your stake and back on from either side of the line-up.
Hunting the best betting odds at Royal Ascot
While odds are quite literally the hard numbers of betting, making the best of them is more art than science. Getting the best betting odds about your selections depends on several factors, including your own approach to betting and the types of horses you tend to back. As such, any advice that can be given has been earned from years of personal experience and your sweet spot will only be found through similar means.
Accordingly, it is always a good idea to watch markets and how they develop wherever possible. That goes for the evening before the Royal Ascot markets right the way along to comparing on-track Ascot betting with what is happening on the exchanges. As with anything in racing, the lessons drawn are all the better if you are familiar with the horses involved. That said, many of the factors in reading the markets boil down to reading the humans actors involved – to paraphrase a quote so beloved by horsemen, the horse cannot affect what price it is.
If bookies are offering prices now, what is in it for them? If someone wants to get a wedge on, when would they do it? What signs might be there that today is The Day when it is all fancied to come together at Royal Ascot? Judging the odds market is something that even the best bettors get wrong more often than other factors. You will back a few that go off five times the price and are never involved. The satisfaction of being an early adopter more than makes up for these moments, though, and even though it stings to see your 8-1 bet get chinned eight hours later as 15-8 favourite at Ascot, the fact you read the market so deftly soon comes along as a bit of an anaesthetic.
A word of warning, though: do not mistake this cold comfort for any sort of compensation. It is surprisingly easy to find yourself looking for horses who will go off shorter than current odds, rather than those that actually represent good value. The two often overlap but are ultimately distinct. Never lose sight that winners are the currency of betting and that beating the market is comparable with nothing more important than grabbing a bargain in the sales.
Read more by purchasing Racing Post Betting Guide for Royal Ascot