Home › Betting Strategy › How Often Do Favourites Win?
By The Guv'nor · Last updated October 2026
How often do favourites win in horse racing? About a third of the time. Across 12,991 UK and Irish races from 1 October 2025 to 30 September 2026, the Betfair SP favourite won 4,550: 35.0%. Odds-on favourites won 60.3% (N=2,112), handicap favourites 29.8% (N=8,333), and backing every favourite lost 1.6p in the pound before commission.
Look, everyone has a "favourites win a third of the time" line in their back pocket. I'm essentially a statistics/maths geek, so I wanted proper horse racing favourites statistics for the UK and Ireland, split the ways punters actually ask about them. Everything below comes from one season of Betfair's own published price files, with the race count next to every percentage so you can see how much weight each figure can carry. The method is at the bottom if you want to pick holes in it.
How often do favourites win in horse racing? The headline numbers
Here's the top-line answer, plus the main splits people search for. The "likely range" column is a 95% confidence interval: roughly where the true long-run figure probably sits, given how many races went into it. Smaller samples get wider ranges.
| Races | Number of races (N) | Favourite won | Likely range |
|---|---|---|---|
| All races | 12,991 | 35.0% | 34.2% to 35.8% |
| UK | 10,086 | 35.6% | 34.7% to 36.5% |
| Ireland | 2,905 | 33.0% | 31.4% to 34.8% |
| Flat (turf and all-weather) | 7,947 | 34.3% | 33.3% to 35.4% |
| Jumps | 5,044 | 36.1% | 34.8% to 37.5% |
| Handicaps (including nurseries) | 8,333 | 29.8% | 28.8% to 30.8% |
| Non-handicaps | 4,658 | 44.4% | 43.0% to 45.9% |
So, what percentage of favourites win horse races in the UK, and how many favourites win in a year? In this season, 35.6% of UK favourites won (3,590 of 10,086). Ireland came in a bit lower at 33.0%, and the ranges barely touch, so I'd treat that gap as real but small.
Handicaps v non-handicaps, Flat v jumps
The Flat v jumps split is the one people argue about in the pub, and it's the least interesting. Two points between them. The handicap split is where the action is: a handicap favourite wins less than three races in ten, a non-handicap favourite wins well over four in ten. That's the whole point of a handicap. The handicapper gives the better horses more weight to carry to bunch the field up, and it works. If handicaps are new to you, I've explained how the weights and marks work in horse racing handicaps explained.
| Code and race type | Races (N) | Favourite won | Return at BSP, before commission |
|---|---|---|---|
| Flat handicaps | 5,333 | 29.6% | -1.1% |
| Flat non-handicaps | 2,614 | 44.0% | -0.5% |
| Jumps handicaps | 3,000 | 30.1% | -3.3% |
| Jumps non-handicaps | 2,044 | 45.1% | -1.5% |
Which races do favourites win most?
Break it down further by the type of race and the gap gets wider still. Among the bigger groups, races full of lightly raced horses, like novice hurdles and Flat novice races, are where the market leader does best. Handicap hurdles are where it struggles most.
| Race type | Races (N) | Favourite won |
|---|---|---|
| Flat: conditions and other stakes races (small sample) | 163 | 53.4% |
| Jumps: other hurdles and chases, a mixed bag (small sample) | 109 | 51.4% |
| Jumps: novice, maiden and juvenile hurdles | 1,067 | 49.9% |
| Flat: novice races | 839 | 48.3% |
| Flat: maidens | 964 | 44.0% |
| Jumps: novice and beginners' chases (small sample) | 181 | 43.1% |
| Jumps: Graded and Listed, not handicaps (small sample) | 232 | 41.8% |
| Jumps: hunter chases (small sample) | 68 | 39.7% |
| Flat: Group and Listed, not handicaps | 416 | 37.5% |
| Jumps: bumpers (NH Flat races) | 387 | 33.9% |
| Flat: nurseries (2-year-old handicaps) | 285 | 33.7% |
| Jumps: handicap chases | 1,325 | 33.2% |
| Flat: classified, claiming and selling races | 232 | 33.2% |
| Flat: handicaps (excluding nurseries) | 5,048 | 29.4% |
| Jumps: handicap hurdles | 1,675 | 27.6% |
The top two rows are small catch-all groups, so I wouldn't lean on them. Anything with a few hundred races or fewer can move several points from one season to the next, so read the bottom-of-the-sample rows as a lean, not a law.
Field size and the favourite's price
Fewer runners, more winning favourites. No surprise there, but the size of the drop is worth seeing. In a two-to-four runner race the favourite won more than half the time; once you get to 16 or more runners it's down to about a quarter. The median favourite's price tells the same story: the market knows big fields are harder, and prices the favourite longer.
| Runners | Races (N) | Favourite won | Median favourite's BSP |
|---|---|---|---|
| 2 to 4 | 822 | 52.6% | 1.93 |
| 5 to 7 | 3,843 | 40.0% | 2.63 |
| 8 to 11 | 5,313 | 33.5% | 3.35 |
| 12 to 15 | 2,307 | 26.7% | 4.03 |
| 16 or more | 706 | 25.8% | 4.90 |
How often do odds-on favourites win?
Odds-on favourites (a Betfair SP below 2.0, so shorter than evens) won 60.3% of the time: 2,112 races. That sounds like a lot until you look at the price. The average odds-on favourite was priced to win 61.8% of the time, so they won slightly less often than their price said they should. Here's the full picture by the favourite's price. This table uses the 12,934 races with a single clear favourite.
| Favourite's BSP | Roughly in fractions | Races (N) | Won | Chance implied by the price |
|---|---|---|---|---|
| 1.01 to 1.49 | 1/100 to just shorter than 1/2 | 578 | 74.9% | 75.8% |
| 1.50 to 1.99 | 1/2 to just odds-on | 1,534 | 54.8% | 56.6% |
| 2.00 to 2.99 | evens to just under 2/1 | 3,988 | 40.0% | 40.5% |
| 3.00 to 3.99 | 2/1 to just under 3/1 | 3,368 | 28.0% | 29.0% |
| 4.00 to 5.99 | 3/1 to just under 5/1 | 3,001 | 21.7% | 21.2% |
| 6.00 and bigger | 5/1 and bigger | 465 | 13.8% | 14.9% |
Put the other way round, roughly four odds-on favourites in ten got turned over. Even the really short ones, shorter than 1/2, lost about one race in four. If you've ever stuck an odds-on jolly in a double "because it can't lose", that's your reminder that it can, and quite often does. If you want to convert between decimals and fractions yourself, horse racing odds explained has the full chart.
By course: where favourites get turned over
This is the bit I'd be most careful with. 29 courses staged 150 or more races in the season, and the favourite's strike rate ranged from 27.4% to 39.7%. Here are the five lowest and five highest.
| Course | Races (N) | Favourite won | Likely range |
|---|---|---|---|
| Musselburgh | 175 | 27.4% | 21.4% to 34.5% |
| Windsor | 190 | 27.9% | 22.0% to 34.7% |
| Chelmsford City | 178 | 29.8% | 23.5% to 36.9% |
| Ascot (Royal Ascot included) | 176 | 30.1% | 23.8% to 37.3% |
| Dundalk | 323 | 31.9% | 27.0% to 37.2% |
| Yarmouth | 170 | 38.2% | 31.3% to 45.7% |
| Lingfield | 585 | 39.1% | 35.3% to 43.2% |
| Doncaster | 258 | 39.1% | 33.4% to 45.2% |
| Chepstow | 206 | 39.3% | 32.9% to 46.1% |
| Catterick | 179 | 39.7% | 32.8% to 47.0% |
Now the honest bit. Look at those ranges. Almost every one of them includes the 35% national average. Only three courses had a range that didn't: Musselburgh and Windsor on the low side, Lingfield on the high side. And when you test 29 courses at once, you'd expect one or two to land outside their range by pure chance. So one season of course data is mostly noise. I'll add earlier seasons to this table; until then, don't build a betting plan around "favourites never win at Windsor". Course quirks like the draw matter more race by race, and I cover those in my draw bias guide.
Second and third favourites
| Position in the betting | Races (N) | Won |
|---|---|---|
| Favourite | 12,991 | 35.0% |
| 2nd favourite | 12,991 | 21.1% |
| 3rd favourite | 12,950 | 13.7% |
| One of the top three in the betting | 12,991 | 69.6% |
So the second favourite wins about one race in five, the third favourite about one in seven, and seven races in ten go to one of the first three in the betting. Flip that last one round and it's the stat I like: three races in ten are won by something outside the top three in the market. (The 3rd favourite count is slightly lower because 41 races had only two priced runners.)
Does backing favourites make money?
No. Backing every favourite to level stakes at Betfair SP returned -1.6% before commission across the season. That's £1.60 lost for every £100 staked. Betfair takes commission on your net winnings, so the real figure is worse: at an illustrative 5% on winnings it works out at about -4.7%. Your own rate depends on your account, so treat that second number as a worked example.
And this is BSP, not bookmaker SP. Bookmaker starting prices aren't in this data set, so I can't give you the SP figure from it, but I've explained the difference between the two in starting price explained.
A few slices showed small profits, such as favourites in fields of 16 or more (+3.2% before commission, but only 706 races) and outright favourites priced 4.0 to 5.99 (+1.8%, 3,001 races). That's hindsight on one season. Slice any data set enough ways and a few will come up green by chance; it's why I'm wary of most "back the favourite when..." systems, and I've tested the popular ones in horse racing betting systems. The wider point, that the market is mostly efficient and you only win by finding horses it has priced wrong, is what value betting in horse racing is about.
A high strike rate on its own tells you nothing about profit.
How I use favourite stats in my own betting
If I am honest, a strike rate on its own doesn't interest me much. What I care about is profit month to month. Anyone can talk about high win rates when they tip odds-on horses all day; the table above shows those odds-on shots winning 60% of the time and still losing money.
My newsletter is a short list for your betting of the day. It usually has 'Banker' bets, which is what I call my shorter-priced, more solid bets, and then outsiders from a new but proven system that picks out horses that have won or come close at a higher weight or mark than they're running off today. I like outsiders and each-way value, because even when they place we make more profit than an odds-on shot winning.
The other thing these numbers show is that losers are a thing. Even favourites shorter than 1/2 got beaten about one race in four in this data. So I stake in points (1pt might be £5 if you've got a £100 bank), I never go all in on a feeling, and if you're unsure about a bet, skip it. I've written more on that in staking plans for horse racing, and the rest of my approach is in my horse racing betting strategy guide.
Method and data
- Source: Betfair's free daily BSP price files for UK and Irish win markets.
- Period: races run from 1 October 2025 to 30 September 2026. One season.
- Sample: 12,991 races (10,086 UK, 2,905 Irish) with 119,341 runners. Two 'To Be Placed' place markets that sit inside Betfair's UK win files (Fontwell, 23 October 2025) were taken out, because they aren't win markets. Every runner has a BSP and counts, including the 2,159 that went off at Betfair's 1000 limit or above, and no race was dropped.
- Favourite: the runner with the shortest Betfair SP. This is the BSP favourite, not the bookmakers' SP favourite, and the two are usually but not always the same horse. In the 57 races with joint favourites, the race counts as a favourite win if either won, and returns back each joint favourite.
- Race types: classified from Betfair's race names (for example "Hcap Hrd", "Nov Stks"). Nurseries count as handicaps. Flat includes all-weather.
- Courses: both codes and surfaces combined; Royal Ascot counts as Ascot.
- 2nd and 3rd favourites: where favourites were joint, the tie is split by file order.
- Returns: level stakes at BSP, before commission unless stated. The 16 dead-heat races are settled as full wins, which flatters returns by a tiny amount.
- Likely range: a 95% Wilson confidence interval on the strike rate.
The plan is to extend this back over earlier seasons and refresh it every October, so the course and race-type rows get the bigger samples they need.
Favourites are the market's best guess, and they're right about a third of the time. The other two-thirds of the races are where outsiders and each-way bets earn their keep, and if that's more your style the place-terms maths is in my guide to each-way betting explained.
- The Guv'nor
Favourites FAQs
What percentage of favourites win horse races in the UK?
In UK races from October 2025 to September 2026, the Betfair SP favourite won 35.6% of the time (3,590 of 10,086 races). Across UK and Irish racing together it was 35.0%.
What percentage of 2nd favourites win?
The second favourite in the Betfair SP market won 21.1% of 12,991 UK and Irish races over the same season, about one in five. The third favourite won 13.7%.
Do favourites win more on the Flat or over jumps?
Slightly more over jumps: 36.1% (5,044 races) against 34.3% on the Flat (7,947 races). Whether the race is a handicap matters far more than the code.
Is the Betfair favourite the same as the SP favourite?
Usually, but not always. The bookmakers' SP and Betfair SP are separate prices, so in a tight market a different horse can head each one. That's why these figures are labelled as BSP favourites.
More in this guide
- Horse racing betting strategy: 10 rules from an ex-quant
- Value betting: finding overpriced horses
- Staking plans, tested by simulation
- What does 1pt mean in betting?
- How to bet on horse racing: the beginner's guide
I run Bolts Up Daily. I was a Quantitative Researcher at a Tier 1 Investment Bank (essentially a statistics and maths geek), and I now use those skills to analyse UK and Irish racing, profitably enough that most of your favourite bookies won't take a bet from me. Every horse I tip, I'm betting on myself, and every bet comes with a stake in points. I own racehorses too. Look, I can't guarantee every tip is going to win (anyone that can is a fraudster), but I care about profit, not strike rate.
More from The Guv'nor · How my tips service works