- Sports Betting Index
I had better start out by saying this is not some piece about me ditching my life here and going to start a snail farm or similar ilk in France but purely about the first year of running a betting service based on French National Hunt racing. How I got into it is all a bit strange - I only started looking at this avenue in betting in May 2020 during lockdown and the French went back racing earlier than we did. The first two bets I placed won, if they hadn’t maybe I wouldn’t be writing this today. For 15 months I put the bets up for free on Twitter and it was obvious I had found a niche I was quite good at with a huge ROI yet I was really struggling to get bets on myself from the few accounts I had left. I had vowed quite a few years ago not to run a betting service again, it really is incredibly stressful, but here was something I thought I can make people money and myself to boot. I didn’t want all the admin associated with having hundreds of subscribers paying monthly as it would distract me from the job in hand so I charged a fair amount of money (£200 a quarter) and limited the number to 25 people to “protect” the prices.
It has actually been a fun year, I needed something new in my life and I have reconnected with some people I have got to know over the past 20 years and “met” some new faces, this business is fascinating in finding new people to talk to who you would never normally interact with. It has instilled in me a new sense of belief in what I can be good at and a huge faith in believing in what you can do and sticking to simple discipline even when results can cast huge doubt on whether you are doing the right thing. I actually owe a huge debt to those who kept saying “keep going, the results speak for themselves and bad runs happen”. I guess there I am alluding to the run when 27 tips went by without an outright winner but I was still comfortably beating the SP 90% of the time. Most people will run a mile from such a string of results but I am fortunate having the subscribers I do – who actually get how betting turns out sometimes.
If you want to follow a tipster – analyse their results, there really are some good ones out there, but sit down and think – could I actually sustain that sort of bad run? And it’s as much mentally as financially. It’s one of the reasons I probably got out of golf betting full time, I’m sure people could tell me what the actual losing run could be like if backing 100/1 shots – it would probably run into years if you are being selective! It’s why most golf tipsters these days will put up 5/6 bets per event, I get it – it cuts down on variance.
Anyway – I digress! Final figures are thus for the first year +£4257 Staked £13800 30.8% ROI
It will vary from subscriber to subscriber – having extra places will make a difference, it really is quite surprising how often a horse will finish one place out of the standard place terms. It’s below what I had hoped for in terms of profit but in terms of ROI I really shouldn’t knock myself but you have to be your own worse critic. I have had people come and go and the overwhelming reason for leaving is not getting on, it always will be. I have some places available for the next “quarter” which will actually run until 1st December as August is always quiet, drop me a line if interested.