Royal Ascot Odds & Betting

See the latest Royal Ascot betting odds for this year. We've priced up this year's runners and riders for all 36 races, including the prestigious Ascot Gold Cup.

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Royal Ascot Odds and Popular Betting Markets 

The flat horse racing season at Royal Ascot runs from April to October, starting with Royal Ascot Trials Day and finishing with the QIPCO British Champions Day. The track hosts 18 days of flat racing annually, including the five-day Royal Ascot Festival every June.

The Royal Ascot Festival is the jewel in the venue’s crown, with this typically featuring 35 races in total and no fewer than eight Grade 1 events.  

Here at Parimatch, we always offer extensive coverage of the Royal Ascot Festival and its numerous races. But what are the festival’s most popular betting markets, and are there any insights that can help inform your selections? Let’s find out!

Getting Started – A Brief History of Royal Ascot

Royal Ascot is one of the world's oldest and most prestigious race meetings, having been founded by Queen Anne in 1711.

The festival we know and love today began taking shape in 1807 when the now iconic Gold Cup was inaugurated. The festival was a four-day meeting at this stage, while it was the only race event held at Ascot until 1939. It became a five-day meeting as recently as 2002 and now hosts an impressive 35 races.

As the event has continued to grow in size and popularity, it has evolved into one of the most lucrative meetings in the UK. As recently as 2023, close to £8 million was made available in cumulative prize funds, most of which was paid out via the 18 Group races and eight G1 events.

The eight G1 races include the Queen Anne Stakes, the Prince of Wales Stakes, the Royal Ascot Gold Cup, The Commonwealth Cup and the Queen Elizabeth II Jubilee Stakes. Ladies Day remains the most popular day of action, with this taking place during the middle of Thursday and hosting the iconic Ascot Gold Cup.

Betting Markets at Royal Ascot – The Most Popular Options

While Royal Ascot may be one of the UK’s most famous flat race meetings, it offers access to many betting markets and wager types synonymous with all horse racing events. Here’s our analysis of the most popular bet types at the Royal Ascot Festival:

  • Win Betting: This is the simplest and most popular Royal Ascot bet type that requires you to pick the winner of a particular race. This can unlock highly competitive ante-post prices, especially ahead of G1 races.
  • Betting Without the Favourite: This variation on the win market enables you to pick which horse will finish the highest outside of the betting favourite. This is particularly popular during races with a heavy, short price favourite.
  • Each-Way Betting: This combines two bets in a single wager, as you simultaneously back a horse to win and achieve a placed finish. You’ll divide your stake between these two outcomes, and place finishes will be paid at a percentage of the starting odds.
  • Forecast Betting: There are different variations of the forecast bet. With a ‘straight’ forecast, you’ll pick horses to finish 1st and 2nd in a race (in the correct order). A ‘reverse’ forecast consists of two bets and requires you to predict who will finish first and second in any order, while it costs twice as much as a straight forecast wager.
  • Tricast: A tricast is an extension of forecast betting and requires you to bet on the horses that will place in the top three.  Once again, you’ll have to predict the precise order in which they’ll finish.

Our Royal Ascot Betting Insights – The Key Considerations

Like Epsom Derby weekend and the Cheltenham Festival, Royal Ascot features multiple races and up to 500 different runners. While it can be hard to analyse form and pick winners, several betting insights can be derived from historic trends and performances. For example:

  • Analyse Royal Ascot’s Best Trainers and Jockeys: Before you bet on any Royal Ascot race, we’d recommend checking out the best-performing trainers and jockeys. Over the last five flat racing seasons, Andrew Balding has emerged as the standout trainer at Ascot, recording 31 wins and 97 placed finishes from 316 runs. His horses have put 31% of the time at Ascot. During the same period, Ryan Moore is the best-performing jockey, having ridden 35 winners and earned an impressive 112 places from just 274 starts.
  • Favour Quick Horses Over Stayers: Ascot is a right-handed galloping course and one that typically favours quick thoroughbreds, as opposed to durable stayers. This is especially true during shorter races (such as the G1 Commonwealth Cup). At the same time, Ascot also has a relatively steep incline on the final straight that’s particularly hard for stayers to navigate successfully. The course also plays hard and fast in most conditions, especially during the summer when the weather is good or good to firm.
  • Give Special Consideration to Gold Cup Favourites: The Ascot Gold Cup remains the meeting’s showpiece race and tends to suit early betting favourites. In fact, 12 of the 20 race renewals between 2003 and 2023 saw the starting favourite prevail while being first in the betting market, one of the few trend factors producing ten or more winners during this period. This trend also delivered the best LSP of +8.13, so consider the bookies’ favourites when wagering on the Ascot Gold Cup.

Strategic and disciplined bankroll management is incredibly important across five days of racing at Royal Ascot. So, we’d recommend that you check out our Safer Gambling Portal here at Parimatch, as this offers you access to tools such as customisable deposit limits and even help with self-exclusion.

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