Last Updated on January 30, 2023 by The Betting Dad Team

Horse racing refunds are a common promotion run by various bookmakers.

When Matched Betting, they give you a low-risk chance of regular profit.

On busy race days and Saturdays in particular, there are often numerous opportunities for you.

What Are Horse Racing Refunds?

These are refunds given by bookmakers depending on certain outcomes of a horse race.

The most popular horse racing refund is receiving cash or a free bet if your horse finishes in a certain position.

At the time of writing, Sky Bet, Paddy Power, Coral and Will Hill run the best versions of these offers.

Sky Bet and Paddy Power often give a refund if your horse finishes 2nd and 3rd and sometimes even 4th.

Sky Bet offer a £10 cash refund whereas the refund given by Paddy Power is a free bet.

This is usually for one select race on a given day.

Will Hill has arguably the best horse racing refunds offer.

They allow you to bet on every race at a specific race meeting on a given day.

So, for example, you could place a bet on every race at Ascot and potentially receive a cash refund several times.

There are typically six or seven races each Saturday you can bet on using this offer.

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How To Make Money From Horse Racing Refunds

With these offers, you won’t be making a profit every time.

You should be making either a very small loss or a profit (if your horse finishes in the right position).

Of course with Matched Betting, you are never trying to guess which horse will finish where.

You can simply follow the best odds to give you a long-term mathematical edge over the bookmakers.

You can use a basic Matched Betting strategy with horse racing refunds to give you great value bets.

The strategy is:

– Place a back bet with the bookmaker.

– Place a lay bet at a betting exchange.

That’s it.

This locks in a small loss with the potential for a refund.

You then just need to check later in the day to see where your horse finished.

The most crucial part is ensuring the bookmaker and exchange odds are close for the horse you back and lay.

The closer the odds, the more value you are taking from the bookmaker.

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How To Find The Best Odds Easily

You can use OUTPLAYED‘s Match Catcher to help you effortlessly find and place the best bets.

The Match Catcher features real-time odds on all qualifying horse racing refunds bets on any given day.

These bets can be filtered by bookmaker and betting exchange to suit your preferences.

You can also set up alerts to be notified when a suitable bet is found that fits the given criteria.

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Placing The Bets

The horses with the best odds matches are listed in order on the OUTPLAYED Match Catcher.

For example, at the time of writing a horse named Arrivederci is the current best match with back odds of 5.5 and lay odds of 5.9.

You could place a £10 bet (the max size bet eligible for the offer) with Will Hill and then open the calculator by clicking the calculator symbol.

The calculator will display the details for the bet and set a default lay stake based on a £10 back stake.

(Provided you have linked your OUTPLAYED account with Smarkets, you can lay the bet with one click from the calculator).

You can see below, by using this horse, you would lock in a -£0.68p loss as a worst-case scenario.

However, if the horse finishes second, you would receive a £10 cash refund.

This would leave you with +£9.32 profit (£10 – £0.68 = £9.32)

This is brilliant value and you can work out your implied odds to demonstrate this.

Potential Profit/Qualifying Loss = Implied Odds

9.32/0.68 = 13.70

So you are getting odds as high as 13.70 for the horse to finish 2nd.

Considering the horse is around 5.5 to win and finish 1st, you are creating an exceptional value bet.

After placing a back and lay bet, you can forget about that specific race and move on to the next.

You can uncheck that particular horse race on the OUTPLAYED Match Catcher filter so bets from that race will no longer be displayed.

This makes it easy to keep track of which races you need a horse for.

Furthermore, it rules out the chance of you placing more than one bet in the same race by mistake.

If you place another bet on a horse in the same race, the refund offer would only apply to the first horse you backed.

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Final Thoughts On Horse Racing Refunds

Using this low-risk strategy when doing horse racing refunds is a numbers game.

You just need to focus on setting as many of these value bets up as possible.

Although there may be some losing runs, they are not particularly tough to take as the qualifying losses should be very small.

One refund will cover several losses to keep you motivated through any slow patches.