Hollywood ante-post betting percentages (calling Dev)

Hi Dev,

Was just wondering what your percentage parameters were in your ante-post betting.
It seems like you betting to about 140% on most races, which is kinda tight.
I even noticed on Cpt 2 on Wednesday you are betting to over 150% !

Maybe the percentages could be shown at the bottom of the field, that way punters can get a quick idea of whether the market is fair or not ? Would be very innovative if a website displayed percentages.

interbet does this well

Good call Ruffian. Would love that.

Hi Dev,
Was wondering if you had time to look at my question ?

They recouping there money that they gave away yesterday.

I see Dev PM'd me this morning. I only saw it now. He referred query on and they should reply shortly.

some of these one or two horse books are impossible to bet antepost on imo

Hi Ruffian

The short delay in responding is because we’ve all been caught up in the admin of refunds and adjustments resulting from the “My Sanctuary” saga.

Thanks for your query regarding the (very) early Hollywood betting.

This is a recent innovation between the Winning Form/Sporting Post and Hollywood Teams, aimed at getting betting out in the HW shops and on the internet much sooner than is currently happening in South Africa, to give punters an opportunity to have an interest early on.

From a publishing perspective (e.g. Winning Form/Sporting Post) the aim is to provide form guides with “real” betting. The betting available at Hollywood will ultimately be similar to what is published in SP and WF (subject to normal market moves).

We have our odds-makers working closely with Winning Form/Sporting Post in an attempt to get our betting out quickly and therefor as close as possible to the betting shown in the publications.

Printing deadlines dictate that there is about an hour from the time that final fields and declarations are received, in which time the odds-makers have to price up on between 8 and 10 races (12 on big days) and on anything between 1 and 4 race meetings.

As you’ll appreciate, this is quite a mission, but something we are working hard to achieve, and are improving with each publication.

You will have noticed that we are yet to really market this, as we are still in the early stages, but our ultimate target (in a normal week) is to have all the betting:
• for the weekend meetings (Fri – PE; Sat & Sun – GAU, WCP, KZN) out by 12h00 on the Wednesday before.
• for the midweek meetings (Mon – KIM; Tue – KZN, GAU day/night, Wed – WCP, Thu – GAU, and if possible MAU for Sat/Sun and Zim for Sunday) out by 12h00 on the Friday before.

There are other considerations, such as horses that are double engaged – for example run on Saturday and are also carded to run the following Wednesday, reserve runners, non-declaration and change of jockeys, going and weather.

We are currently aiming to get the early betting percentage to between 130 and 140, taking into account, amongst others, factors such as
• field size,
• race type e.g. Handicap/Maiden/Feature/Juvenile,
• first timers,
• unexposed form e.g. horses going a different distance for the first time
These percentages may fluctuate as market forces take over, but we aim to keep them as stable as possible, and are obviously much lower come race time.

The reason we are only aiming to go “live” with the betting by midday on the days stated above, even though the publications are printed through the night before, is to give the odds makers some time to reassess their early (very rushed) pricing up and adjust where necessary.

I hope this sheds some light on what we are aiming at with the hope it will add value to the experience of betting on South African racing.

*For anyone out there with experience (or not), who fancies themselves as odds makers please pm me and I will send you the email address to send your C.V.

Thanks for your answer. I been away, then the family been sick (projectile vomiting !), so haven't managed to reply.
I appreciate a firm being so open about their ante-post percentages. I've noticed other firms are somewhat haphazard with percentages. It's nice to be able to expect a certain fixed structure.
I would love to hear from other firms about their percentages. Bettingworld, Keith Ho ?
Kudos to Hollywood for the betting and also for not cutting limits. Most bookmakers don't take it on the chin if they lay the wrong price.