Racing Business is a new horse racing tipster service offered through the Bet Kudos arm of the Betfan group. The selections themselves come courtesy of tipster Mark Handford.
What does the product offer?
I feel that it is of great importance with Racing Business to start by saying that there is a very clear separation between the marketing and what the product is actually capable of. With that in mind, I can get down to the proverbial business. The marketing that Bet Kudos have used for Racing Business makes it sound like this is a money making machine with the headline boldly claiming that Mark Hanford made “£25,000 profit from just 68 betting days”. Well, sign me up right? Not necessarily, as I will explore in detail.
When looking at any service the first thing that I consider is the logistics of the service and Racing Business is a very interesting in this regard. If you look at the historic proofing provided by Bet Kudos, Mark Hanford has started out operating a somewhat sporadic tipster approach with extensive periods between bets. At some point, Racing Business as a service has changed drastically and started to become a near daily service. There is nothing inherently wrong with this, however the change seems to have become more in line with the Betfan approach to tips (generally speaking, their services are high volume and daily).
As is typical for products from within the Betfan group, Mark Hanford issues his selections through email. There is also a member’s area on the Bet Kudos site as well. These are all pretty standard arrangements however and there is nothing particularly noteworthy here.
What is noteworthy is the seeming change in approach to betting that Racing Business underwent, incidentally around the same time the consistency of betting started to change. For the first 6 months or so, Mark Hanford used singles, each way and the occasional small accumulator bet. These were all relatively straight forward and were ultimately proving profitable, despite some pretty long losing streaks.
Apparently coming out of nowhere, the approach to betting with Racing Business changes tack massively reverse forecast bets, Dutch bets and even Dutch Lay bets suddenly being added to the roster. These have since started to fade out however truth be told, the months where these additional bet types were prominent generally performed worse than the more selective period towards the start of Racing Business.
Truthfully, this could well mean nothing and it could simply be that Mark Hanford was trying something new out and it didn’t work. This is a practice that I am all for. Every tipster should be trying to improve their game and their system but to do this with a service that is actively being proofed creates anomalies. The problem with anomalies is that they can make data appear untrustworthy and questionable and this is exactly what has happened with Racing Business.
Numbers wise, there is a staking plan in place for Racing Business with Bet Kudos pushing a 2% compounded staking plan. In contrast, the proofing on their website for Racing Business shows stakes of around 2 points to 5 points with the latter becoming more common as the service has moved on into 2017. In terms of the strike rate, this is pretty consistently around the 20-30% margin with the exception of a few months. The nature of the early selections for Racing Business make it difficult to work out a fair and consistent strike rate however.
How does the product work?
In the sales material for Racing Business there is very little said about what the actual selection process entails. There is however plenty of information about Mark Hanford’s history with horse racing. This includes looking at the knowledge and skill that supposedly go into Racing Business. The suggestion here seems to be this should be enough to entice you.
Whilst I have said that there is very little information about the selection process because there are a few details that seem to offer a very basic insight. For example, the sales material for Racing Business does talk a little about how Mark Hanford looks at form and how he looks at a race. There certainly isn’t enough here to allay my concerns about Racing Business however.
What is the initial investment?
At the time of writing, Bet Kudos are offering two different options for Racing Business. These are a monthly subscription (which actually only runs for 28 days) or alternatively, you can subscriber on a quarterly basis (which runs for 30 days). These are charged at £47 and £94 respectively.
As is the case with all products from within the Betfan group, there is no real money back guarantee in place. It does state in the terms and conditions however that any requests for refunds will be reviewed and provided where they feel that it is warranted.
What is the rate of return?
According to the proofing supplied by Bet Kudos, since May of 2016, Racing Business has produced an overall profit of 537.38 points. 368.04 of these have come about since the start of 2017 with 282.26 in January alone. This is using the stakes that are listed on the proofing results. If however you had chosen to use a compounded 2% staking plan, then you would have made £27,822 by February 3rd.
I feel that this result is something that is unlikely to be repeated however as the majority of the profits have come about from a single winning streak. Given that these cannot be reasonably expected given the strike rate, I wouldn’t anticipate this situation arising again in the immediate future.
Conclusion
I am at something of a loss when it comes to Racing Business. If I have to put my cards on the table, there is a lot here that seems to be the result of a little bit of luck and that is far from a good thing. The one thing that I say should be put before anything else when it comes to a tipster service is consistency. Unfortunately, in the case of Racing Business I don’t see where there is any real consistency with the bet types switching massively and profits that are boosted by a lucky winning run.
If Racing Business were cheaper, I may be inclined to say that it is possibly worth a punt as truth be told, I don’t think that Mark Hanford is bad at what he does. In fact, from what he has said and the overall picture, I think that he is probably pretty good at it. The biggest exception that I have with Racing Business (to bring things full circle) is the way that Bet Kudos are marketing the system.
It is clear to anybody that knows betting in any capacity that the kind of results that have been achieved are exceptional and I mean that in every sense of the word. Personally, I wouldn’t be too keen to invest in Racing Business as it currently stands. I would want to see how Mark Hanford is doing a further 3 months down the line to get a more accurate picture of what to expect.
