Racing Intelligence is a new horse racing tipster service which is operated by Matthew Walton. He claims that his network of contacts allow him to make a very substantial profit from betting on very selective races.
Introduction to Racing Intelligence by Matthew Walton
Matthew Walton has done a very good job of presenting his professional image as a bettor who is very much in the know. This is a somewhat subjective concept however and I do want to come back to this later on in this article.
In terms of Racing Intelligence, the entire service is built on his claimed time working as an industry insider. To give you an idea of what you are getting yourself into, let me quote the headline from Racing Intelligence:
“Direct from the bookies… the most valuable, sensitive and sought after racing intelligence from owners, trainers and other connected insiders”.
Access to that kind of information is the dream for most punters and there is simply no getting around the fact that there is a very immediate appeal here. When I have looked products from Matthew Walton, there was a lot of initial appeal there, however a stream of people came forward with their own experiences. Is Racing Intelligence likely to be a repeat of this? Let’s have a look.
What Does Racing Intelligence Offer?
As a tipster service, Racing Intelligence is somewhat unique in how it is all set up. First of all, Matthew Walton is very clear about the fact that this is not a daily tipster service. Those who are looking to receive bets every morning by email should look elsewhere he says.
This is because when selections are made available to Matthew Walton (and subsequently Racing Intelligence), they are usually via text message or Whatsapp and apparently come with very short notice. I won’t linger too much on this as I want to examine it further a little later on.
This does all have an impact on the volume of bets that you will receive through Racing Intelligence which is claimed to be an average of 19 per month.
The bets themselves appear to all be win bets.
This would fit with the nature of Racing Intelligence (since the bets are supposedly being relayed from markers, it makes sense that they would be sure a horse is going to win) and of the few examples that are given, this also seems to be the case. It is worth noting that there is a strong bias towards longer odds with Racing Intelligence however these should shorten throughout the day.
This means that if you want to make the most out of the service, you need to be able to work quickly when you receive Matthew Walton’s advice.
In terms of the staking, there doesn’t appear to be any specific plan in place for Racing Intelligence, however Matthew Walton does have some choice words in the sales material. He says that the service isn’t designed for those who “break into a cold swear putting, say, £100 or £200 on an expected winner (rather than fivers or tenners)”.
Personally, I find this to be quite an insulting way of approaching things, however Matthew Walton clearly understands who he is marketing Racing Intelligence at. Irrespective of this, the staking is very interesting to me and does come into play when looking at the results for Racing Intelligence.
Finally I want to talk about the strike rate, or more specifically, the lack thereof. There is one reference to the claimed fact that Irish marker bets are “extremely selective” and have a strike rate of 55%. There are however no figures provided for the service as a whole, nor do we receive any proofing for Racing Intelligence. This means that there isn’t even a number that we can attempt to calculate.
How Does Racing Intelligence Work?
Racing Intelligence is fundamentally based around the idea of markers still being a thing. For those who aren’t familiar with the term (and I imagine that a lot of younger people reading this won’t be), there was a time when bookies were very much on their own when it came to compiling odds.
There were lots of things that you could go off, but the truth of the matter was that if a race was supposed to happen a certain way, it would. Often with a small number of people making a lot of money off a race. Markers were those in the know.
They might win often, and they might win big, but paying out £1,000 on a £100 bet could potentially save a bookie tens of thousands on the wider race.
Here is one of Matthew’s Claims:
Matthew Walton claims that he has a number of employees in place at bookmakers across Europe, all of whom deal with markers. When a marker calls in a bet, Matthew Walton receives notification of this and he notifies Racing Intelligence subscribers.
This seems incredibly straight forward, however I feel the need to highlight that there is a lot of evidence to suggest that the practice of using markers is almost dead these days. I want to get to this a little later, but I am rather cynical of the claims made.
What is the Initial Investment?
If you want to get access to Racing Intelligence then you have to be willing to pay a very hefty price. In fact, Matthew Walton says that he is not “going to be asking for chump change when it comes to premier league quality, almost impossible to access winning information”. What this actually means is that you will be paying a monthly subscription of £97 plus VAT.
This makes Racing Intelligence one of the more expensive products that I have looked at. It is rather telling to me that Matthew Walton says that you should take a long term view to Racing Intelligence and give it at least 6 months.
It is worth noting that there is a full 30 day money back guarantee in place with Racing Intelligence, however I have heard of people struggling with customer service from Matthew Walton before now.
What is the Rate of Return?
When it comes to the income potential of Racing Intelligence, there are a lot of numbers thrown about. These range from around £900 on one win all the way up to £2,000 for a win on another horse.
The most telling number to me however is Matthew Walton’s claim that on average, Racing Intelligence wins £1,312 per month. It is worth keeping in mind however that there is no proofing provided for the service as well as the fact that there is no information about staking (a point that I do want to come back to).
Conclusion to Racing Intelligence by Matthew Walton
There is a lot of ground to cover with Racing Intelligence so I want to get straight into it. First things first, there is the claims around how Racing Intelligence works. The idea of markers is pretty well documented, however the advent of betting markets have altered the need for this. There are a few complex reasons for this that I want to quickly touch upon.
First things first, there is the fact that most big bettors prefer to use betting markets rather than bookies. This is because of account closures and restricted stakes. This suggests to me that if bookmakers were still using markers, they wouldn’t be engaging in this kind of activity.
The other thing is that it is quite common knowledge that bookmakers base their odds on wider markets. Furthermore, there are allegations that they will use betting exchanges to lay off certain bets and limit their liabilities.
Is any of this true? Honestly, who knows, but it is believable.
The betting world has moved on from a time in the 80’s, 90’s and even the early 00’s where it was much easier to manipulate odds and fix races. Does it still happen, possibly, but I can’t find any evidence that it is on a wide enough scale to warrant something like Racing Intelligence being genuine.
This brings me on to some other points. First of all, I want to talk about the income potential for the service. Using Matthew Walton’s talk of £100-£200 stakes, this means that the average monthly profit for Racing Intelligence could be as low as 6.5-13 points depending on the stakes used.
This is ridiculously low if I am honest, especially for the money. This leads nicely into the fact that I can’t see value to be had here as the costs are quite outweighed by the potential risk in my book. Don’t forget, one of the strongest services has a strike rate of 55%, how much will you spend before you hit winners that make Racing Intelligence profitable?
Given all of the experience that Matthew Walton claims to have with betting as a whole, I would expect a wholly more professional tipster service to be put together. Honestly, I am about 1,500 words into this and I could quite easily keep dissecting this service and why I find it to be questionable.
Honestly though, I just don’t see the need at this point. We aren’t given a single scrap of evidence that Racing Intelligence is genuine and that is a big problem for me. Especially when somebody is asking you to essentially pay him almost £600 to trial the service.
On top of this, the reports that I have seen from people who have dealt with Matthew Walton before are far from flattering. This only adds another element of risk in my opinion. With all of this in mind, I simply can’t bring myself to recommend Racing Intelligence.
I have seen much much better products for a hell of a lot less money than Racing Intelligence and I don’t believe that that is an unfair statement at all.
i’ve been with this ervice a month (at 13/7/19) and it’s 5 points up at betfair sp which is encouraging tbh. that’s with 5% comm deducted.
This chap also goes golf tips..its done on a long term basis (ie expect losses) I had too many losses to stick around further. I signed up for another service where the name was hidden to find it was this chap as well. Hes all over the place hiden behind stuff, Hes a nice enough man – in the long run maybe his products work. They didnt work for me and I ended up losing money.