The Bookie Insider is a horse racing tipster service which is being offered by Graham Spencer. Supposedly, he is able to leverage inside information to ensure a profit for his subscribers.
Introduction to The Bookie Insider
I don’t think anybody reading this would disagree with me if I said that bookies are BS. Not on a personal level or anything, and most people employed in the industry are just doing a job. They don’t have a lot of interest outside of taking home a paycheque. I’m talking about the big companies though. The “close your account cos you’re winning” companies. The “good luck making money when you can only bet 50p” companies. The “Insert a four letter word of your choosing here” companies.
And would anything be more satisfying than taking down the bookies from the inside? Well, probably. But it’s certainly an appealing fantasy, and one that Graham Spencer says he can help you to fulfill with The Bookie Insider. A tipster service that is built entirely around inside information. And we’re not just talking about the bookies (although that is core to the concept), we’re talking about all elements of horse racing.
Add in a supposed 12 straight months of profit for 2019, and bloody consistent profit at that, and The Bookie Insider really does look quite appealing. And with horse racing finally back on the betting menu, maybe there is no better time to give Graham Spencer a chance? Right? Well, that depends on how willing you are to take his word…
What Does The Bookie Insider Offer?
One of the things that I will say I rather like about The Bookie Insider is that it has a very strong mission statement. The service is built around a few core tenants and aims, and I like to see that. It is always good to know where a service is going. Do these things make it a unique service in any way? Not really, no. Almost all of that comes down to Graham Spencer himself, who I will be talking about later.
I really want to start by talking about the bets themselves. Because there is a lot that is quite interesting here. In fact, in many respects, it is actually central to The Bookie Insider as a concept. Now, first things first, this is incredibly low volume. Each day you will receive just one bet that you have to place.
That bet will have varying odds with Graham Spencer claiming that you will see anything from “as low” as 3/1 going all the way up to 33/1. That is some considerable range. What kind of odds you will actually be winning at…? Well, that’s a different (and actually very poignant) question for a little later on.
Naturally in terms of the bet type, The Bookie Insider is a horse racing tipster service. There are very limited markets available and you will simply be backing a horse to win. That isn’t however a bad thing as it is a nice simple bet type which means that there is plenty of scope to utilise multiple bookies.
Now, all of that is well and good, but what are the logistics of The Bookie Insider like? Well, honestly, it is wholly unremarkable really. As I’ve mentioned, this is a daily affair and, as you would expect, selections are sent out directly via email. The content of these is pretty basic at best, however there is enough to get bets placed.
Given that The Bookie Insider is a value based service, it is important you are getting the best possible odds. As such, if you find that you aren’t in a position to get onto the best as soon as you get them, an odds comparison site will serve you well. That way you can at least know that you are still getting some potentially reasonable returns.
In terms of staking plans for The Bookie Insider, whilst there isn’t anything explicitly stated, it doesn’t seem unreasonable to deduce that this is a simple level staking affair. In the very limited evidence that Graham Spencer provides, he shows betting £200 on every bet. And it doesn’t seem like a stretch to deduce that this is a “1 point bet”.
Quite what the betting bank would be however isn’t something that is discussed. In fact, you are pretty much on your own there, which is a bit problematic in my eyes. Realistically, I’d say that you’d want at least 100 points to get started, although I’d potentially bump this higher.
The fact of the matter is that whilst The Bookie Insider is selective and you aren’t betting huge amounts per day, those long odds mean that inevitably wins simply won’t be that common place. As such, you should expect to have a respectable sized drawdown, just in case you need it.
Which actually brings me in a roundabout way to the strike rate for The Bookie Insider. Or rather, one should say the lack thereof. The fact is that Graham Spencer provides no information at all in this regard. Nor is there any substantive proofing from which you could look to ascertain such a number. Honestly, given his background, this is very disappointing to me.
What we are given are screenshots of just 7 bets. Of these, 1 is a none runner and one is a losing bet. To me, the implication of this is that 5 bets in 6 will come in for you. At the odds that The Bookie Insider entails, I don’t believe that this is a sustainable figure at all. Best case scenario, those results are genuine, but more likely than not cherry picked from a great week.
How Does The Bookie Insider Work?
Central to everything that makes The Bookie Insider work is Graham Spencer himself. Because, as the name of the service suggests, he seemingly has insiders working with him at the bookies. Contacts that he says he has made as a “Chief Accounts Manager for one of the world’s biggest bookmakers” for 30 years. So seemingly, he has some pedigree.
And during that time, Graham Spencer also claims that he “dealt primarily with clients from racing’s elite facilitating the largest bets from unrestricted accounts across Europe – those are the guys we afford a large amount of credit and tailored bets to”. Now, this is very interesting to me because it is very much at odds with what most punters experience, but I’ll come back to this later.
So, having established his past, we can now talk about how The Bookie Insider works. Because the key claim here boils down to the claim that Graham Spencer is receiving “confidential trade notes afforded to [him] by very close contacts”. This information, he says, he is now sharing with your average punter. Honestly though, it’s quite difficult not to be a little sceptical of all of that.
I don’t think it’s unreasonable to say that the inner workings of The Bookie Insider have a whiff of “tall tale” about them. And Graham Spencer doesn’t provide… Well, frankly, any evidence that backs up his claims. Of course, he is very conveniently positioned to say that he simply can’t provide that evidence without compromising his contacts. For my money though, all of this boils down to simply taking somebody’s word that they are who they say they are.
What is the Initial Investment?
Graham Spencer has two differing pricing structures that are available. Firstly, you can sign up for The Bookie Insider through a proprietary payment platform. This is, by a long way, the cheapest way of signing up, however your purchases do become much more restrictive if you take this option.
The first subscription option for The Bookie Insider is a 7 day free trial, after which it is then priced at £19.95 (plus VAT) per month. As well as this, there is an option for a quarterly subscription which is priced at just £29.95 every 3 months(again, plus VAT).
If you are looking for a longer subscription than this, then Graham Spencer offers a few options for The Bookie Insider on an annual subscription at a cost of £59 (plus VAT). Finally, there is a lifetime license which Graham Spencer offers. This allows you to sign up, for life, for a one time cost of £97 (again, plus VAT) however this is advertised as a limited time offer.
As well as this option, The Bookie Insider is also being sold directly through Clickbank. This comes with a full 30 day money back guarantee. It is however, as I mentioned earlier by far the priciest option. If you want to buy this way, you can expect to pay £99 plus VAT. This gets you a 6 month subscription.
If you want to sign up for this for the full year, there is an additional 6 month “top up”. This requires an upfront cost of an additional £89 (plus VAT).
This means that over the course of a whole year, using Graham Spencer’s payment platform, would mean that you see a very substantial £130 discount. This is of course compared to the cost of The Bookie Insider when purchased through Clickbank.
What is the Rate of Return?
There are two key numbers to consider when you talk about how The Bookie Insider has performed. The first claim is Graham Spencer saying that he made £54,000 in tax free income over 2019. The other number and in my opinion the more important one is the points profit.
Graham Spencer actually provides us with a claimed monthly breakdown in this regard which demonstrates that over the course of the year there was a profit made of 327.25 points. This is within the realm of possibility (although realistically, it would be a very good year).
To me though, the two numbers don’t quite seem to tally up. You see, in order to make that £54,000 profit, Graham Spencer would have been betting £165.01 per point. That isn’t outside of the realm of possibility, but it is also one hell of an esoteric amount to be staking.
Meanwhile, if you use the £200 stakes that are demonstrated in the “evidence” for The Bookie Insider, you end up at £65,450 which is significantly more than that headlining amount. My point here is that something doesn’t add up. And given that Graham Spencer provides no real proofing, there is no way of knowing quite what that is.
Conclusion for The Bookie Insider
There are a lot of elements of The Bookie Insider that frankly, I just can’t believe. Things that just don’t really make sense to me. Now, the first thing that really stood out to me as questionable in terms of Graham Spencer’s story is that he claims he was working with people who would bet big money, receive unlimited credit, etc. For any bookmaker to be extending these courtesies, it seems very likely to me that these people weren’t winning huge amounts of money.
Because in my and a lot of other people’s experience, even going a couple of grand up can see your accounts restricted. The letters come in saying that your accounts are restricted to betting pennies or simply closing them. As such, I find it highly unlikely that these same bookmakers will allow bettors who are consistently winning to rinse their accounts.
And yet, we are told that these bets and the information that Graham Spencer leans on is coming from contacts within these “elite” bettors. Now I’ll admit, it certainly makes for an interesting sounding story. What it doesn’t do however is convince me that this is really genuine or above board.
Nor does the disparity in terms of the income. I know I’ve just talked about it in depth, but it cannot be overstated that these numbers should add up pretty nicely. But they don’t. That to me is a red flag. Almost as if somebody has thought up the numbers they want to portray, before they’ve figured out how to portray them.
Let’s be honest, £54,000 a year sounds… Well, it just sounds plausible. Graham Spencer isn’t saying The Bookie Insider will have you in a Lamborghini before the end of the year. More, an amount that somebody on a decent salary might take home. And 20 plus points per month also sounds good. This is a number that is once again within the realm of possibility.
The fact is though if The Bookie Insider was in any way genuine, these numbers should add up, at least, better than they do. And if Graham Spencer was genuine, he’d have provided some proofing instead of just 1 week of bets. Especially since he comes from within the betting industry. There is little excuse for that kind of ignorance.
And of course, there is definitely a conversation to be had about the pricing structure. I am familiar enough with the people who appear to be managing The Bookie Insider and this isn’t anything new. But I am yet to see a single reason why they go so far out of their way to encourage people to not use the payment method that offers a refund.
I don’t want to say that there is anything shady going on. In fact, I am sure that there are plenty of good reasons why this is done. But really, it just seems to be a new standard and that does concern me slightly. At the end of the day, you are being pushed into giving up consumer rights. That is difficult to ignore.
Factoring in all of this, I don’t think that I can bring myself to really recommend The Bookie Insider. I just don’t see a lot of valid reasons to invest your time or your money. Ultimately, I think that Graham Spencer as a “person” creates more problems than he solves, and it is honestly rather difficult to look past this. Even the photo of “Graham Spencer” is blatantly false (it’s labelled as Peter Collins when you look at the image).
When there is that big a question mark over that much of a service, I can’t help but feel like it probably warrants avoiding. Especially because there just doesn’t seem to be any answers to the questions that The Bookie Insider throws up either.
