The Racing Life is a new to market horse racing tipster service which is operated by new tipster stable, BETViral. They say that the service has a strong focus on longer term income.
Introduction to The Racing Life
It isn’t very often that something genuinely “new” happens in the world of tipsters and stables. Sometimes a big media name might sign up with an existing stable, tipsters might transfer management, but actual new things isn’t all that often. In fact, the last “new” thing that really stood out to me was the launch of Betting Gods. And we all know how well that ended up turning out. They are now one of the most reputable tipster management services on the market.
So where am I going with this? Well, the subject of today’s review, The Racing Life is an entirely new product (nothing new), but it has been launched by an entirely new tipster stable. And BETViral have seemingly landed in style with tips producing the kinds of profits I might expect a tipster to make in a year, in just a few months. It is an exciting thing and make no mistake! Not just for the result of this service, but potentially future services as well. Especially because they are doing some quite exciting things that could easily carry over to other tipsters.
Unfortunately though, there are some pretty big question marks that hang over The Racing Life. And if I’m honest, by extension, BETViral. They really do a lot to temper some of that initial intrigue and excitement. Whether or not they could be counted as a deal breaker is a bigger and much more debatable question. And it is this debate that I can’t help but feel will dominate much of this review. And with that in mind, let’s get to it.
What Does The Racing Life Offer?
I feel like I have probably come in a bit hard on The Racing Life. And it really isn’t unfounded. But there are a lot of good things here too. This isn’t something that is black and white just patently bad. Furthermore, I think that if the positives can be built upon, then BETViral can actually potentially be a decent player in the game.
One of the areas that I think is commendable is the way the service is managed. Firstly, The Racing Life isn’t based around email. Whilst this is very much the industry standard, I personally have rather mixed feelings. I simply cannot tell you how often I’ve found out that I’ve missed tips by virtue of having missed an email. Sure, this is ultimately on me, but with so many more noticeable alternatives available, it does seem a touch archaic.
What BETViral use with The Racing Life is an app called Telegram. This is described (by the app creators, admittedly) as the fastest way to send a message in the world. Whether there is validity to this claim doesn’t really matter to me here though. What does matter is that when BETViral send out a tip, it pops up as a notification on your phone. Much harder to miss than a single email out of 18.
These contain all of the right insight too. There is information on which bookies have the best odds available, as well as a few others that are also offering decent odds. This is something incredibly basic, however, it is also something that far too many tipsters miss out. Again, it is another definite plus for BETViral and The Racing Life. As is the inclusion of industry offers which are sent out via email. It all helps build up an idea of where to bet, and I rate that.
With that out of the way, let’s talk about the bets themselves. As I often find myself saying when it comes to a horse racing tipster service, trying to jaBETViral up the bets and make them sound interesting is difficult. Because there are only really win, each way, and laying markets. The Racing Life is even simpler with all bets simply being back to win.
In terms of odds, things are… Well, they’re interesting. BETViral’s proofing shows a range from 1.91 all the way up to 21.00, however, this isn’t reflective of the service at all. Instead, I feel like the average odds of 3.42 really show off what sort of things you can expect from The Racing Life. The fact of the matter is that this simply isn’t a service that you win big on.
Fortunately, you do tend to win quite often. The overall strike rate for The Racing Life comes in at 40.52% between November 2020 and February 2021. And with strike rates ranging from 31.58% up to 51.52%, I think it is probably pretty fair to say that this is a pretty accurate reflection of what you an expect.
This reasonable strike rate is incredibly important here because the staking plan is definitely… I will say controversial, at least in my opinion. Every bet in BETViral’s proofing is to 5 point stakes. This kind of number can start to add up incredibly quickly. Of course, this drastically increases the profits (a point that I want to come to very soon). But it also has a huge effect on the losses and draw-down you can face.
There have been a few losing streaks with The Racing Life, none of which are substantial, if I’m honest. The longest was 8 bets. However, those 8 bets mean a loss of 40 points. And because of the odds involved, even with the 5 point stakes, it can take a few winners in order to make up that deficit.
With 1-3 bets per day (with the odd day producing no bets), this really isn’t the end of the world. However, my concern with The Racing Life are that a run of a few bad days (which is almost inevitable) could really do some serious damage to your betting bank. It can also really damage a punters confidence in a system.
How Does The Racing Life Work?
Rather frustratingly, we don’t actually get given any information at all about what The Racing Life actually entails. We are mostly told about the simplicity of the service and that all selections are NAPs. For those who aren’t familiar with this, they simply a tipsters most confident or best bets of the day.
This creates the unfortunate situation that you are pretty much coming into The Racing Life blind. When I talk about the areas that BETViral can definitely improve, this is a big one. I always maintain, and will stand by the fact, that a detailed breakdown isn’t required. It would be unreasonable to expect somebody to give away something that they are trying to monetise in this situation.
But by the same token, I am a strong supporter of consumer rights. In my mind, you absolutely have the right to understand what you are getting into. And the truth of the matter is that with The Racing Life, I don’t think that you do. The frustrating part is that I entirely believe that BETViral could have provided some insight, especially since they have presumably been working with a tipster for a long time pre-launch.
The only real offset that you can offer to all of this is that BETViral do provide comprehensive proofing for The Racing Life. Unfortunately, with only 4 months of proofing, it isn’t necessarily what I would consider to be a significant sample of data. As such, whilst I do think it gives you some idea of what you can expect, but it is a long way from demonstrating that “long term” approach that is talked of.
What is the Initial Investment?
There are 3 different subscriptions available for The Racing Life, all with massively varied outlays and value. The least expensive option is a weekly subscription which is priced at just £14. However, you are having to pay that out every 7 days meaning an effective monthly cost of £56. Terrible value really.
Especially when you look at the monthly subscription that BETViral offer for The Racing Life. This is priced at £35. I do however feel it is very important to point out that whilst it is a “monthly” subscription, you are still paying this out every 28 days. That means paying 13 times a year, so you do have to factor that additional cost in.
The best value option comes from signing up to The Racing Life on a quarterly basis. This is priced at £70 per quarter, which of course, represents the best value. At the time of writing though, BETViral have an introductory offer which allows you access to selections for your first quarter for a one time cost of just £42.
Unfortunately, there is no money back guarantee on any of these subscriptions. This means that if you are going to sign up for The Racing Life, it is quite important that you are willing to commit in order for it to be, in any real way, worth it.
What is the Rate of Return?
Now we come to the income potential for The Racing Life. First things first, I want to address that there is a huge range of income potential depending on what you are able to bet on. For example, BETViral’s proofing shows 201.8 points to BOG. To SP though, this number falls incredibly drastically to just 93.7 points of profit.
Either way, these are both ultimately influenced by the fact that they are based on those 5 point stakes. This means that you can quite reasonably scale back the results to around 40 points and 18.5 points respectively. A very drastic drop in those results. Of course, it doesn’t change the ROI’s of 29.04% and 13.48%, but it is important in my mind to keep these results in context.
Conclusion for The Racing Life
I was really excited to see The Racing Life. New offerings rarely come along like this, and so when they do, it can be serious cause for celebration. That is of course, so long as it is actually able to deliver. And it is here that, rather unfortunately, things fall down. Which is particularly disappointing as it’s the one area where you can’t really afford to do that with a tipster service.
Here’s the thing, on the surface of things, The Racing Life has performed. 201 points in 4 months is a bloody good looking number. But as I mentioned, this number really isn’t all that it appears to be. In actual fact, can very reasonably be demonstrated as significantly less than that. And in a number of ways too.
First things first, let’s come back to the fact that these results are based around BOG. Best odds guaranteed means that if the SP is higher than the odds you take, you will be paid out at the best price. This varies in terms of offering and terms from one bookmaker to another. This creates an issue in so much as, straight off the bat, there are simply no guarantees that you are going to be able to take full advantage of this.
On top of that, there is also the point about The Racing Life using 5 point stakes. Now, this could genuinely be what the tipster behind the service believes to be the best approach to betting. Alternatively, it could simply be BETViral wanting to make a number that looks much more impressive than it is. But irrespective of the reasoning, those results do end up inflated.
What is really frustrating about this is the fact that The Racing Life doesn’t have a bad ROI at all. At 29.04%, I would go as far as to say that it is very respectable. And BETViral could have quite reasonably presented this as a selling point, and it would be OK. Of course, it is much harder to justify the costs involved at that point…
And this brings me to what I think is my biggest issue with The Racing Life. The value for money. Look, inflated results are a part and parcel of this line of work. Plenty of tipsters will talk about a five-figure income based off £100 stakes that most people won’t be able to follow. In and of itself, whilst it is a point ton consider, BETViral aren’t doing anything that hasn’t been done before.
The real issue that I have is asking £35 every 28 days for a service that has averaged around 10 points per month, in a best case scenario. Realistically, you will take home less than this if you can’t get the best odds. Which really does present a quandary
Look, at the end of the day, let’s not forget the fact that The Racing Life is actually making a profit. That is more than some tipsters can say. And whilst I think BETViral are asking quite a lot for what they are offering, it isn’t the most expensive service on the market. I just think that there are better products out there for similar money.
