Trackside is a tipster service which is currently being offered as a part of the Punthub stable of tipsters. It claims to have produced a solid ROI in the near 18 months it has been operational.
What does Trackside offer?
PuntHub as a company tend to be pretty reserved in their marketing however there is one thing that immediately jumps out at me when looking at Trackside. This is the claim that it is “One of the highest rated services on the market today”. Now it would be foolish of me not to acknowledge the fact that this statement is somewhat vague and there is probably good reason for this, however it is also a claim that I simply have to address. If Punthub are talking purely about their tipster services, then they may well be right. If you are talking about the market as a whole however, well, that is a completely different can of worms.
So what are you getting from this market leading service exactly? If I hold my hands up, something that appears to be quite different to the norm as it happens. This is mostly down to the fact that Trackside is a lot more selective than most.
What is Trackside by Punthub?
To put this into context, 2018 has seen just 60 bets at the time of writing and we are right at the back end of April. I know of some tipster services that can put that out in a busy week. In terms of the logistics of things, when selections are available, they are sent out to subscribers directly via email.
The bets themselves are a more typical affair with Trackside made up of both win and each way bets. This is a service where you can definitely expect more of the latter than the former however.
I have no doubt that this is down to the odds that are involved. The shortest odds seen this year are 11/10 however this is very much an exception. I would be inclined to say that the average odds for Trackside are much closer to 8/1, something that in my experience is almost unheard of.
Any service that takes the measured approach that Trackside does will require a decent staking plan in order to keep profits reasonable. In this case, it is a staking plan which involves staking anywhere from 1-3 points on bets (the 3 points coming from 1.5 points each way).
Historically there have been larger bets than this however Trackside appears to have undergone a bit of a transformation, something I will explore in detail a little later on.
So what is the strike rate for the service? Honestly, I am going to disregard 2017 when calculating this as I don’t believe that it will provide an accurate picture of the service as it is today. Out of the 60 bets that have been advised, 28 of them have won or placed. This makes for a strike rate of 46.66% which given the odds involved is an absolutely incredible result.
How does Trackside from Punthub work?
There is very little information made available about what the selection process entails. There is an implication made by PuntHub in the marketing where they say “Information straight from the side of the course”.
Naturally this suggests that there is literally a man at the track, but this seems highly improbable for any tipster service, even one that is focused on selective betting (I should point out that whilst it would appear plausible for 2018, 2017 was much higher volume and there is nothing to suggest that the service has changed on a fundamental level).
Outside of this, there is very little information and this is something that I find to be a little bit frustrating. I have said many times before now that I believe that customers should be able to make an informed decision about what they are buying into. This lack of information from PuntHub means that this isn’t possible for Trackside.
What is the initial investment?
There are two options available if you want to subscribe to Trackside. The first of these comes in at £35 and is a monthly subscription. Alternatively, there are costs of £85 per quarter.
This represents a saving of around £80 over the course of the year. Irrespective of which option you sign up for, PuntHub provide a one month trial for Trackside. This is priced at just £17.50 and should be enough to get a feel for the service. Unfortunately there is no money back guarantee in place, however this is pretty typical for most tipster services.
What is the rate of return?
Since Trackside launched in December of 2016, it has made a profit of 226.2 points. Whilst I am happy to concede that this doesn’t particularly sound like a lot for nearly 18 months of tips, The ROI is 25.41%. Since January this year there has been a points profit generated of 38.77 points. This in turn represents much stronger ROI for Trackside during this period of 36% which frankly, is phenomenal.
Conclusion on Trackside by Punthub?
At the start of this article, I questioned (quite validly) whether or not PuntHub were justified in saying that Trackside is one of the best on the market.
The long and rambling answer to this is that it is ultimately subjective and what one person considers brilliant may be stupid to another and so on and so forth. The short answer is that a 36% ROI is bloody brilliant over a 4 month period and if this can be maintained at half this performance for the year, it will be a damned fine performance.
With this having been said, there are some… I am loathe to say downsides to Trackside, but there are some aspects of the service that will make it not for everybody. One of the main factors here are the periods of downtime between tips arriving.
This means that if you want to be successful here, you will also need to be very disciplined with your betting. Again, this is something that some people will struggle with. This is not a criticism by any means, but expectations must be managed.
In terms of value for money, this is a little bit of an interesting thing depending on how you want to price Trackside up. For example, as a monthly subscription cost, I think that Trackside is very good value given the results.
This is also how I generally way up value when it comes to a service. By the same token, there is an argument to be made that you are paying several pounds for individual tips which some people may not be keen on.
In my opinion, Trackside represents some of the most promising results I have seen for some time.
Now I do need to qualify this statement and say that this is mostly off the back of the ROI. 10 points per month on average (give or take) does not look great, but taking £36 back for every £100 staked sounds much better to me.
Of course we are only 4 months in and there is potential for Trackside to get better, and by extension, worse. The new approach that has been taken has demonstrated a considerable improvement on last year though and I see little reason to believe that this trend won’t continue.
