Festival favourites hit bookies hard

THE largest number of winning favourites for almost a decade at the Cheltenham Festival has hit bookmakers hard, with the industry taking an estimated hit of somewhere between €4 million and €10m.

While the big betting companies don’t divulge exactly how they fared — and usually only refer to big meets like Cheltenham and Aintree in their half-year commentaries — market analysts neatly summed up this year’s festival as being “neutral to slightly negative” for the main bookies.

Nine (or 32%) of the races at Cheltenham this year were won by favourites. That was the highest since 2003, when 45% were won, and was well up from 2010’s historic low of 15.4%.