Betting on Royal Ascot

One of the UK’s Premier Sporting events comes to Berkshire in June with the running of Royal Ascot, a prestigious horse race meeting that attracts a competitive entry across 30 races. The event starts in the middle of the month, lasts for five days and will always attract huge interest, both with spectators and throughout the betting community.

Packed with History

The first mention of Royal Ascot dates way back to 1711 when Queen Anne founded the event at the newly inaugurated Berkshire racecourse. Over 300 years later, it remains an important occasion for the Royals with the family attending on all of the days.

That’s one of the reasons why the more patriotic among the British public are so fond of this event but take out the royal element and a serious week of horse racing can still be found.

The Schedule

There are Group One Races held across all five days and the action gets going on Tuesday with the Coventry Stakes. This is followed by the first of the Group Ones – the Queen Anne Stakes – and included among the six renewals are the King’s Stand Stakes and the St James’s Palace Stakes.

A further six events go off on Wednesday and the highlight here is the only group one of the day – the Prince of Wales’s Stakes. From here we move to Thursday and Ladies Day which is the most popular as far as attendance is concerned.

While the focus of the TV may be on the fashions of the day, this is another serious afternoon on the course with the Gold Cup standing out as the biggest group one on show.

Friday and Saturday may be more subdued from a spectator point of view but the racing is no less intense on either day. Friday’s card includes the Coronation Stakes and then Saturday has the Diamond Jubilee Stakes as the remaining Group Ones.

So, if you are betting on Royal Ascot there are lots of races across the five days and while attention will be focussed on the classics, there may well be some better value among the listed renewals.

Options

Like any festival, Royal Ascot betting gives you the choice of staking outside the races themselves. Therefore, you can expect to find top trainer and top jockey markets being quoted by the majority of bookmakers.

From there, your options become a bit more obscure with markets such as Highest Winning SP. Taking Cheltenham as an example, the list of bookies willing to quote for this diminishes significantly with Betfred, SkyBet and bet365 among a very small set of outlets declaring on the day of the festival itself.

Other niche markets may well include number of favourites to win, total favourites and numbers of winners for selected jockeys.

Back with more traditional markets, each way betting on Royal Ascot may well go down to five places for the bigger Group Ones while there will be plenty of bookmakers offers to entice you in.

Offers and Promos

Ahead of the Cheltenham Festival, Coral were offering new account holders the chance to claim 8/1 on any Willie Mullins winner – a very likely outcome. So, that could well be the type of deal that drops in whenever Ascot approaches.

Most bookies will be looking to get involved as much as they can and while we can’t guarantee what those promotions will involve, do check the news feeds as there will be lots of action around the event.

You can also use the types of horse racing betting offers that run right through the season and these may typically include the kind of accumulator deals being quoted by William Hill and Unibet at the time of writing.

Racegoers have their own opinions over which is the most important festival but Royal Ascot will always draw huge crowds because of its history and connections. With 30 races on offer, it’s a great time to have a bet as well!