August the 1st means a big Happy Birthday to all Thoroughbred racehorses in the Southern hemisphere, and it also brings a close to a wonderful and as always dramatic 2025/2026 racing season.

As it ends, we reflect on another remarkable 12 months of Betfair Exchange activity.

Punters find better odds with Betfair

As is often the case, it’s better to bet with Betfair, with 67 of the season’s 76 Group 1’s producing better odds post commission on the Exchange when compared to the corporate average and Best Tote.

$10 on every G1 winner using the corporate average = $5,681.27 | Using Betfair Starting Price (BSP) [post commission] = $6,612.

That’s almost a thousand dollars better value for the punter, or a 16% advantage across the board.

The season’s best matched race was once again last year’s Melbourne Cup, which saw over $10 million traded in the winner market for the third time in the past five years.

Bad beats of the year

We’ve all seen bad beats; we’ve all asked the question “I wonder how short that got” in the straight before getting rolled on the line. But how often did horses “bottom out” at $1.01 and get beaten this season?

Lay Back with Betfair’s Tom Haylock explained the figures on this week’s season review show.

“There were 16,891 races this season. In 99% of which the winner hit a $1.01 naturally. There's a few that come from nowhere and don't trade that low, but 192 of those $1.01 shots got beaten.”

That breakdown reflects about 1% of all $1.01 shots get beaten, indicating accuracy in the market.

If you expand the price out to $1.20 or less, a staggering 2,744 runners have gone down after trading at that price or lower.

“A horse by the name of Mucci Star was the worst offender, beaten five times at sub $1.20 in play this racing season.” Haylock added.

Of the metro runners, Tycoon Star and Snack Bar each did it three times throughout the season.

Favourites struggle in at Morphettville and Ballarat

Another question for punters to consider is, ‘Where are favourites seemingly the most vulnerable?’ Of all tracks in Australia, Morphettville saw the highest number of runners beaten after trading at $1.20 or lower. It happened 80 times at South Australia’s feature race venue, with Belmont (67), Eagle Farm (62) and Randwick (61) the next most prominent.

Ballarat was by far the worst regional track for short priced runners getting beaten, with a total of 59, surpassing the busy metro Melbourne tracks of Caulfield and Flemington, as well as other prominent regional tracks like Geelong.

Finding Value

Racing and Sports Trent Crebbin discussed the role of Starting prices, probabilities and how to assess edges in market when reflecting on the racing season gone.

“I think a massive part of form analysis is market expectation. The way it works on probability is, if they started $2, they had a 50% chance of winning off their SP. If you do that again, they're $2. You've had two times 50% chances of winning.

“From there you can just multiply those things together and how it works out to be their expected number of wins. And you can do it for jockey’s as well, their SP every time they stepped out. Convert that to a percentage and add them all up and work out how many times they should have won; versus how many times they did.”

“You hear a lot of people speaking about the efficiency of a market and how over time a market gets it right, and that's basically spot on.” Crebbin added.

“An example is, you find a horse that started $2.20 last time, and maybe the horse that beat it was in a better part of the track. This same horse finds a weaker race today and when the market goes up, he’s $4 when he had excuses last time. So, I’m instantly thinking, well this horse is value.”

So, who were the best and worst jockeys at beating market expectation this season?

Best:

Dylan Gibbons - 90 (Wins) - 22.40 (Prob. diff) - $9,900.27 (Stake to win $100) - $2,296.84 (Profit)

Adam Sewell - 54 (Wins) - 17.24 (Prob. diff) - $4,870.81 (Stake to win $100) - $1,948.77 (Profit)

Aidan Holt - 71 (Wins) - 16.32 (Prob. diff) - $12,398.14 (Stake to win $100) - $2,141.29 (Profit)

Natika Riordan - 85 (Wins) - 15.97 (Prob. diff) - $10,045.87 (Stake to win $100) - $955.22 (Profit)

Dylan Turner - 71 (Wins) - 15.44 (Prob. diff) - $8,551.91 (Stake to win $100) - $1,716.42 (Profit)

Worst:

Blaike McDougall - 50 (Wins) - -25.40 (Prob. diff) - $11,494.95 (Stake to win $100) - -$4,560.63 (Profit)

Taylor Johnstone - 37 (Wins) - -21.35 (Prob. diff) - $8,331.58 (Stake to win $100) - -$3,090.76 (Profit)

Ryan Wiggins - 94 (Wins) - -16.01 (Prob. diff) - $19,163.74 (Stake to win $100) - -$3,216.06 (Profit)

Jason Collett - 76 (Wins) - -14.07 (Prob. diff) - $13,770.93 (Stake to win $100) - -$2,213.19 (Profit)

Cejay Graham - 60 (Wins) - -14.02 (Prob. diff) - $10,369.45 (Stake to win $100) - -$1,939.62 (Profit)

When narrowed down to the metro racing circuit, it looks like this:

Best:

James McDonald - 153 (Rides on faves) - 67 (Wins) - $11,403.09 (Staking to win $100) - $1,417.00 (Profit)

Jason Collett - 50 (Rides on faves) - 21 (Wins) - $1,997.79 (Staking to win $100) - $737.75 (Profit)

Jason Holder - 31 (Rides on faves) - 16 (Wins) - $2,549.39 (Staking to win $100) - $731.82 (Profit)

Logan Bates - 31 (Rides on faves) - 14 (Wins) - $4,837.04 (Staking to win $100) - $532.46 (Profit)

Clint Johnston-Porter - 65 (Rides on faves) - 28 (Wins) - $1,558.08 (Staking to win $100) - $488.74 (Profit)

Worst:

William Pike - 203 (Rides on faves) - 75 (Wins) - $16,080.24 (Staking to win $100) - -$1,436.88 (Profit)

Blake Shinn - 36 (Rides on faves) - 6 (Wins) - $1,931.07 (Staking to win $100) - -$1,042.58 (Profit)

Tommy Berry - 82 (Rides on faves) - 26 (Wins) - $6,164.74 (Staking to win $100) - -$999.14 (Profit)

Mark Zahra - 65 (Rides on faves) - 20 (Wins) - $4,091.49 (Staking to win $100) - -$816.71 (Profit)

Beau Mertens - 22 (Rides on faves) - 3 (Wins) - $1,297.08 (Staking to win $100) - -$790.88 (Profit)

Another key factor in analysing a runner is weight, and Ben Asgari from Racing.com, who is now a Lay Back with Betfair regular, feels this is a greatly overrated component.

“I think it's the most overrated part of analysis.” Asgari said.

“I do get that weight is a quantifiable you know is going to have an impact. It’s physics. But where I think it's the most overrated factor is there's never been a study, as every horse is an individual, but there's never been a study into the biomechanics of horses and how little weight discrepancies impact a horse's power to weight ratio, etc.

“The whole weight scale and weight-for-age (WFA) scale is based on averages. But you can get horses on either end of the scale that are not average. And so that's where the things don't kind of line up.

“It's why three-year-olds do very well at WFA, because three-year-olds on the WFA scale worldwide outperform the market. But it's because they're based on average three-year-olds. But the average three-year-olds aren't the ones that are racing in group one races at WFA.” Asgari added.

Looking broadly at the feature races of the season, the autumn carnival produced significantly more upsets, with an average BSP of nearly double the Spring Carnival.

Group 1’s overall averaged a $10.51 BSP, with the Spring Carnival averaging $7.34, and the Autumn Carnival averaging $13.57.

The five shortest priced runners to get beaten in Group 1’s were as follows:

Autumn Glow (shortest loser since Fangirl lost 2024 VE Stakes at $1.46BSP) - $1.36 (BSP)

Treasurethe Moment - $1.80 (BSP)

Getta Good Feeling - $2.06 (BSP)

Apocalyptic - $2.12 (BSP)

Overpass - $2.14 (BSP)

The five longest priced Group 1 winners were as follows:

Rothfire - $93.06 (BSP) - $85.70 - (BSP (POST COMM))- $68.33 (Average of SB, TAB & LADS) - 25% (%ADV)

Changingoftheguard - $70.60 (BSP) - $63.64 - (BSP (POST COMM))- $54.33 (Average of SB, TAB & LADS) - 17% (%ADV)

Wigmore - $55.00 (BSP) - $50.68 - (BSP (POST COMM))- $44.33 (Average of SB, TAB & LADS) - 14% (%ADV)

Geegees Mistruth - $49.46 (BSP) - $45.58 - (BSP (POST COMM))- $33.00 (Average of SB, TAB & LADS) - 38% (%ADV)

Charm Stone - $39.30 (BSP) - $36.24 - (BSP (POST COMM))- $32.00 (Average of SB, TAB & LADS) - 13% (%ADV)

You can watch/listen to the full 2025/26 Racing Season Review podcast here.

The 2026 Spring Racing Carnival kicks off on August 29 with the Group 1 Memsie Stakes at Caulfield and runs through until November 14.

Betfair’s team of experts like Tom Haylock, Trent Crebbin, Ben Asgari, Jackson Oldham, and more will be across all the action, providing you tips with better odds. You can follow them in the Betfair app today and make sure you opt in to notifications to never miss a tip.

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