17 days of dominance – Australia’s biggest betting races

Spring racing remains unchallenged as the primary time for Australians to bet on racing, with data compiled by The Straight revealing that eight of the top 10 races are staged in a three-week window in late October/early November.

The top six most bet-on races in Australia in 2024, and eight of the top 10, were held in 17 days from the Caulfield Cup/Everest meetings until the Melbourne Cup.

During the wagering boom days of early this decade, state-based administrators and clubs were in the habit of regularly publishing their turnover numbers soon after a feature raceday.  

But, except for the odd end-of-carnival press release, that flow of information has dried up and even the annual figures usually published by Racing Australia in its Fact Book were not included in its most recent edition.

When you consider the importance of wagering to the future funding of racing, it is quite staggering that there is not more transparency, or publicly available benchmarking of race performance on turnover.

For what it’s worth, Entain, which runs TAB NZ, publishes its highest turnover races monthly.

In the absence of comprehensive national data, The Straight surveyed major wagering service providers (WSPs), asking them what their top 10 most bet-on races in Australia were for the year.

None of those surveyed were willing to put precise figures on each of these races, but they were able to provide a list of their top 10, as long as the data was kept anonymous.

With the data we were able to build a top 10 power rankings of Australia’s most bet on races.

Unsurprisingly, the Melbourne Cup was on top of every single bookmaker’s list as having the highest turnover.

Publicly available figures indicate the Cup attracted $214 million in turnover in 2024. That figure is down from the record number of $226 million in 2022, which occurred at the peak of the post-pandemic wagering boom and featured a $101 promotion from Betr, which generated massive interest.

The Straight understands that Melbourne Cup turnover is between four and five times larger than the second-ranked race.  

While the Cox Plate and Caulfield Cup were tied on the power rankings, weighting the data provided by the WSPs by market share would see the Cox Plate rank second.

The Caulfield Cup fills the podium but is expected to be challenged by The Everest for that spot in the next couple of years. Both races were held on the same day in 2024.

Those three races, the Cox Plate, Caulfield Cup and The Everest are well clear of the fifth most bet-on race, the Victoria Derby.

Given the criticism aimed at the depth of the Derby as a race in recent years, it is interesting it ranks so highly. It sits just above the other feature of the day, the Golden Eagle, which is run at Rosehill.

That means that the top six are all run within 17 days of each other in spring.

Again, there is a gap between those races and the seventh ranked, the Golden Slipper. The world’s richest two-year-old race is also the most bet-on in the autumn.

Then follows the Doncaster Mile, a time-honoured race and the leader when it comes to the races contested over The Championships at Randwick.

The move of the King Charles III Stakes to Everest day has captured punters’ imagination. It sits in ninth spot.   

In 10th spot is the final race on Melbourne Cup day, which in 2024 was a benchmark race titled the Channel 9 Trophy. It speaks to the power of the lure of Cup day that the weakest race on the 10-race card has the second-highest turnover.

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The StraightWarwick Barr

While they didn’t feature in the Top 10 of the Power Rankings we compiled, the race before the Melbourne Cup, the Furphy Plate, and the ninth race, the Hong Kong Jockey Club Plate, were also featured in the individual Top 10 rankings from the bookies.

The one major change in the Australian betting landscape over the past 15 years has been, of course, the growth in fixed odds betting, and the corresponding decline in parimutuel betting.

In 2009, $95 million was spent on the Cup across the TAB pools in NSW and Victoria. In 2024, that was less than $54 million.

The Hong Kong Jockey Club’s World Pool concept has been mooted as having the potential to significantly shape the turnover landscape of Australian racing. But keeping it in context, its overall 2023/24 turnover figure of $1.7 billion is still less than 8 per cent of what Australians turn over on racing betting every year.