What Does SP Mean in Betting?

If you’re someone who has ever placed a bet on horse racing through betting sites, you might have noticed SP appearing when you are scrolling through the racecard. 

SP stands for Starting Price and these are the odds for a particular selection just before an event is about to start.

SP is usually a term that is reserved for the sports of horse racing and greyhound racing. 

The Starting Price will be the same from bookmaker to bookmaker and it’s calculated according to the weight of money that has gone on each selection in a particular race.

When you head to a bookmaker site to bet on a horse, you might find that there are early prices or board prices available. 

You can choose to back these particular odds that are available at that point in time, although the SP might end up being different.

There might be other races where only SP is available. Therefore, you don’t have a particular gauge of what the odds might be, although customers sometimes need to take a Starting Price and hope that the final odds yield a nice return if their selection wins.

How is the SP Calculated?

Many horse racing fans often wonder how the Starting Price is calculated. The key determining factor is the prices that are offered by the bookmakers before a race takes place. 

These could be the on-course bookies or alternatively the online horse racing betting sites.

A panel of officials uses technology to gauge the weight of money and the odds movement for each selection.

They are then able to tag each selection with an SP at the off and that SP is used by the bookmakers to pay out any winnings and calculate multiple bets.

Best Odds Guaranteed Means Bigger SP Pay Out

A lot of horse racing fans used to have the dilemma of taking an early price about a horse that they wanted to back or instead choosing the SP. 

By taking an early price, there was always the danger that the odds on a horse would drift and they would end up feeling short-changed if their selection won.

Alternatively, there was the flip side of the coin that if they settled for SP instead of the available early odds, they could potentially see the price shorten compared to the odds that had previously been available.

However, a few years ago, a number of bookmakers started to roll out a horse racing and greyhound racing concession called Best Odds Guaranteed (BOG). 

This was a popular move with the punters and it meant that you were automatically assigned a price about your selection with the BOG assurance.

By having Best Odds Guaranteed, you either get the early price or the SP depending on which odds are bigger. 

It’s regularly the case that a BOG betting apps will end up paying out bigger dividends and it gives a customer peace of mind that it doesn’t matter whether a selection shortens or lengthens in the betting market.

The Starting Price therefore has less relevance in the horse racing betting world compared to previously. 

That’s providing you are going ahead with a Best Odds Guaranteed bookmaker, however there are still some instances where there are no early prices available and that usually applies to international horse racing.

Ultimately, the SP should give an accurate reflection of the probability of a selection winning an event. 

The SP pay out is effectively the betting odds multiplied by the stake which was used and this is also used when it comes to Tote betting where the SP is calculated according to the combined stakes that have been placed on each selection.