On Saturday I was part of a record breaking 42,586 crowd at York Racecourse for their Sky Bet meeting. At 4.20pm took myself into the grandstand to watch the King George at Ascot. I attempted to get some money on Harbinger, who at this point had drifted out to 4/1, but the queues meant this was impossible. However I stood and watched with interest regardless.
My selected viewing position was in front of a Totesport betting outlet showing SIS, and another TV showing coverage on the BBC via what appeared to be a digital feed (presumably Sky). I was alarmed at just how much difference there was in the delay of the coverage on the channels. SIS appeared to be a comfortable 2 seconds ahead. I wasn’t satisfied with just guessing, though, so I took out my phone and moved onto stop watch mode ahead of the start of the race. I timed the difference between the two channels at 2.8 seconds.
2 minutes later – by the time Harbinger had destroyed the field on SIS, he was just coming out of his canter on the BBC.
Today I watched a re-run of the coverage to calculate just what time delay means to in-play punters… and why you should avoid it.
As Harbinger turns the corner for the straight, coming past the 3 pole, he begins to pick up and is a full length behind.
Just 2.8 seconds later Harbinger has stepped up a few gears and has moved into a lead.
Remember, at this point if you are watching on the BBC, you have only just seen him come off the corner a length behind. Admittedly some of you will say this entire piece is flawed by the fact Harbinger always looked like the winner and was travelling far better than any of the other runners. But what if that wasn’t the case? What if this were a jumps race.
In 2.8 seconds Harbinger went from 4th to 1st. In that same time in a jumps race a horse could have clattered into a fence and lost it’s jockey. SIS/TurfTV punters could have swept up all of the money long before BBC, Channel 4, ATR or Racing UK viewers have even seen the incident.
We know for a fact that ATR at least could technically speed up their coverage. In the past their footage has indeed been a split second FASTER than SIS. But this is no longer the case. Why? I’ll leave that one to the speculators.
The bottom line is if you do continue to bet in-play via non-SIS/TurfTV coverage, remember that you are doing so against others who have a clear advantage.