India’s Best Horse Racing Betting Sites 2024
Horse racing betting might not be the number one in India, but it surely is one of the most popular markets for punters in India. In this comprehensive guide, you’ll learn everything you need to know about horse racing betting in India. We’ll list your top sportsbook options, explain all the most important bet types and terminology, give you some top tips on making a profit, and much more besides.
Top 10 Horse Racing Betting Sites in India
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Top Horse Racing Betting Sites – A Closer Look
Not all of the top Indian betting sites cover horse racing, but you’ve still got plenty of good options here. We’ve listed 10 of your main options above, but now it’s time to take a closer look at the very best of the best.
1xBet – Number One Site for Horse Racing Bets
1xBet is one of the most ambitious international sportsbooks around right now. It’s making a push into a huge range of countries, including India, and counts horse racing among its many available markets.
Whether using the desktop site or mobile betting app, you can choose between hundreds of different horse racing markets. These include events not only in the likes of Australia, but India too. You also get plenty of options for funding your account for horse racing betting, and 24/7 customer service is provided too.
What we like:
- India’s leading sports betting site for horse racing
- Great odds on horse races
- Indian horse races are covered
- Use the desktop site or mobile app
- 24/7 customer service
What we don’t:
- UK racecourses not included
22Bet – Enormous Range of Payment Methods for Horse Racing Betting
Like 1xBet, 22Bet is an incredibly ambitious international betting brand. India is just one of the many countries in which it operates, but it does provide a specific Indian version of the site, and accepts deposits in INR. These can be made in an exceptionally wide variety of ways, and you can even choose to use cryptos instead.
The range of horse racing betting markets here is seriously impressive. Courses from not just India, but also countries like Japan, Australia, and France are all covered. You can also place not just Race Winner wagers, but even simply bet on a runner to finish above a certain competitor.
What we like:
- Wide range of international courses covered
- Excellent selection of special offers
- Cryptocurrency deposits accepted
- iOS and Android apps available
- Very straightforward user interface
What we don’t:
- Only holds a Cyprus betting license
Sportsbet.io – Great Option for Crypto Betting
In India as elsewhere, cryptocurrencies are becoming increasingly popular for funding bettors’ accounts. If this appeals to you, then Sportsbet.io is a great option. You can use a whole range of cryptos here – including bitcoin, ethereum, and litecoin – and making payments is extremely quick and easy.
With your account funded, you can wager on both regular horse racing and harness racing. Courses across Europe, Asia, Australasia, and the USA are covered, and you can even bet on virtual horse racing too.
What we like:
- Top option for cryptocurrency horse racing betting
- Exceptional coverage of international courses
- Creative ongoing promotions
- India-specific special offers
- Very good virtual sports section
What we don’t:
- No iOS betting app
888sport – An Excellent All-Rounder
888sport is the best-known brand on this list, and has built an excellent reputation for itself over the past decade or so. It’s a bookie without any major weaknesses, and counts horse racing among its many strengths.
888sport provides exceptional race coverage, including events in India, the UK, France, and further afield. Ante-post markets are available, alongside a wide range of pre-race bets, and there’s also a handy ‘Bet Finder’ tool to help you make picks.
What we like:
- Courses from all around the world are covered
- Ante-post markets available far in advance
- Innovative ‘Bet Finder’ tool for horse racing
- Good selection of special offers
- Excellent international reputation
What we don’t:
- Doesn’t accept INR payments
PariPesa – Top-Notch Customer Service
PariPesa offers its services in dozens of different countries, but has still managed to create a version of its site specifically for Indian punters. This means you can bet on horse races, fund your account, and use all the special offers directly in INR,.
Hundreds of horse racing markets tend to be available at any given time here. Courses from Argentina to Australia are all covered, and PariPesa provides you with handy form guides for the vast majority of runners.
What we like:
- Accepts deposits directly in INR
- Plenty of horse racing data available
- Indian horse races are covered
- Sizable special offers
- Good choice of payment methods
What we don’t:
- Doesn’t have an established track record
How We Rank the Top Horse Racing Betting Sites
As noted earlier, there are plenty of horse racing betting sites around in India. Our curated list of the 10 best options was the result of extensive research, analysis, and testing, which was carried out according to a strict set of criteria. Here are five of the most important things we looked at.
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Safety
Safety is a pretty big deal for us, as our name suggests, and it’s the first thing we look at with any new betting site. Specifically, we check two things. Firstly, that the brand holds a license with a legitimate regulatory body (such as the Malta Gaming Authority). Secondly, that the bookie has appropriate security measures in place, such as SSL, 2FA, and KYC checks.
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Betting Markets
Naturally, a bookie had to provide horse racing markets to make our list. Preferably though, those markets will cover a wide range of racecourses around the world, with those including Indian racecourses getting a bonus. We also like to see a few different bet types represented, including each ways and the ability to place multiples.
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Odds
It’s not enough to simply provide plenty of markets. The actual quality of those markets must also be high. We compared the horse racing prices on all our chosen brands to those offered by competitors. In each case, we confirmed that the odds were either equal to or better than the competition’s.
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Promotions
Special offers shouldn’t just be there to tempt punters into signing up. They should provide genuine value, be fair, and help your money go further. A few of our favourite horse racing-specific promotions include best odds guaranteed, extra places, and any form of ‘money back’ special.
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Special Features
The more special features a brand can provide, the better. Live streaming is pretty rare among Indian sportsbooks, but can greatly enhance your enjoyment of horse racing betting. Elsewhere, the likes of form guides, betting tips, radio commentary and more are all welcome.
Key Features of the Best Online Horse Racing Betting Sites
As mentioned above, we always like to see as many special features as possible on an Indian betting site. That said, some are definitely more important than others. Specifically, we value those which either make your betting experience much more fun, or significantly improve your chances of making a long-term profit. Live streaming is an obvious example of the former, while the likes of cash out tools and each way markets are examples of the latter.
Below, you can immediately see how our chosen Indian horse racing betting sites stack up regarding all the most important special features.
| Sportsbook | Live Betting | Live Streaming | Enhanced Odds | Cash Out | Bet Builder | Each Ways |
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| MELBet | |
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Top 3 Horse Racing Betting Strategies
There are never any guarantees of success in horse racing betting, but there are definitely strategies you can use to help improve your chances. These are three of the best examples, each of which has been extremely popular for a long time now.
Dutching
This is probably the most famous horse racing betting strategy of all. In short, it involves backing multiple runners in the same race. You can’t wager on all of them, or you wouldn’t make a profit. Take a handful of them, however, and the maths is actually still in your favour.
Dutching does require some fairly complex calculations, in which you’re trying to calculate the implied probabilities of the odds available on a race, and split your stakes accordingly. If you’re willing to put the time in though, this is as close to a ‘sure thing’ as you’re likely to find.
Lay the Favourite
This is a much more straightforward system, which revolves around the idea that favourites are usually underpriced in horse racing. If there are eight horses in a given race, for instance, then even a heavy favourite still faces a significant challenge to beat seven other runners. Statistically, favourites are actually more likely to lose a race than they are to win it.
To use this strategy, you must first sign up with a betting exchange. Once you’ve located the favourite you want to go against, place a ‘lay’ bet to wager that it won’t win its race.
Beaten Favourites
Even bearing our previous point in mind, favourites are still favourites for a reason. If a horse is a favourite in one race and doesn’t win, its odds will often drop significantly going into the next race. Its value has suddenly increased dramatically, therefore, even though you’re still looking at a high quality runner. As such, many punters judge this – rather than the first race – as the perfect time to strike.
Horse Racing Exchange Betting
All of our recommended Indian horse racing betting sites are straight-up sportsbooks. You do have another major option though: betting exchanges.
Choose to use these, and – unlike with sportsbooks – you will not be betting against the bookie. Instead, you’ll be betting against other punters. Every time you take one side of a wager, another user will be taking the other side. Whichever one of you ends up being proved correct will take home the winnings.
The main advantage of betting exchanges is that you can essentially pick whatever odds you please on a horse, as long as somebody else is willing to ‘match’ the other side of your wager. In return for this benefit though, you will need to pay the exchange a small commission on any winning bets.
Unfortunately, there aren’t really any betting exchanges for us to recommend right now in India. The likes of Betfair, for example, do not accept Indian punters. We’d definitely expect this to change, however, as the popularity of online betting continues to increase.
New Horse Racing Betting Sites in India
When picking between Indian horse racing betting sites, your instincts may tell you to go with an older, more proven brand. We understand this completely, but you should still consider the alternatives.
Younger sportsbooks have more to prove. As such, they will often provide very large welcome offers indeed to try and tempt people into signing up. It can often be worth triggering one of these deals and using the bonus, then evaluating whether you want to continue with the brand afterwards.
If going with a newer horse racing betting site appeals to you, here are three Indian brands we’d recommend checking out to start with. All three were launched within the past five years.
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The Most Experienced Horse Racing Betting Sites
As noted above, as you’re looking for a new horse racing betting site in India, your first instinct will usually be to go with a tried-and-tested brand. That’s perfectly understandable, and does come with a few clear benefits.
The main one is that these bookies have a proven track record. This means two things: that they’ve been popular with punters over the long haul, and that they’re not likely to go bankrupt any time soon! These sites often offer more special features too, such as live streaming.
If this is the approach you’d prefer to take, these are our three recommended experienced horse racing betting sites. All have been around for a decade or more.
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Most Popular Horse Racing Betting Markets
Compared to football betting, for example, you won’t find anywhere near as many bet types available for horse racing. You still have a few choices available to you though, with these being a few of the most popular.
This is the most straightforward horse racing bet type, and the most popular. Quite simply, you’re picking which horse you think will win the race. If it does indeed triumph, you get your winnings. If it comes in any position except first, you lose. Considering how many runners are typically in a horse race, this is actually a pretty tough wager to win. Because of its simplicity though, we’d still recommend placing race winner wagers first if you’re new to horse racing betting. Most horse racing markets open shortly before the race itself, once the final field has been confirmed. Ante post markets open days, or – for the biggest events – even weeks and months in advance. The main advantage here is that you can usually get better odds than you’ll be able to pre-race. The drawback, naturally, is that your chosen horse might not even compete, due to injury or other unforeseen circumstances. Each ways actually consist of two separate wagers (and therefore two stakes). The first is a simple race winner pick. The second is a ‘place’ bet. This will have pretty low odds (often 1/4 or 1/5), but your horse simply needs to finish within a certain range (usually the top two, three, or four positions, depending on the number of runners) for the place part to hit. With a winning distance wager, you’re not just betting on a horse to triumph. You’re trying to predict the actual distance it will win by (usually within a certain range). This is obviously very risky, but can be a good way to bet on clear favourites. You’ve got two main choices for horse racing multiples. The first is to place a ‘simple’ multiples, wherein you’ll normally pick the winners of a few different races. The second is to use a ‘complex’ or ‘exotic’ multiple (Lucky 15’s, Lucky 31’s, and so on). As the name suggests, these are both complicated and tough to win, often requiring a set of results in a specific order. The returns for winning one, however, will be lucrative.
Horse Racing Betting Terms Explained
During your research for your horse racing betting, you’ll come across a wide range of weird and wonderful terms. Not all of these are actually that important, but – below – you can check out a selection of the vocabulary you definitely need to learn.
- Back / Lay
These are betting exchange terms. You ‘back’ a bet if you think it will happen, and ‘lay’ it if you think it won’t
- Card
For online betting, the ‘card’ or ‘racecard’ is the page on which you view all a race’s runners and odds
- Combination Wager
Another term for ‘multiples’. You place multiple selections into the same wager, and all of them must come in for your overall bet to win
- Dead Heat
When two horses finish the race at exactly the same time. Different bookies have different rules for dead heats
- Favourite
The horse with the lowest odds going into the race. This runner has been judged most likely to win
- Flat Race
The most common type of race, which simply takes place over flat ground
- Going
This refers to the conditions in which a race will be run – dry, wet, and so on
- Handicap Race
In races with a clear favourite, this horse may be given extra weight to carry as a ‘handicap’
- Jump Racing
Races in which horses must jump over obstacles. There are two main variations: hurdles, and steeple chases
- Length
The measurement of distance by which a horse’s finishing distance is judged. E.g. ‘Seabiscuit won the race by five lengths’
- Long Shot
A horse which has been given very high odds, and has thus been judged unlikely to win a race
- Non-Runner
A horse which was supposed to compete in a race, but didn’t for some reason, such as injury
- SP
Short for ‘starting price’. This refers to a horse’s odds when the race actually begins
- Tote
Communal horse racing bets, in which punters pool their stakes together into one larger wager
The World’s Biggest Horse Races for Betting
Hundreds of races take place each and every day around the world, and a top Indian horse racing betting site will let you wager on just about all of them. That said, a select few truly grab the attention of punters around the world each year.
Below, you can get a quick look at how some of the planet’s biggest annual races compare.
| Name | Location | Surface | Month | Distance | Prize Pot |
| Belmont Stakes | New York, USA | Dirt | June | 1 ½ Miles | $1.5 million |
| Breeder’s Cup | North America | Dirt | November | 1 ¼ Miles | $6 million |
| Dubai World Cup | Dubai, UAE | Dirt | March | 1 ¼ Miles | $12 million |
| Epsom Derby | Surrey, UK | Turf | June | 1 ½ Miles | $2 million |
| Grand National | Aintree, UK | Turf | April | 4 Miles | $1 million |
| Indian Derby | Mumbai, India | Turf | February | 1 ½ Miles | $250,000 |
| Japan Cup | Tokyo, Japan | Turf | November | 1 ½ Miles | $6 million |
| Kentucky Derby | Kentucky, USA | Dirt | May | 1 ¼ Miles | $3 million |
| Melbourne Cup | Melbourne, Australia | Turf | November | 2 Miles | $5.3 million |
| Prix de l’Arc de Triomphe | Paris, France | Turf | October | 1 ½ Miles | $5.6 million |
The World’s Biggest Horse Events for Betting
As noted above, it’s specific races which horse racing fans – in their millions – tune in to watch. The ‘sport of kings’, however, also centers around a few key, longer-term events throughout the year, most of which last for at least a few days. Let’s take a look at a few of the most famous examples.
Best of British
The UK features some of the most historic horse races in the world, and two festivals stand out above all the others: Cheltenham and Royal Ascot. The former marks the unofficial start of the horse racing season every year, taking place in March, while Royal Ascot is opened by a member of the royal family each June. Elsewhere, while it can’t qualify as a ‘festival’, the Grand National is the biggest horse racing event in Britain for bettors.
Kentucky Derby Festival
The Kentucky Derby is arguably the most famous horse race in the world. It’s actually the culmination, however, of a larger event that lasts two entire weeks – the Kentucky Derby Festival. This is held in Louisville each spring, and includes dozens of different races.
Dubai World Cup Carnival
The Dubai World Cup is the world’s single richest horse race. Again though, while this is definitely the headline contest, it is part of a larger event – the Dubai World Cup Carnival – which includes a whole range of other lucrative races, and takes place in the spring each year.
Our Top 5 Horse Racing Betting Tips
Betting on horse racing has been going on for centuries, but it still presents a unique challenge to this day in both India and other countries around the world. Here are five top tips to try and help you turn a profit.
1 – Do Your Research
There’s simply no substitute for putting the time and effort into your research. Check out the form guides for any races or individual runners you’re interested in. Watch back any relevant races you can get your hands on. Read a wide selection of betting tips written by true experts. All of this will help to inform your betting, and improve your picks.
2 – Have Multiple Accounts
There’s no rule saying that you must stick to one bookie for your horse racing betting. In fact, by signing up with multiple brands, you get two main benefits. Firstly, you can trigger more welcome offers. Secondly, you can compare prices on a horse and place your wager with the site offering better odds.
3 – Use Special Offers
All good betting promotions will help you money go further, whether by boosting your odds, giving you free bets, or insuring your wagers. Use as many as realistically can to help generate a long-term profit.
4 – Measure Your Stakes
Heading into a big event, or on a month-by-month basis, identify exactly how much you’re going to wager. Remember, you simply cannot stake anything which you’re not willing to lose.
5 – Watch Along
Actually watching the races is much more rewarding than simply seeing the results of your wagers after the fact. The ‘eye test’ for any runners you’re interested in can help to inform your future picks too.
Bottom Line on India’s Best Horse Racing Betting Sites
If you’ve never tried out horse racing betting in India, there’s never been a better time to get started. The calendar is absolutely jam-packed with events, both in India and around the world, and a whole range of bookies are ready and waiting to let you wager on them.
Follow the advice throughout this article, pick one of our 10 recommended horse racing betting sites, sign up, and grab the welcome offer. After that, we wish you a safe, responsible, and profitable gambling experience.
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Horse Racing Betting in India FAQs
Will I be able to make payments in rupees?
Yes. Several of our recommended betting sites let you make deposits and withdrawals in INR, with 22Bet and PariPesa being just two examples.
Which bet types shall I use?
If you’re just getting started, stick to Race Winner wagers. After that, look to experiment with Each Ways and multiples bets.
Can I wager on Indian horse races?
Absolutely. Many of our chosen horse racing betting sites cover Indian racecourses, with new events available for betting each and every day.
Are there any good horse racing special offers?
Plenty. Most welcome offers are compatible with horse racing markets, and you may also be able to find horse racing-specific deals like Best Odds Guaranteed or No Runner No Bet.
What is the best horse racing betting site in India?
We’ve listed 10 of your very best options at the top of this page. 1xBet is our number one overall pick, but each of the other nine has their own strong points.
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