It seems that the Pricewise betting feature in the Racing Post has been around forever and is a recognised and integral part of the horserace betting landscape.
Whenever a big race is featured the markets are on standby for the announcement of the Pricewise selection. Then all hell breaks loose. Big arguments take place as to who got what bets, for how much and at what prices. It is debatable the extent to which bookies take bets before cutting the price and just what their liabilities are after accommodating punters in the shops to their chosen and restricted limits. Nevertheless the column commands huge attention.
You may wonder how Pricewise got started. While Mark Coton may have been the initial Pricewise contributor the concept was not his.
I started Pricewise and this is how it happened.
In around 1985 I joined the London Racing Club. Having recently moved to London with my job and with nobody at my workplace interested in racing I thought I would toodle along to The Glassblower pub just off Piccadilly Circus one evening where the meeting of the club was held on the second floor of the establishment.
The first time I attended was an awkward experience as I knew nobody there and arriving early merely made my unease all the more acute. The social experience of joining any club is never easy but it was not long before I got chatting to a couple of the regulars. I cant quite remember who the Guest speaker was on that first occasion but over the months that followed an assortment of racings luminaries turned up to represent the various factions of Racing’s rich tapestry. The Chairman of the club at the time was Roger Cook who along with his wife Sue ran a pretty efficient and amiable outfit.
One of the guests in those first few months was Graham Rock who had just been appointed Editor of the fledgling Racing Post. The Post had been kick started with the backing of Sheikh Mohammed and the Maktoum family of Dubai and was instituted as a competitor to the Sporting Life who had the market to themselves among the racing dailies.
Brough Scott was the editor in chief and was instrumental in the conception of the idea and securing the financial backing for the venture.
After the speech and question and answer session I later spoke directly to Graham that evening. Quite often when you speak to people selling their products or ideas you find them with a fixed agenda and inflexible to new attitudes. They often seem in a defensive and almost combatitive mode as if trying to defend their territory from an attack.
Graham was quite the opposite. I think he appreciated that the audience were a sophisticated and representative sample of racing enthusiasts and he was reactive to positive suggestions
.
At the time the Bookmakers had increasingly supported the idea of going up with their prices especially on a Saturday when the big handicaps offered big fields and even bigger ovverounds. In the seventies Bookmakers would offer prices on races they were sponsoring themselves and pretty much kept the market to themselves. With pickings so rich it was not long before all the books were offering prices on pretty much every race that they could.
What then tended to happen was that Bookmaker adverts appeared all over the Paper with dozens of races featured and prices on all of the horses contesting them. I found on a Saturday that it would take ages to collate the prices and found myself drawing up grids filling in the prices of the various firms seeing who was biggest and with what terms for places etc.
I had before that evening floated the idea in conversation with some members of the Racing Club that it might be good if the paper were to produce all the races and prices on one page so that punters could see at a glance the various odds on offer. They could also see what firms were best for multiples as some books would be bigger on some races but not on others. I found most of the members in agreement.
I put it to Graham and also suggested that Bookmakers might support the idea as punters would see straight away which firms were biggest and that would increase turnover for the firms. Likewise if a firm wanted to duck a horse the grid would similarly work in their favour. Graham agreed that it was a good idea and he would take it away and see if it had support.
I also suggested that one of his journalists could write a piece highlighting the best prices available and any value that ensued.
Anyway, it was not long before Graham put the proposal into practice and the Pricewise column was introduced. It was a great success.
The legend that is the Pricewise column today developed during the time that Melvyn Collier was in the seat. Not only was he tipping winners but some of his selections were spectacular to say the least. His success gathered momentum and seemed to peak to my eye at least, with the victory of Papillon in the Grand National which fired a huge nationwide plunge and ensured the column fame forever more.
At the time I was working for the Sports Advisor magazine under the editorship of Andrew Sim. Andrew had a long and distinguished record as an investigative journalist with The Sporting Life before the increased sales of the Racing Post put that esteemed paper out of business (no doubt due to the success of the Pricewise concept!). There have been very few investigative journalists in racing since the War and even fewer with tenacity and success of Andrew.
It did not take me long to realise that Ladbrokes were consistently shorter with their prices when Pricewise put up the same horse. Now I dare say that over the years bookmakers might have approached a successful journalist so as they could mark their card beforehand in order for their odds to be under the market. But it seemed to me in this case that it was the other way round and that Ladbrokes were marking Collier’s card especially as many trainers would have been putting their bets through them. Ladbrokes were forewarned on most of the big races as a consequence. At the time prices were being held and profits were proving to be enormous. If Ladbrokes were to duck the huge liabilities and their competitors were to cop all the winning bets it could lead to movements in share prices and the improved perception of Ladbrokes as a company in the eyes of the City.
I put it to Andrew that as editor of the magazine that it might be worth following up the theory but after talking with his bosses it seemed they were keen not to upset a potentially major advertiser. That was the end of that. In turn and no doubt fired by his success at the Post, Collier left the paper to set up as an independent tipster but singularly failed to match the success of his Pricewise tenure. That in itself proved the validity of my suspicions at the time.
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