UK Horse Racing Tips

I started reading Patrick Veitch’s Enemy Number One: The Secrets Of The UK’s Most Feared Professional Punter, published by the Racing Post in 2009.

It’s a good read. In fact, I’m halfway through it. A mix of professional punting, scared for his life and even selling racing tips. I say racing tips in the way of being paid to give racing tips. This was an interesting read from Mr. Veitch who detailed that while studying Mathematics at Trinity University at Cambridge he was paid to give racing tips, which paid well. He teamed up with a few people along the way and had advertisements in The Sporting Life and Racing Post, at one time under the name of The Professional. By all accounts it was a good money spinner until other tipsters – let’s call them the good, bad and ugly – starting to saturate the market and it wasn’t viable from there on.

After his initial tipster escapades, Veitch was approached by The Winning Line, founded in 1992 by Stephen Winstanley, a costly subscription service, which detailed the tips via recorded telephone messages. For this he sign a contract and was paid £100,000 per annum and bonuses on performance. It was a lucrative deal but something that didn’t sit very well with ‘Baby Faced Assassin’ who would rather have time for himself and do his own thing. He made a healthy profit for the company, which obviously kept the punters happy.

I found it interesting from reading Dave Nevison’s A Bloody Good Winner: Life as a Professional Gambler, published by Highdown in 2007, that he too had been paid £100,000 for his tips by The Winning Line in 2000. On balance, it would seem that both appreciated the earning potential of the contract but for both tipsters it was a short-lived experience.

I think Veitch worked with The Winning Line around 1995 and Nevison in 2000. I wonder if there were any other high-profile professions who were involved. It would be intriguing to know the other faces and how they went. I would love to read a book published about The Winning Line as it would be fascinating to hear the thoughts of both partner’s Stephen Winstanley and Nick Stewart.

If the horse racing tipster of today are making money at the same level it must be a very lucrative deal. As Veitch detailed, The Winning Line was very successful in his duration and within minutes of tips being given the prices shortened. This has been the case with other services and the market adjusts for those who are well informed. In fact, many imply have their tips were passed on by other tipsters as their own which was even accepted by some publications and turned a blind eye to.

It would seem that both Veitch and Nevison made hay while the sun shined but the implications of working in the world of giving racing tips hindered their enjoyment of simply being professional gamblers.

A fascinating read.

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