Most American sports bettors expect to roll out of bed, open their favorite sportsbook app, and bet the Triple Crown races, like the Preakness.
But horse racing betting is a different experience, in that its usually not available in sportsbook apps and it uses a different system of odds and payouts.
We'll break down how to get started in horse racing betting, from picking an app to making your first bet.
1. Getting an App to Bet the Preakness
If you don't have a horse racing betting app, you'll need to get one. Fortunately, online horse racing betting is legal in 40+ states.
If you live in a handful of FanDuel states, you can bet right in the FanDuel Sportsbook app.
- States you can bet through FanDuel Sportsbook: AZ, CO, IL, IN, KY, LA, MA, MD, MI, NY, OH, PA, VA, WV, WY
- Non-sports betting states with FanDuel Racing: AR, CA, DE, FL, KY, NH, NM, ND, OR, RI, SD, and VT
- States with the TVG app: AZ, CT, IA, ID, MN, MT, NJ, or WA
TwinSpires and FanDuel Racing are two of our favorites. TwinSpires is offering $400 in total bonus funds, but you get $100 of those for every $400 you wager in your first 30 days on the platform. So you won't have anything to use for the Preakness unless you
FanDuel is offering all users a $20 no sweat bet on a Preakness winner, meaning if your bet loses, you'll be refunded in racing credits up to $20. In some other states, you can get a no sweat first horse racing bet up to $500, but only if you've never played on any FanDuel product — sportsbook, DFS, racing, etc.
2. Finding Your Way Around the App
Horse racing apps function a bit differently than sports betting apps, just because of how horse racing betting works. But the look and feel should be pretty similar.
The home screen will look like a sportsbook — upcoming races on the left side, promos at the top, popular races in a module in the middle.
Once you click on a race, you'll see a number of different things.
- All the races at that track along the top, so you can easily toggle
- Different bet types — win, exotics like exacts and trifectas, etc.
- The horses — with their post position, name, trainer and jockey, and odds, from left to right.
Horse racing uses parimutuel odds, which means the odds can change after you've bet it, since the odds are determined exactly by how much action is on each horse.
3. Placing a First Bet
OK, once you've comfortable jumping around in the app, it's time to place a bet.
The major difference between horse racing and sports betting apps is that you have to move to a separate menu to place each different bet type. In sports betting, most places will just create a parlay for you once you start adding legs; some will even do that for a same game parlay.
To Win Bet
To place a bet on a horse to win, it's easy enough — just
Placing Exotic Bets
In horse racing, if you want to place a different kind of bet, you need to change your bet type along the top menu. I won't go into every bet type, since there's a lot to cover. But here's on example.
To make an exacta bet (picking the 1-2 finishers in correct order), click "Exacta" along the top menu. If you want to place an Exacta box (which is the 1-2 finishers correctly, but you get both combinations) you have to click the "Exacta box" menu along the top.
From there, you'll click the horses you want to put in the Exacta box, and choose your bet amount along the bottom. Because you're making two bets (the correct finishing order being horse 1-3 or horses 3-1) you're paying twice the amount.
Again, functionally it feels a bit like sports betting. You click the bet cell to make your selections, and then it highlights it and creates a "bet slip" at the bottom of the screen.
The big difference is that it doesn't give you the payout, because we won't know the payout until all the betting action has concluded. The exacta payouts are determined by how much money was bet on each horse.
