Betfair Official Blog

Happy birthday BAGS, 40 this month and staying on well

Tracks have come and gone but daily dog racing service just gets bigger, says greyhound expert Darrell Williams

The Bookmakers Afternoon Greyhound Service or BAGS as it's affectionately known has been around almost as long as betting shops themselves and this month celebrates its 40th anniversary.

For those who don't know, BAGS is the company that negotiates the contracts with greyhound tracks to supply live racing to the nation's betting shops via SIS, and it's certainly come a long way since those heady first days of 1967. Way back then the service comprised of just four tracks and acted purely as a safety net in the winter when horse-racing was abandoned to give us punters something to bet on.

Through the years the service has grown on an almost yearly basis to the extent that BAGS now stage a race roughly every seven minutes throughout the day from 11:00 to 21:30 - that's well over 80 races a day - all, of course, readily available on Betfair.

But it's been a long road to get to where the well-oiled BAGS machine is today. I still recall the days of what we used to term a 'two and two' back in the early 90s - which comprised two afternoon horse-race meetings running in tandem with two BAGS cards, and in those days the dog tracks used to stage just 10 races each as opposed to the 14 race cards of today.

Doubtless the most famous BAGS track is the now long since defunct Hackney Wick, which for many years raced exclusively in the daytime meaning shop punters had the chance to see every single race. Like many I grew up on the Saturday morning double header of Hackney and Crayford, and still remember with fondness my Saturday job, not long after I turned 18, as a boardmarker in my local Ladbrokes chalking up the prices, and hoping that they'd be plenty of trap three winners, which was my usual 'fun' bet in those days.

Over the years many tracks have come and gone, with the closure of Bristol, like Hackney one of the mainstays of the service, a particularly sad loss. More positively, only this month, as part of the introduction of all year round evening opening of the betting shops, three new venues have been introduced to the service, with the delights of Belle Vue, Yarmouth and Poole joining the BAGS family.

Many people see BAGS racing as just a numbers game. Six dogs, same colours every time, perfect for a quick punt without any need to know anything about the form, and maybe that's why it's been so successful - nearly one in five bets placed in the shops is on a greyhound race. Others complain of its repetitive nature, citing every race as being deadly competitive - the term 3/1 the field is often banded about, and that nearly every race is over the bog standard four bend trip. Personally I'd like to see a bit more variety. Races for Open Class dogs seem to go down well when they're included, and just because a short-priced favourite is included it doesn't mean it will win.

But that aside BAGS remains a good punting medium, and often those so called impossible races are not quite as mind blowing as they first appear. I'll expand on my theory another time, but for those looking to make a profit I'd always suggest keeping a close eye on any track bias, including when it suits front runners or finishers, and staying on the right side of improving puppies and bitches returning from season. Easy really!

So BAGS, happy birthday and here's to the next 40years!