The following is a review of the Tom Waterhouse horse racing tipping service, which is run by former bookmaker Tom Waterhouse. We discuss the various packages and our own experience with the service.
About Tom Waterhouse
Tom Waterhouse is the former CEO of William Hill Australia. He comes from a long family heritage of both bookmakers and horse trainers, which includes his mother, Gai Waterhouse. Tom became a licensed bookmaker in 2003 and launched the eponymous online wagering service in 2010. Waterhouse sold the business to William Hill Australia in 2013 and acted as CEO of William Hill Australia from 2014 until the service was sold in 2018 to BetEasy.
Judging by the performance data provided, it appears that the Tom Waterhouse tipping service was launched in May, 2018.
How Membership Works
Tom Waterhouse tipping provides horse racing tips for major city meets across Australia and Hong Kong.
Membership grants you subscription to a newsletter. All tips are sent by email rather than posted online.
A range of weekly packages are available, ranging from the free Bronze package to the Emerald package at $249.95 per week. The Australian packages provide tips for one race day per week, while the Hong Kong package provides tips twice weekly. With the exception of the platinum package, membership is paid on a weekly basis. There are no lock-in contracts so you can cancel anytime.
Membership can be paid by Visa, MasterCard and American Express debit & credit cards. Your membership renews each week automatically unless you cancel the renewal using the online account area.
Apart from the free bronze package, the tips come with a recommended stake for each bet along with a comment on why Tom Waterhouse has selected that runner. A recommended starting bank of units is provided for each package. It’s up to you to assign a dollar value to each unit that fits your budget. Let’s say you choose a conversion of 1 unit = $3.00. If the recommended starting bank is 500 units and a certain bet has a recommended stake of 6.0 units, then you would start with a balance of $1,500 and wager $18.00 on that horse. Tom Waterhouse recommends that you periodically adjust the dollar value you assign to each unit in line with the ebbs and flows of your betting bank.
From our experience all of the tips are win bets, with no each-way, place or exotics recommendations. Some tips involve betting on multiple runners, but the majority involve one selection per race.
Account Area & Subscription Management
Tom Waterhouse uses the 3rd party service Memberful to run the account area and subscription service. The account area is basic and clearly designed for mobile devices. It enables you to manage your subscriptions, view your payments and update your personal details.
Tipping Packages & Prices
Tom Waterhouse offers a range packages that provide horse racing tips. Until now the focus has been on Australian venues, but a twice weekly Hong Kong package has recently been launched.
The following prices are in Australian dollars. Unless stated otherwise, the package provides tips for Saturday races.
Bronze – free
Receive one Best Bet every Saturday. No credit card details are required to subscribe.
Performance:
According to the website the best bets have gone 17 from 31. With a level stakes staking plan you would be up over 83% on turnover.
Silver – $14.95 per week
This package provides five best bets every Saturday morning before 11 AM AEST. Also included is an ‘Early Odds Boost’, where Tom Waterhouse emails one tip on Friday so you can save an odds boost for when the remaining tips come out on Saturday.
Recommended staking levels are provided, with the recommendation that you start with a bank of 500 units.
Performance:
The Silver package has yielded a positive return in four of seven months since inception.
Staked (Units): 1,859.0
Returned (Units): 2,219.6
Profit (Units): 360.6
Profit on Turnover: 19.4%
Return on Investment: 72.1%
Gold – $24.95 per week
Sample email screenshot:
The Gold Package provides around 20 tips each week. The tips along with staking plans are emailed every Saturday at around 11 AM AEST. Included are the five ‘Best Bets of the Day’ that included in the Silver package, along with top tips for every major Australian city meeting that Tom Waterhouse is betting on.
Like the Silver package, the Gold package includes an ‘Early Odds Boost’, where Tom Waterhouse emails a tip on Friday so you can save an odds boost for when the full tips come out on a Saturday.
The Gold package is the only one that comes with a money back guarantee: if the bets show a negative performance over your first 28 days of your membership, you’ll get your subscription money back.
For this package it is recommended that you start with a bankroll of 1,000 units.
Performance:
The Gold package has yielded a positive return in four of seven months since inception.
Staked (Units): 4,334.5
Returned (Units): 4,813.1
Profit (Units): 478.6
Profit on Turnover: 11.0%
Return on Investment: 47.9%
Saturday Early Mail Package – $99.95 per week
Sample email screenshot:
The Saturday Early Mail package was launched at the end of July. Every Thursday before 3 PM AEST, subscribers receive five best early bets of the week. Each tip comes with a recommended stake, race comments and where to get the best odds. The sales pitch behind this package is it gives you the best chance to back the runners before the odds firm.
For this package it is recommended that you start with a bankroll of 250 units.
Performance:
Profit (Units): 112.5
Profit on Turnover (PoT): 17.1%
Strike Rate: 44%
Average Extra Profit By Taking Early Price: 34%
View a full spreadsheet of results
Sunday Early Mail Package – $39.95 per week
Subscribers receive Tom Waterhouse’s three best tips for Sunday’s races along with a staking plan and where to get the best odds. Each email is sent by 6 PM AEST on Saturday. Race commentary for every bet is provided. This package recommends working with a bankroll of 150 units.
Performance:
This package is brand new so no data is available.
Wednesday’s 3 Best – $59.95 per week
The Wednesday Early Mail Package provides three best tips for Wednesday racing, along with a staking plan and where to get the best odds. Each email is sent out by 3 PM AEST on Tuesday.
This package recommends working with a betting bank of 100 units.
Performance: No data has been published
Hong Kong Package – $88.88 per week
Sample email screenshot:
The Hong Kong Package provides five tips each week for both Sha Tin and Happy Valley for a total of ten tips per week. Membership includes staking recommendations for each pick, what odds to take for the tips and a proprietary speed map for each race. The race days are typically Wednesday and then either Saturday or Sunday. View the Hong Kong racing calendar.
Performance:
This package has only recently been launched. No data has been published
Friday’s 5 Best – $19.95 per week
Receive Tom Waterhouse’s five best bets Australia-wide each Friday morning for the Friday races. The tips are emailed before 11am AEST.
This package recommends a starting bank of 500 units.
Performance:
No data has been published.
Emerald Package – $249.95 per week
The Emerald Package includes:
- All bets that Tom Waterhouse is placing on a Saturday – Australia-wide. These are sent out before 11 AM AEST each Saturday.
- A staking plan for every race
- Race analysis for every bet
- An ‘Early Odds Boost’ pick sent out before the weekend
- Access to an exclusive WhatsApp group where Tom Waterhouse provides updates and the late mail throughout each race day
- Invites to exclusive events throughout the year for no extra charge
Platinum Package – $120,000 per year
You’d have to be keen to get this one! I would love to know if anyone has taken him up on it.
The Platinum package gives you the privilege of sitting with Tom Waterhouse every Saturday to watch first hand how he works.
There isn’t much information provided and we didn’t quite have the budget to do a test! The website simply shows an online form where you can register your interest.
Our Experience
We subscribed to a number of Tom Waterhouse packages over a one month period. Below are the results. All profit figures represent profit on turnover. Keep in mind that these figures don’t include membership fees. How the fees impact the results depends on how you define 1 betting unit. The higher the currency value per unit, the lower the impact of the fees. For our trial anything over $1.50 per unit would have yielded us a profit, net of fees, but a number of our packages were free trials.
October 27
– Gold members had 2 winners from 20 races for a 40% loss
November 3
– Gold members had 4 winners from 18 races for a 21% loss
November 6 – Melbourne Cup day
– Gold members had 6 winners from 32 races for a 36% profit
November 8 – Oaks Day
– Gold members had 5 winners from 17 races for a 90% profit
November 10
– Gold members had 3 winners from 18 races (including a runner at 15.00 odds) for an 87% profit
November 17
– Gold members had 1 winner from 26 races for an 83% loss
– Saturday Early Mail members had 3 winners for a 50% profit
November 24
– Gold members had 7 winners from 26 races for a 19% profit
– Saturday Early Mail members had 5 winners from 7 races for a 171% profit
November 28
– Hong Kong members had 2 winners from 5 races for a 97% profit
To provide some insight into the stakes and odds, for the Gold Package tips on the 24th of November the stakes ranged from 1 unit to 12 units. The odds that we obtained for the selections (using a pool of four bookmakers) ranged from 2.90 to 34.00 with an average of 8.27 and a median of 7.00.
Summary
Upsides
- Transparency about previous performance, particularly for the Saturday Early Mail package, which provides a spreadsheet of all results
- Positive long-term profit achieved across all of the oldest packages
- Tips were received on time
- On the back of bad weeks we received free package trials
- Money back guarantee for the gold package
- The third party software for managing your account runs smoothly
- The tips arrived successfully to a Hotmail inbox, without winding up in the Junk Mail folder
- Cancelling subscriptions is easy, with no ‘why are you leaving’ surveys, discount offers or other delaying sales tactics
Downsides
- No recommended minimum odds are provided for the Gold package
- Large swings in profits and losses from week to week
- The published performance stats don’t account for membership fees
- The free package trials automatically renew to paid memberships unless you cancel
- Win tips are provided only, with no each-way, place or exotics suggested
- It remains to be seen whether the strong Saturday tipping results will persist given the recent additions of the Hong Kong and Sunday packages. There’s the possibility that Tom Waterhouse is spreading himself too thin.
- When we subscribed to the Sunday Early Mail Package we accidentally received a copy of the ‘Welcome to the Hong Kong Package’ email
- “By subscribing to this tipping service members also consent to receiving information and links to third party websites. This applies to all Australian residents (excluding NSW and SA residents).”
Conclusion
Below are the profit on turnover figures for four of the major packages since the Tom Waterhouse tipping service was launched in May 2018. It should be noted that the Gold package has yielded a larger dollar return than the Silver package due to the higher number of units wagered each week. Also keep in mind that these figures (with the exception of Bronze, which is free) don’t account for membership fees, the impact of which depends on how you define 1 betting unit.
Bronze: 83.0%
Silver: 19.4%
Gold: 11.0%
Saturday Early Mail: 17.1%
Overall, our impression of the Tom Waterhouse tipping service is positive. The tips were sent on time and the net result from our own wagering using a pool of four bookmakers (rather than relying on Tom Waterhouse’s figures) was a net return of 10.4% on turnover. Be prepared for a roller coaster ride, however, due to the high average odds and the fact that only win bets are provided. You will get vastly different fortunes from week to week because the difference between having a particular horse run 1st or 2nd is huge. You’ll have to accept that there will be bad weeks and will have to trust that the performance going forward matches the previous long-term performance.
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