Horse racing runs on data. Punters, tipsters, syndicates and analysts all depend on race cards, horse form, jockey and trainer details, odds, going, prize money and results to make their decisions. The problem is that this data is spread across many racing websites, and copying it by hand race after race is slow and error-prone.
In this article we bring together our video guides which show how to scrape horse racing data from popular racing websites using WebHarvy, a point-and-click web scraper. You do not need to write code. You load the page inside WebHarvy, click on the data you need, and WebHarvy extracts it from every race, page and meeting you point it to.
What horse racing data can you scrape?
Depending on the website, you can extract details such as:
- Race meetings, race names, race times and venues
- Race class, distance, going and prize money
- Runners – horse name, number, draw, age, weight and official rating
- Jockey and trainer names
- Form figures and past performance
- Odds, forecasts and betting prices
- Tote dividends and results
- Speed ratings and handicap data
The scraped data can be saved to Excel, CSV, JSON, XML or a database, ready for your own analysis, models or backtesting.
Video guides by website
The following videos show how to scrape horse racing data from different racing websites. Each one covers the techniques needed for that particular site.
1. Racing Post (racingpost.com)
Racing Post is one of the most widely used sources for UK and Irish racing data. The following video shows how to scrape horse details from racingpost.com using WebHarvy.
The next video shows how to scrape both horse and race details from Racing Post.
2. Sporting Life (sportinglife.com)
Sporting Life publishes race cards, odds and results for UK and Irish racing. We have three videos for this site, each covering a different scenario.
Race and horse details from all races using 2-stage mining
This video uses a 2-stage approach. In the first stage, WebHarvy collects the URLs of all races (a small JavaScript code clicks the ‘UK & Ireland’ tab, and another one loads the next day’s races for pagination). Once that run completes, the second stage opens each race URL and scrapes the race and horse details from it.
Codes used in this video:
- JavaScript code for clicking the ‘UK & Ireland’ tab: view on GitHub Gist
- JavaScript code for pagination:
document.getElementsByClassName('NewGenericTabs__ActiveTab-mpmc8b-3')[0].nextElementSibling.click();
Odds, race handicap and horse data, and how to change the URL
This video scrapes odds, race handicap details and horse data from a Sporting Life fast card page, and then shows how to change the start URL of the saved configuration so that the same configuration can be reused for another meeting.
Notes:
- Advanced Miner Options: Low, 4, 2 and 1 respectively.
- Capture the repeating data (like horse names) first. After the repeating data is selected, capture the non-repeating data like the race name.
- RegEx strings used: view on GitHub Gist
- To reuse the configuration for another race meeting, edit the start URL of the configuration.
Race details including forecasts and prize money
This short video shows how to scrape race details, including forecasts and prize money, from Sporting Life.
3. Timeform (timeform.com)
Timeform is known for its ratings and race analysis. This video shows how to extract betting data from timeform.com by using the Scrape a list of similar links feature, which lets WebHarvy open each race link from a list and scrape data from all of them in a single run.
Notes:
- Advanced Miner Options: 2 and 2 respectively.
- RegEx strings used: view on GitHub Gist
4. TAB New Zealand (tab.co.nz)
TAB is the tote betting operator in New Zealand. This video shows how to scrape horse racing data, including Tote Win prices, from www.tab.co.nz.
5. Speedratings
Speed ratings are a popular tool for comparing horses across races. This video shows how to scrape all race related data from the Speedratings website, again using the Scrape a list of similar links feature to go through every race.
Note: Advanced Miner Options used are High, 4, 2 and 1 respectively.
6. Winning Warlock (winningwarlock.com)
This video shows how to scrape horse details from www.winningwarlock.com.
Try it yourself
You can download the free evaluation version of WebHarvy and try scraping your favourite racing website. If you get stuck on a particular site, contact our support team and we will be happy to help you set it up.