How to bet at Santa Anita Racetrack online

Stay tuned to Online Sports Betting for Santa Anita Park racetrack picks for some of the biggest races of the year. Santa Anita runs its celebrated winter-spring meet from December 26 through mid-June. Then, it picks up again for a fall meet from late September until either late October or early November, depending on where the Breeders’ Cup is located.

Whether it’s Breeders’ Cup day or a fun Friday after work, betting Santa Anita Park is easy, secure, and convenient if you play from one of these recommended online racebooks. You can be part of the action from anywhere, view live fields and odds, and get benefits that you’ll never find at the track or OTB.

How to Bet at Santa Anita Park

Santa Anita offers racing on both dirt and turf, and plans to add Tapeta racing as early as 2025. The dirt course covers a distance of one mile around, with the regular turf course covering seven furlongs. Santa Anita also has a hillside extension to the turf course, allowing it to run distinctive six-and-a-half-furlong downhill sprints as well as longer distances on the grass. Races on the far-inside oval, previously only a training track, will include a two-turn 6 1/2 furlong trip up to a three-turn mile.

To stay tuned with all that is going on at Santa Anita, you can watch the simulcast feed. Analysts including Jeff Siegel, Michelle Yu, Frank Scatoni, and George Ortuzar provide on-screen analysis and commentary to accompany the picks you make based on the past performances and replays. You can also go out to Santa Anita to watch the works yourself in the morning, if you live in Southern California. After all, they’re free and open to everyone, and they can give you an early look at a talented young horse or an older runner who is in uncommonly good form.

Santa Anita Wagering Menu

Santa Anita offers a full wagering menu to satisfy every bettor. The classic bets on an individual race include $2 win, place, and show bets, the $1 exacta and trifecta, and the $0.10 superfecta on all race. Santa Anita also offers a $1 Super High Five on the last race of the day.

Multi-race exotics help you chain opinions on consecutive races into big payouts. Those include $2 rolling daily doubles on most races, a $5 daily double on the last two, rolling $1 Pick 3 wagers most of the day, as well as a $3 Pick 3 on the last three races. Santa Anita also offers a $3 all-turf Pick 3, two $0.50 Pick 4 sequences a day, two $0.50 Pick 5 sequences a day, and a $2 Pick 6. Santa Anita has made the bettor-friendly move of removing its jackpot provision on the Pick 6: the major pool pays out no matter how many people have all six winners, and carries over only if there are no winners.

If you prefer contest play to pari-mutuel betting, Santa Anita has you covered with contests all year long. The ShowVivor contest, in which you try to maintain a streak of picking a horse every day to finish third or better, offers $7,500 in prizes across five category, and is free to play.

Santa Anita Betting Contests

Santa Anita also has numerous betting contests throughout the year. The ShowVivor contest is free to join and offers $5,000 in prizes. There is also a $40 Handicapping contest on some Saturday and Sundays, and a $3,000 American Football contest in the winter. Another exciting free contest from Santa Anita is the Pick’em, which combines horse racing and sports prop-bet picks.

In addition to these free online contests, Santa Anita also hosts live-money contests all year long that offer cash prizes as well as seats into the richest handicapping contests of the year including the National Horseplayers Championship, the Breeders’ Cup Betting Challenge, and the Pegasus World Cup Betting championship.

Santa Anita Betting Tips

One of the best things to do before betting Santa Anita is to know the top jockeys and trainers at Santa Anita. Flavien Prat is as good as it gets on the grass, though he had a breakout season on dirt in 2024 and has made his name as perhaps the best big-stakes jockey in the game today. Juan Hernandez, buoyed by getting many of trainer Bob Baffert’s top mounts, is a superstar on the Santa Anita dirt. Antonio Fresu is an underrated rider on the Santa Anita turf, while world-famous Frankie Dettori has been winning prodigiously on both surfaces in recent times at Santa Anita.

On the training end, the same trainers who have been big stars at Santa Anita Park in recent years continue to lead the way. Bob Baffert is always near the top of the training standings, and he is especially fearsome in dirt stakes and with buzz-horse maidens. Other top trainers at Santa Anita include Doug O’Neill, Mark Glatt, Phil D’Amato, Steve Knapp, and John Sadler. Make sure to keep an eye on both Richard Mandella and Michael McCarthy as well – though neither has a barn as big as some of the others, they both have many top-class horses and are as shrewd as it gets with placing them in races.

Looking at post position statistics at Santa Anita, middle posts (4 through 6) do well, especially if the horse can be near the lead. In dirt routes, it is inside speed in the first three gates that has an advantage.

As far as Santa Anita post positions, posts 1 through 6 do very well at sprints on the dirt. Middle and outside posts do better in turf sprints, while the middle stalls are best for any route race. Routing on turf, a horse who can get a pressing or stalking spot from an inside or middle gate is in a good place; turf sprints do not have much of a bias, and a good horse can win from anywhere.

If you can find a horse with good connections, a good post, good works, and a good fit for the race that they’re in at a price, they’re going to be your Santa Anita Best Bet!

Santa Anita Best Races

Santa Anita hosts some of the best horse race in the country all year long, including 11 races at the Grade 1 level.

The Grade 1 races happen on both dirt and turf, at a range of distances.

Two-turn dirt races at the top level at Santa Anita include the 1 1/4-mile Santa Anita Handicap (G1) and the Beholder Mile (G1) for older horses in early March, the 1 1/8-mile Santa Anita Derby (G1) in early April for three-year-old Kentucky Derby hopefuls, the 1 1/16-mile American Pharoah Stakes (G1) in late September for two-year-olds, and the 1 1/8-mile California Crown (G1) for older horses in late September as well.

The Grade 1 sprints come at the end of the year: the Malibu (G1) and La Brea (G1) are opening-day features on December 26 every year. Those seven-furlong dirt races are a final chance for 3-year-olds and 3-year-old fillies to get Grade 1 laurels against their own age groups.

Four Grade 1 races are contested on the Santa Anita grass, all at a mile or more. Milers aged three and up take the stage in the Kilroe Mile (G1) in March and the Shoemaker Mile (G1) in May. Fillies and mares go 1 1/8 miles in the Gamely, also run in late May like the Shoemaker. The longest Grade 1 turf race at Santa Anita is the American Oaks (G1), a late-December race at 1 1/4 miles for sophomore fillies.

The Santa Anita Derby is the most eagerly-awaited race of the spring meet. It is the most important California prep for Kentucky Derby, and many horses have gone on to win that race and then the three-year-old Classics. 2018 Triple Crown winner Justify came out of the race in 2018. Other recent stars to win the Santa Anita Derby and then at least one of the Classics include 2016 Preakness Stakes winner Exaggerator, 2014 Kentucky Derby and Preakness Stakes winner California Chrome, two-time Breeders’ Cup Dirt Mile winner Goldencents (the sire of 2024 Kentucky Derby winner Mystik Dan!), and 2012 Kentucky Derby and Preakness winner I’ll Have Another.

Also run the same day as the Santa Anita Derby is the Santa Anita Oaks, the premier Kentucky Oaks prep in California. Even though recent winners of the Santa Anita Oaks have not necessarily gone and won the Kentucky Oaks, they have shined in other important races. 2020 winner Swiss Skydiver was second in the Kentucky Oaks, but then beat the boys in the Preakness! Midnight Bisou (2018) was third in the Kentucky Oaks, but went on to win many major races including the Saudi Cup (G1) against males. Songbird (2016) missed the Kentucky Oaks, but won the Coaching Club American Oaks (G1), Alabama (G1), and Cotillion (G1) en route to champion sophomore filly honors. Both Stellar Wind (2015) and Breeders’ Cup Distaff winner Beholder (2013) also went on to championships as three-year-old fillies.

The most historic race for older horses at the Great Race Place is the Santa Anita Handicap, the first $100,000 race in the country. Seabiscuit worked for years to win the Santa Anita Handicap, missing in photo finishes in 1937 and 1938 before ending his career in triumph in the 1940 edition. Other all-time stars to win this race, affectionately known as the Big ‘Cap, include Round Table (1958), Ack Ack (1971), Affirmed (1979), Spectacular Bid (1980), John Henry (1981 and 1982), Alysheba (1988), Tiznow (2001), Game On Dude (2011, 2013, and 2014 – the only three-time winner!), and Shared Belief (2015).