The ITV7 is a free to enter competition focussing on horse racing, but while it is free to take part, there are real cash prizes.
It’s possible to win £100, £1,000 or £50,000, depending on your results compared to the results of others, but it’s not going to be easy.
The challenge with ITV7 is to pick the winners of seven different horse races chosen by ITV each day, this is the only way to win the larger amounts of money, but there are consolation prizes too in the form of smaller amounts.
For a free competition, the ITV7 has an especially good interface to use with plenty of extra features, making it much more interesting than a simple once a day free spinning wheel game and the like.
Horse racing fans can actually use their knowledge and experience to make their predictions with ITV7, so it’s a competition that attracts serious gamblers and casual punters alike.
How to Enter the ITV7 Competition
Although the competition is called the ITV7, it’s actually run in conjunction with Sky Bet, so you will need a linked account to play.
If you have previously signed up for Sky Bet, Sky Games, Sporting Life Pick 7, or Super 6 account, then the technology will recognise you and let you use the same sign in details to get started.
If not, you will need to create an account, but this is super easy, especially if you have an account with another brand owned by Flutter Entertainment. Sky Bet itself is owned by Flutter Entertainment, which also owns Paddy Power, Betfair, and a bunch of others, and again, the tech can cross reference accounts to prove your identity, making the sign up process much smoother.
You will be able to follow links to the competition from the various Sky sites, but they will all redirect you to the ITV7 site rather than letting you enter via their own platform.
With that in mind then, there are three ways to enter:
- Via the ITV app
- Via the ITV7 app (it has its own app)
- Via the ITV website
It doesn’t matter which one you choose since it’s your picks that will ultimately lead you to victory or failure, the platform you use is simply a matter of personal taste.
Once you’re in, all you have to do is browse through the horses and select one in each race.
As soon as you have picked a horse the site will load the next race, and you can see where you are up to using the 1, 2, 3 etc. at the top of the page. See the image above for anexample.
Once you get to the end you will be asked to complete a tie breaker question before submitting your picks, and at this point you are officially in the competition.
If you want to amend your picks you can do.
Just go back to your account and there will be a button inviting you to edit your choices, although this won’t be possible once the first race has started.
Once the first race is off you can track your results using the app/website, and cross your fingers that you have picked correctly.
Prizes
As mentioned, there are significant prizes to be won in the ITV7 competition, and this is how they work.
The prize amount varies depending on whether the meetings selected are broadcast or not. Since ITV7 runs every day, obviously not all of the meetings selected can be equally as exciting and draw in the same amount of wagers, therefore the prize for this competition adjusts.
The top prize for broadcast meetings, referred to as the Jackpot, is £50,000, while for non-broadcast competitions it is £1,000. To win these amounts, all 7 of the horses picked must finish in first position.
People don’t often pick 7 winners though, it’s a tough ask, so a consolation prize of £1,000 for broadcast meetings and £100 for non-broadcast meetings will be awarded to the person with the next best results.
ITV7 ranks the results like this:
| Winners | Places | No Places |
|---|---|---|
| 6 | 1 | 0 |
| 6 | 0 | 1 |
| 5 | 2 | 0 |
| 5 | 1 | 1 |
| 5 | 0 | 2 |
| 4 | 3 | 0 |
| 4 | 2 | 1 |
| 4 | 1 | 2 |
| 4 | 0 | 3 |
| 3 | 4 | 0 |
| 3 | 3 | 1 |
| 3 | 2 | 2 |
| 3 | 1 | 3 |
| 3 | 0 | 4 |
If there ends up being more than one winning entry to the competition, whether that be a jackpot prize or a consolation prize, then the tie breaker comes into effect.
After selecting all seven horses, players will be asked to predict how much the winner of the final race will win by; neck and neck, by a nose, half a length, 2 lengths, etc.
There are lots of options to choose from, and the winning player that is closest to the actual result will be the one who ultimately takes the prize in a tie breaker situation.
A few other rules to be aware of:
- Non-runners shall be replaced with the SP favourite
- In dead heat situations both horses will be awarded the win for the purposes of the competition
- An abandoned or void race will reduce the jackpot to £5,000 broadcast/£500 non-broadcast, and £1,000 broadcast/£0 non-broadcast consolation prizes. Two abandoned or void race will reduce the jackpot to £1,000 broadcast/£250 non-broadcast with no consolation prizes. Three abandoned or void races will cancel the competition entirely for that day.
Sometimes, during big meetings like Cheltenham, the £50,000 jackpot will roll over to the next day if it is not won, so the prize could technically hit six figures on certain occasions.
ITV7 Leagues
A fun little feature of the ITV7, is that as well as playing the competition itself and viewing winners and past results etc., you can create your own mini leagues.
Each league is given a code, so whether you create a league or want to join someone else’s, you just need to either give the code out to allow people to join, or input a code you have been given to join a league someone else has created.
So if you have a bunch of horse racing enthusiast work colleagues, you can set up a friendly competition between the group and have your own leader board etc.
There is no financial aspect to this element of the ITV7 site, it’s just for fun, but there’s nothing to stop you making your own wagers with each other if you want to make it more interesting.
