SP (Starting Price)
The official decimal odds at which a greyhound went off at the start of the race, set by an industry panel from on-course bookmaker prices.
The SP, or starting price, is the official odds at which a greyhound was sent off when the race started. It's not a market price you can typically bet at — it's set retrospectively by the industry SP panel, based on the on-course bookmaker prices at the moment the traps opened.
How it differs from BSP: SP is bookmaker-set and represents the "average" final on-course price. BSP (Betfair Starting Price) is the exchange-derived clearing price between backers and layers at race start, and is usually a few percent more generous on average.
Use in TrapStats: SP is a key market-signal feature in the prediction model — it's the cleanest single summary of what bookmakers thought about the dog. We also store SP on every settled bet for honest after-the-fact ROI tracking. The forecast price used for actual bet decisions is the forecast (typically Timeform) — never the post-finish SP.