Noel,

It would be interesting to do a long-term analysis on this but I personally think you are right - the tab divs are nowhere near as bad as everyone makes out, especially if you are not backing short priced favourites. In fact the analysis that I have done (I admit it has not looked at a big enough sample to be conclusive) indicates that if you are backing favorites you are probably better off with SP but if you are backing horses in the $8-$20 range (which I generally do) then you are better off with TAB.

A little bit of maths indicates that the TAB MUST be better for a large number of horses in the field. With the TAB the total of the divs for all horses always adds up to about 117% - with SP they generally add up to around the 130-140% mark (sometimes even more) and then as the bookies adjust the prices the total comes in to around the TAB total. If the favourites are better on average under SP (there is an analysis on this site that suggests this) then the longer odds horses MUST be better on average on the TAB.