Be aware that there may be a limit on the maximum withdrawal winnings, but free cash is free cash! Other common signup offers are like this one from Ladbrokes Casino for new customers: Offers such as this one are not necessarily risk-free because you first have to stake some of your own money.
There are other offers which instead require you to deposit your own money but not actually risk it. The point is, you need to know what you’re doing! We’ll shortly cover how you can gain this knowledge. Typical offers involve you depositing a certain amount and then you’ll get given a bonus.
As mentioned to be able to match the bets, you need to be able to stake money against an event happening, which is known as laying. Your money is staked against people who are backing a bet for an outcome to win. This may sound confusing at first but you’ll quickly get the hang of it, trust me! Several of these betting exchanges exist to be able to lay bets. On each exchange you’ll find all of the most popular sports with odds displayed for each match.
Here for example are the odds for an upcoming match compared between Ladbrokes and the three exchanges I have used: If we wanted to place bets for Leicester in this match, notice how each of the lay odds are slightly different to the odds displayed at Ladbrokes. For this match we’d be best choosing Smarkets since these odds are closest to Ladbrokes. When choosing which exchange to use there are a few factors to consider: As we’ve just seen, the laying odds vary a bit between bookmakers. You want the odds to be as bet betting sites bonus sign up close to the back odds as possible: higher odds are not better. Betting exchange usually have fees which you should be aware of, usually 2-5%.
Fees vary between platforms and how often you use the platform. Often if you pay for a matched betting subscription there are offers, for example currently with Outplayed.com I’ve got a 0% fee offer with Matchbook. Exchanges depend upon back bets being placed which your lay bet can be matched to. The amount of available money is displayed on each betting exchange right below the odds.The different exchanges receive varying amounts of traffic and therefore sometimes you’ll have an easier time finding a good match between odds at another exchange. This can be a big factor if you’re trying to make a large bet: notice for example that in the above screenshot there is only £25 available at betfair exchange if you wanted to lay a bet on Aston Villa. The really important thing to look out for are the wagering requirements.
| Event/Season | Typical Free Offer | Participating Bookmakers |
|---|---|---|
| Grand National | Money Back as Cash if 2nd/3rd | Paddy Power, Betfair |
| Champions League Final | Free Bet if Game Goes to Extra Time | Bet365, Unibet |
| Wimbledon | Free Bet on Each Set Won | Ladbrokes, Coral |
| New Year | Deposit Bonus with Free Bets | Most bookmakers |
| Super Bowl | Profit Boost on Prop Bets | BetMGM, DraftKings |
These offers involve “wagering requirements” which means spending through your bonus a certain number of times, such as 40x, before you can withdraw any winnings. Therefore if you took full advantage of an offer, deposited £10 and got a £50 bonus you would have to wager £50×40 = £2000 before you can withdraw your winnings.
It is kind of like if you bet on every outcome but much less tedious and more profitable. By both backing and laying a certain outcome of an event, you take away all the unknowns. How the sporting event plays out becomes irrelevant: thankfully to be good at matched betting you don’t need to know anything about sport! When taking part in offers, this technique of reducing the risk has the effect of allowing you to potentially securing yourself a profit no matter the sporting outcome! The odds at the betting exchange often do not perfectly match the odds at Ladbrokes and sometimes there is a fee, therefore you’ll likely lose a little bit of money on this first set of bets, but much less than risking your whole £20.
This is how the offer could play out: You find something on Ladbrokes you want to bet on, above the minimum odds of 1/2 (decimal odds: 1.5) You find the odds for the same event on your betting exchange and calculate what size stake to make here Stake your £20 at Ladbrokes (called your back bet) Make your lay bet at the exchange: because the odds are slightly different (and there may be a fee depending on the exchange you use) it won’t necessarily be exactly a £20 lay bet you make. You’ll your overall position to be the same no matter the result of the sports match. We’ll come onto how to calculate the stake, for now let’s say it is £19.50. Now you have both bets placed, depending on how the sports match goes you’ll either make money at Ladbrokes (and lose some at the exchange) or make money at the exchange (and lose some at Ladbrokes. But importantly, we calculate the amount we lay at the exchange so that the net result is the same no matter the sporting result.
After placing your qualifying bet of £20, you’ll typically be down around 50p depending on the exact odds, but now you have a £20 free bet available! Ladbrokes should now credit you with a £20 voucher. In my experience they’re usually good about helping customers out if you have to contact them for help accessing it. Now, you could just place the bet on anything you fancy at Ladbrokes, but of course there is a chance it could lose. Therefore we employ the same backing and laying techniques to profit from the free bet, no matter what the result is! And before you think it, no this does not mean you have to have £2000 in your account.
You can keep on using the same £50 (on lots of small wagers) but to be able to withdraw you’ll basically have to have spent £2000 with the casino.
Betfair for example is owned by a larger company which also operates several bookmakers, namely Sky Bet and Paddy Power. It would not be a good idea to lay your bets on the Betfair Exchange if you’re making use of an offer at one of these bookmakers I personally use Matchbook and Smarkets the most because they’re not affiliated with bookmakers and the fees are lower or in the case of Matchbook free if you’ve got a subscription with Outplayed.com. Again this is an affiliate link, my policy is here. Along with sports offers, the second main type of offers come from casinos. Just like bookmakers, casinos offer promotions both for new and returning users.
In fact, a lot of bookmakers also run casinos, including our previous example of Ladbrokes. Casino offers include slot machines and table games like blackjack. I actually prefer casino offers to sports offers, in part because you can progress with them easily at any hour of the day (without waiting for physical sporting events to play out) but also because the rewards can be higher. Just like sports matched betting offers, bet free first bet no deposit app there are many types of casino offers. I’ll stick to giving examples of some of the common offers which are either no or low-risk, though it is worth mentioning that there are also many “positive expected value” (+EV) casino offers: where you are not guaranteed a risk-free profit, but you are very much stacking the odds in your favour. Which yes, is a lot of money and potentially also a lot of time, so it’s important to figure out how profitable the offer may be.
Follow exactly the same process as for the qualifying bet, adjusting your lay stake (at the exchange) to secure yourself a profit. From your free bet you should be able to retain 70-80% of the value. Therefore for a £20 free bet your profit should be around £16.00.Now including the 50p loss for your qualifying bet, you should end up with a total profit of around £15.50! Your first offer may take a little time to get your head around but bet top uk betting sites list free you’ll get a lot faster. An offer like this will eventually take you under 10 minutes from start to finish.
The Ladbrokes example was pretty typical: bet a certain amount and you’ll qualify for a free bet of the same value. There are loads of other types of sport betting offers, including: Place a certain number of bets and get a free bet If your first bet loses, you’ll either get a free bet or refund up to the value of the bet Bet a certain amount on accumulator bets and get a free bet Once you’ve completed the new-customer promotional offers, many of the most popular bookmakers will be keen to keep you as a regular customer by offering ongoing offers. These offers include ones of a similar nature to the sign-up offers but in addition there are a load of other types, such as: Getting paid out as a winner if you team goes a certain amount ahead during the match (even if they go on to lose) Some bookies simply give out small free bets every so often to entice you back! Some of offers don’t require you to wager any of your own money, meaning that no matter the outcome you won’t be worse off than you started. You can certainly stick to just doing these types of offers and still make a good amount of money.
Other types of offers do require wagering your own money but offer big incentives for little risk. For example Bet365 regularly runs a promotion where you make a qualifying bet of £50 and you’ll get a free in-play bet (on a popular football match) for the same amount: meaning potentially you can regularly make an easy £35 or more! There are some offers though which instead are positive EV (expected value) meaning that although profit is not guaranteed, on average you can expect to finish with a certain amount of profit. If you’re comfortable doing these, you can earn even more money. There are other ways to make money, such as with price boosts, but I think you get the idea: there are lots of ways to make money! For this offer you can play table games such as blackjack which has a really high return to player (RTP) rate, more on that in a second, and so the expected profit from this offer is around £42.
Later in the article you’ll see examples of my winnings from these types of offers but for now let’s stick to risk-free offers. This offer is pretty easy to understand and doesn’t require much of an explanation. All you have to do is register and you’ll get a certain number, 50 in this instance, of free spins on a slot machine. Most of the time you might not make any money but every so often you’ll hit a big win. Earlier this year I did exactly one of these offers with 30 free spins and won £180 so don’t dismiss these offers, they can actually be really profitable every so often.
