During the past year or so matched betting has attracted ...



During the past year or so matched betting has attracted an unusual amount of media attention. Trust-worthy news sources, such as The Guardian and The Telegraph have covered matched betting, publicly confirming that it is indeed a legitimate (and highly profitable) way to make money.

The Guardian first covered matched betting in the June of 2010. The Free World Cup bets offered a chance to beat the bookies

With bookmakers offering 'free bets' to tempt new customers, you can play the system and pocket hundreds of pounds – with little risk to your own cash

• Saturday 5 June 2010

World Cups and other major events can work to fans' advantage in the bookmakers. Photograph: Alessandro Bianchi/Action Images/Reuters

The William Hill website promises "Get a free bet on the World Cup Winner". Over at StanJames it says: "Scared of Spain? Don't be" as it promises another free £25 bet. Coral is giving away a £20 bet, Paddy Power and Ladbrokes £25, and Victor Chandler as much as £100.

Free bets when you sign up online are the industry's primary method of attracting new customers. For major sporting events – such as the World Cup – these offers increase in generosity because regular folk, who rarely think about betting, fancy a punt.

The bookies obviously want to haul in new punters. What this article will show you is how to beat the bookies and pocket the cash from the free bets.

The offers

Many headline-grabbing deals have been introduced for the World Cup, but more and more generous ones will appear after the tournament starts.

In terms of investment-to-reward ratio, the daddy at the time of writing is Ladbrokes' offer of £25 in free bets if you make a £5 bet. More usual are the deals that match the money they want you to bet, such as BetFred's £50 freebie if you make a £50 bet. Many companies are offering £25 and £30 deals. As the figures rise, such as Victor Chandler and ExtraBet's £100 of free bets, Bet365's £200, or TitanBet's £250, it gets more complicated involving a larger number of qualifying bets.

An internet search on "free bets" will lead you to the latest offers. Start with the small, straightforward offers.

How much money can you make?

I made an easy £600 during this year's Cheltenham Festival, kickstarted by the Ladbrokes offer of a £200 free bet if you made your own £100 bet. Others are more dedicated. A discussion board on records the exploits of Donglemouse, who claims to have won £10,434 from new offers, and £19,736 from offers on existing accounts.

Researching this article has been more lucrative than writing it. I am not using my own byline because I don't want bookmakers to turn me down or close my accounts.

How do you make money without risking your own cash?

Firstly, you have to open an online account with a bookmaker and deposit some money. You then have to stake some of this money, and after you have done that – and won or lost – you then get the free equivalent bet, usually up to the value of £25.

The way to play the system is to make your first bet on, say, Team A to win, from your own money that you deposited on opening the account. At the same time, open an account at a betting exchange (such as Betfair), where you are both punter and bookmaker, and "lay" the opposing bet of equal value, at the same odds, that Team A won't win (ie loses or draws). The two bets cancel each other out – you'll win one bet and lose another.

Lay betting works like this. You put, say, £10 on Team A winning a football match at 2/1 (decimal odds 3.0). If the bet won, you would receive a total of £30 back – your stake of £10 plus the bookie's £20. If you lost, the bookie keeps your £10. If you "layed" the bet, you would pay out £20 if Team A won (your liability is stake x odds, so £10 x two) and gain £10 if they did not win.

So, to make money from the free bets, you first make a straight bet at, say, Ladbrokes, plus the opposing bet at, say, Betfair. You won't lose anything, but it means that you will then qualify for the free bet. Now you go through the same process as you did before, backing one team, then making an opposing bet on the other. This time, when the game, race or whatever is over, you're left with a profit equivalent to the amount of the free bet.

For example, bet the bookmaker's free £10 bet on Team B winning a football match at, say, 2/1, and your return, with no outlay from you, would be £30 if they won, (or of course you lose your £10 bet). Over at the betting exchange site, you make a lay bet, where you lose £20 if Team B wins, or gain £10 if they lose. Whatever happens, you walk away with £10. You either win £30 from your first bet and lose £20 from the lay bet, or lose £10 from the first bet and win £20 from your lay bet. Regardless of the outcome, you have made £10.

Is it really that simple?

Not quite. The arrival of betting exchanges such as Betfair or Betdaq means it is relatively simple to act as a bookmaker yourself and lay bets. However, the odds they offer rarely neatly match those of the bookmaker offering the free bet. They also charge a commission of 5%, payable on winnings. Also, some bookmakers' free bet deals return the stake with winnings, and some don't.

Searching for "matched betting" will lead you to useful forums and spreadsheets to help with the calculations. Most people exploiting these offers usually accept losing a small percentage of the free bet during the process.

How many times can I do this?

With experience it's not too hard to find favourable events to back at the bookmaker and lay on the exchanges. Bookmakers try and avoid this as it means they're being over-generous with their odds.

The professionals are making hundreds of pounds by systematically scouring the internet for big money offers. You can also get help from automated sports arbitrage services, such as SportsArbitrageWorld or Rebel Betting, which find pricing discrepancies between bookmakers guaranteeing profits for those betting on both sides of an event. They encourage the grabbing of bookmaker freebies as part of a trading strategy and offer free trials.

Rajeev Shah, managing director of Sports Arbitrage World, has described the offers as "money out of thin air".

Will opening lots of bookmaker accounts affect my credit rating?

Opening and funding lots of bookie accounts should have no effect on your credit scoring. Santander says "credit scoring and ratings are a result of whether the account is kept in good order or not ... that has no bearing on the type of transaction." Credit reference agency Experian says that the gaming companies don't currently share any account data with their industry. "It won't appear on the credit reference radar. You can have as many gaming accounts as you want," a spokesman said.

What can go wrong?

The biggest risk is getting an addiction.

rticle begins rather boldly:

With bookmakers offering ‘free bets’ to tempt new customers, you can play the system and pocket hundreds of pounds – with little risk to your own cash.

While this is obviously true, you can imagine what kind of attention such a claim attracted, especially considering today’s economy. The article then proceeds with a brief explanation of how matched betting works.

Later on, they address a more serious concern that people have about matched betting, namely, whether it has any effect on a person’s credit rating.

Opening and funding lots of bookie accounts should have no effect on your credit scoring. Santander says “credit scoring and ratings are a result of whether the account is kept in good order or not … that has no bearing on the type of transaction.” Credit reference agency Experian says that the gaming companies don’t currently share any account data with their industry. “It won’t appear on the credit reference radar. You can have as many gaming accounts as you want,” a spokesman said.

In just a few weeks another article was published on The Guardian. This ‘time it was inspired by the aforementioned article: another reporter from the Guardian wanted to see if matched betting is really that simple. This is what he discovered.

I was a financial adviser for 10 years until I sold the business a year ago. I think I have a more critical and suspicious mind when it comes to money-making schemes, especially ones that purport to be risk free.

There is an old proverb that says: “In a bet there is a fool and a thief”, and I’m not inclined to disagree. Could I really sit in front of my screen and make money from the bookies for nothing?

The answer, to my surprise, was yes. Over the past month I have researched and used every decent online free bet introductory offer from a bookie. I’ve taken up 31 offers so far – and I’ve made in the region of £770.

The money I have made has been absolutely risk free, it’s not been about gambling but about playing the system – and it was inspired by Guardian Money. I don’t even have to pay tax on my winnings.

Then the author goes on explaining that this money wasn’t completely free and that he had to spend hours in front of his computer:

That said, it has not been completely free. I have had to sit in front of my computer screen, spending an hour or so most days over the past five weeks, working through the offers. But even factoring that in, it works out at around £22 per hour tax free.

I don’t know any other way anyone could make £22 per hour tax free, working from home. If you know anything better, please let me know.

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