How Matched Betting Works

1. Find an offer

For this example, we will use a made-up betting company called Bob’s Bookmakers that offers a £20 free bet to new customers who bet their first £20.

First, we go to bobsbookmakersite.co.uk and sign up for a new account. We put in the required details to make the account and finish the sign up by depositing £20. All simple stuff so far!

2. Place your bets (Bet & Lay)

Matched betting covers all outcomes, so we have to place two bets:

• The first bet – something to happen – we place with the Bookmaker.
• The second bet – something not to happen – we place with an Exchange.

Then we need to find close odds matches. This is the key to matched betting. Sites like Outplayed.com have software that finds close matches for you.

So with the help of the software, we see that the Leeds United game later today is a close odds match:

• It is 5.0 (in decimal odds) FOR LEEDS TO WIN with the Bob’s Bookmaker Site (this is called a ‘BACK BET’).
• It is a close match because it is 5.1 FOR LEEDS NOT TO WIN in the exchange website we are using (this is called a ‘LAY BET’).

So we place the first bet of £20, also known as the QUALIFYING BET with Bob’s Bookmaker Site. We bet on Leeds United to win at 5.0. Straightforward enough!

We then need to place our second bet on the exchange website to balance things out. The calculator below is used to work out how much we need to bet in the exchange. We simply input the Bet amount and odds from both sites, and it tells us what size of bet to place on the exchange website.

3. Collect profit

This is the kicker. We have lost 39 or 40 pence so far, but now we have unlocked a FREE £20 BET, and it has only cost us a minimal amount to do this. We will do exactly the same, only this time we will change the calculator ‘BET TYPE’ to ‘FREE BET’ at the top.

To keep things simple, I am assuming we have found a second football match the next day with the identical odds of 5.0 on Bob’s Betting Site and 5.1 on the exchange website. This match is the Fulham match for our example.

So our £20 FREE BET has arrived on Bob’s Betting Site! We place this on Fulham to win. Then again, our calculator shows us how much to bet on the exchange website AGAINST FULHAM WINNING.

This time as you can see above, we are guarantee a profit regardless of the outcome of the match! If Fulham win we will have made a profit of £15.67. If Fulham draw of lose we will make a profit of £15.69. Take away our 40 pence qualifying loss from the first bets we placed and we have guaranteed a profit of around £15.28. You can withdraw this and head down for a free meal now, it is as simple as that.

As you can see through mathematical certainty, we made a guaranteed profit from this sign up offer, regardless of the result in either match. There are hundreds of these offers.