Getting started

If you've never heard of it before, matched betting is a way of taking advantage of offers from bookmakers to make a profit, whether or not your bet wins. This includes offers like odds/price boosts, free bets, risk free bets, ACCA insurance, and arbitage. To complete the guide you need to be a resident of the UK, with proof of address and proof of ID, as well as ideally £100-£200 available. You won't be gambling that money, but you'll need it as security with the exchange.

Backing and laying

For this guide we're going to focus on a simple free bet, where a bookmaker offers you one or more free bets of some amount in return for making a bet. If you simply placed your bet and subsequent free bets, you might win some, you might lose them all. We're going to be using a matched betting technique to ensure that we always make a profit, whether or not your bet wins. The key to accomplishing this is the "betting exchange", a place where you can act as the bookmaker and offer odds for others to bet on. If you already know the basics, feel free to skip ahead to the Sky Bet offer. For everyone else, let's look at an example of making a bet!

You go to the bookmaker and bet £10 on Man City to beat Man Utd at odds of 2.0, meaning you either lose your £10 if Man City loses, or get back £20 if they win, giving you a profit of £10 (£20 minus the £10 that you staked). This is known as backing the bet.

You then go to the betting exchange and offer up the same bet for someone else, this is known as laying the bet. You lay £10 on Man City beating Man Utd at odds of 2.0. This means that if Man City loses, you get the £10, as if you were the bookmaker. If Man City wins, you lose £10, just like the bookmaker would.

Now the magic of this is that if Man City wins you win £10 at the bookmaker and lose £10 at the exchange, leaving you with a loss of £0. If Man City loses you lose £10 at the bookmaker and you win £10 at the exchange, leaving you with a loss of £0. Or in other words, what is called a "qualifying loss" of £0. In real life the odds won't necessarily match that well, and the exchange may charge a commission, meaning you frequently lose a few pence making the bet. Logging in you'll find a tool for finding cheap bets you can make, and how to calculate what stakes to use at the bookmaker and the exchange. Let's move on to the bookmaker offer giving you free bets if you make a qualifying bet!

Let's say the bookmaker offers you a £10 free bet if you make a qualifying £10 bet. We've already gone through making the £10 qualifying bet, so let's say you've now earned your free bet. Time to make a profit.

Same as before, we're going to back a bet with the bookmaker, and lay the same bet with the exchange. The difference this time is that on the bookmaker side we're using the free bet they gave us, so we're playing with the house's money. The way free bets normally work is that the stake itself is not returned, so if it's a £10 free bet and you bet at something with odds of 2.0 and you win you get £10 instead of £20, because the money that was used to make the bet belonged to the bookmaker. Don't worry if it seems complicated, the calculator will take care of everything for you.

Again you'll be able to use the odds tool that you see when you log in, but make sure to switch to "Free Bet" mode. Giving another example, you go to the bookmaker and use your £10 free bet on Iceland beating England, the bookmaker offers you odds of 19.0 for that to happen, meaning you would make a profit of £180 if it wins (19 * £10 - £10 because we don't get the stake back). Obviously this is very unlikely to win, so let's lock in a profit by going to the exchange.

The odds tool will tell you what you need to stake on the exchange. In this example the exchange offers lay odds of Iceland winning of 22, meaning we don't have a perfect match like we did with our qualifying bet. That's no worry though, we'll still be able to make a profit. The Free Bet calculator tells us to stake £8.18 at lay odds of 22 at the exchange, guaranteeing a profit of around £8.20.

If the bet wins at the bookmaker we get £180 pounds, but we have to pay out 171.18 at the exchange, giving us a profit of £8.22.

If the bet loses at the bookmaker we lose nothing, but we win £8.1 at the exchange, locking in a guaranteed profit.

Now that we've gone through an example, let's try it out in real life!

Skybet - £30 in free bets for placing any bet. Expected profit: >£20

Skybet is offering you £30 in free bets if you sign up and place any bet. It's important to always read the terms and conditions, which you can find here. The fine print says that you must make a deposit of £5 and then place any bet at a minimum of 5 pence, but we'll place the full £5 to look less suspicious.

Before you sign up to Skybet, start by signing up to QuickOdds to get access to up to date odds and the matched betting calculator.

Once you've got access, next step is signing up to Skybet, making sure you click "GET BONUS" on the card showing £30 in free bets here. Provide all the information they're requesting and get your account set up. Once you're in, use a debit card to deposit the required £10. Avoid other methods of deposits, as they often make you ineligible for offers.

The Betting Exchange

The final step before you're ready to place your bets, is setting up an account with an exchange. One of the oldest, most popular exchanges, is Betfair, and we'll be using that to lay our bets.

Finding and placing the bet

Now for the fun part! Open up the QuickOdds bet finder and look at the list for an offer that lists Skybet. You can use the bookmaker filter on the top right to show only Sky Bet options. The rating tells you how much your qualifying loss will be. Once you find a likely looking candidate, click the calculator at the end of the row. This will show you all the information you need to place your back and lay bet. Double check the stakes and the liability to make sure that it matches what the calculator says. Consider betting on an event that happens sooner rather than later, because once you've placed your bet you need to wait for the bet to settle before you'll get your £30 worth of free bets.

Once your first bet has settled you should receive 3x£10 free bets in Sky Bet, within 24 hours. To use the free bets, open up the QuickOdds bet finder again and switch to Free Bet mode and repeat the steps to lock in your profit. Congratulations, you just made money from matched betting!

Next steps

If you want to learn more, check out the Matched Betting Blog. If you're done with betting on the Euros and you want more tools and content, consider signing up to Oddsmonkey. They offer a completely free trial that'll earn you more than £40, no strings attached.