Can You Still Make Money From Matched Betting?
Recently I have published several posts on Pounds and Sense about tax-free ways of boosting your income. One is Tax-Free Ways to Boost Your Finances and another How to Win Cash and Prizes in Online Competitions.
For the sake of completeness, though, I thought I should publish (or more accurately republish) a post about matched betting. This is something I did for several years and earned about £3,000 (tax-free!) from. I am not doing it as much these days, for reasons I’ll explain below. But if you’ve never done it before, I do still recommend matched betting as a way of making some quick tax-free cash.
So Why Am I Doing Less?
There are two main reasons. The first is that since I started matched betting around six years ago I have had my account restricted (or gubbed, as we say in the business) by many online bookmakers. That obviously makes it harder to take advantage of the offers matched bettors need in order to generate their guaranteed profits.
My second reason is that during the pandemic, with many sporting events cancelled, there were far fewer matched betting opportunities. Thankfully that is behind us now and normal life (more or less) has resumed. Even so, the bookies are more cautious than they once were, and offers are somewhat thinner on the ground.
I still do a small amount of matched betting but keep it very low-key. There are only a few good online bookmakers I can now use, and I’d like to go on flying under their radar for as long as possible before they ban me!
If you are new to matched betting – or have let it fall by the wayside – then as stated above I do still recommend it. But be aware that it may not be quite as profitable as it was pre-Covid.
But let’s start with a recap of the basics…
What is Matched Betting?
Matched betting is a method for making risk-free profits by taking advantage of offers made by online bookmakers.
The best offers are those made to attract new clients. Here’s an example. The bookmakers Sky Bet offer £30 in free bets (3 x £10) for new online customers. To get this, you have to open an account with them and deposit a minimum of £5. You then have to place a minimum 5p bet at odds of evens (2.0) or better. Once you have done this, Sky Bet will immediately credit you with £30 worth of free bets.
So how do you turn this into a guaranteed profit? Well, that’s the clever bit. You make use of a website called an exchange (Smarkets and Betfair are two of the better known). These sites allow anyone to lay a bet (i.e. bet that the outcome in question won’t happen). By backing with a bookmaker and laying the same bet at an exchange you can ensure that however the event pans out, you will only make a small loss or occasionally a tiny profit (depending on the odds available).
With a normal bet this is obviously of limited value, as the two bets more or less cancel each other out. But when your first bet qualifies you for a second (and in Sky Bet’s case much larger) free bet, it suddenly becomes a lot more interesting. Here’s an example…
Let’s say Wolverhampton Wanderers are about to play Spurs in the Premier League. You can back Wolves to win with Sky Bet at 4.75 (15/4 in the more traditional but less useful fractional style) and lay them with Smarkets at 4.80. If you put £5 on Wolves with Sky Bet and at the same time lay Wolves to the appropriate stakes (something I’ll come to shortly) you can ensure that whether they do or don’t win, your net loss will be just 13p (allowing for Smarkets’ standard 2% commission charge). The lay bet covers you for the draw as well, as in effect you are betting that Wolves won’t win – so if Spurs win or the match ends in a draw, the lay bet will pay out.
But now, because you are a new member, Sky Bet will give you £30 worth of free bets. You can back and lay these again to generate a guaranteed profit. For the sake of simplicity let’s say you use the same market, Wolves v. Spurs, although you certainly don’t have to. At the odds mentioned, and backing to the correct stakes, if you use all three £10 free bets you can guarantee yourself a net profit of £23.05 however the match pans out. Subtract the 13p loss from your qualifying bet, and once the dust has settled you will have made a risk-free (and tax-free) £22.92. If your bet loses with the bookie, your profit will be in the exchange (remember, this is a free bet so it hasn’t cost you anything). If the bet wins at the bookie, you will lose money at the exchange, but your winnings with the bookie will exceed this, giving you the same net profit either way.
Those are the bare bones of matched betting. Of course, there’s more to it than that, but most matched betting opportunities boil down to this. You place an initial qualifying bet and lay it to ensure (at worst) a small net loss, and then back and lay the free bet you receive to make yourself a guaranteed profit.
- One or two people have asked me whether matched betting is legal. The answer is a clear yes. It’s fair to say the bookies don’t like it, though. And if they suspect you are doing it, they may close or limit your account. As mentioned above, this is called ‘gubbing’ and it is an occupational hazard for matched bettors. As a matter of interest, I had to change the example used at the start of an earlier version of this blog post after being threatened with legal action by the bookmaker in question.
How Do You Get Started?
You can, of course, do all this yourself, researching opportunities and comparing odds to find the most profitable matched betting opportunities. When you are starting out, though – and especially if you are new to online betting – it obviously helps a lot to get some instruction and guidance.
Fortunately there are some excellent online services that will do all this for you and provide step-by-step instructions. You can apply these even if you have never placed a bet in your life before. Here’s the service I recommend for beginners to matched betting…
Outplayed
Outplayed (formerly Profit Accumulator) is a dedicated matched betting website. You can get a 7-day free trial which gives you access to over 60 welcome offers of the type mentioned above. If you wish to continue, you can then pay a fee (currently £39.95 a month) to become a ‘Platinum’ member and get access to Outplayed’s full range of betting offers and services.
As well as detailed instructions on offers, Outplayed also provide various online tools you can use. Their oddsmatcher, for example, helps you find markets where the back and lay odds are as close as possible, so you can minimize your losses on qualifying bets and maximize the value of your free bets. They also have calculators where you enter the back and lay odds and how much you want to bet at the bookmaker. The calculator then reveals how much you need to lay at the exchange to guarantee a set profit (or qualifying loss) with either outcome.
A further advantage of joining Outplayed is that you get access to the members-only community forum, where you can get any questions you may have answered by more experienced members and/or the Outplayed team.
For more information about Outplayed and its different membership levels, just click through this link [affiliate].
- If you are at all sceptical about the Outplayed service, you might like to check out the reviews on the independent Trust Pilot website. They currently average 4.7 out of 5 stars, with 89% of respondents awarding them a five star (‘Excellent’) rating. That is among the highest average ratings I can recall seeing on Trust Pilot.
What Happens When You’ve Exhausted the Welcome Offers?
This was something I wondered about before I started, and I know other people do as well.
First of all, it will take you quite a long time to work through all the offers on the Outplayed website. Not all are as simple and straightforward as the Sky Bet offer mentioned above, but nonetheless if you follow the step-by-step instructions they can all generate a healthy profit for you.
After that, you can move on to ‘reload’ offers. These are offers made by bookmakers for existing members to encourage them to keep coming back and using their service. Reload offers work in a wide range of ways. Some provide a guaranteed profit if you apply them correctly, while others may sometimes make a small qualifying loss but other times produce a much larger profit, generating a good net profit overall. Reload offers are also listed on the Outplayed website and updated every day.
Is Matched Betting for Everyone?
In principle anyone can do matched betting, but it is probably more suitable for some people than others. In particular, it will help if you have a small amount of capital to get started – at least £50, preferably £100 or more.
If you have less you can still do it, but it will take longer to build up your earnings. Remember that you will need money to fund your qualifying bets at the bookmaker sites and also your exchange account. You don’t lose this money – it simply moves between bookie and exchange according to how events pan out – and you can always withdraw it if required. But to operate as a matched bettor you do need to have some ‘working capital’.
Another requirement to make a success of matched betting is that you need to be organized and methodical. Matched betting is not difficult once you grasp the basic concept, but if you make a mistake it is possible to lose money doing it. Initially at least it’s important to take it slowly and steadily and follow the instructions on Outplayed (if you have signed up with them) to the letter. It helps to be reasonably numerate as well, although the actual calculations are done for you by the oddsmatching tool and calculators.
And finally, if you think you might get drawn in to gambling through matched betting, you may be better giving it a miss. This applies especially if you have ever had a gambling problem in the past. To emphasize again, matched betting is NOT gambling if you do it properly and follow the correct procedures. But if you are tempted to go off-piste and start placing random bets, the likelihood is that you WILL lose money overall.
Final Thoughts
If you are looking for a tax-free sideline earning opportunity, matched betting can certainly fit the bill. Done properly it is risk free, and (as mentioned earlier) I have made around £3,000 from it myself.
For reasons discussed in this blog post I don’t recommend matched betting as a substitute for a full-time job. In these challenging times, however, if you need another tax-free string to your money-making bow, it can certainly perform that role. But be aware that the first few months are likely to be the most profitable. After that, as you run out of welcome offers (and are perhaps ‘gubbed’ by some bookies) it will get harder.
As always, if you have any comments or questions about this post or matched betting more generally, please do leave them below.
- This is a fully updated version of an earlier post.
Disclosure: This post includes affiliate links. If you click through and make a purchase, I may receive a commission for introducing you. This will not affect the price you pay or the service you receive.
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