Matched Betting is a way of making risk free profits by taking advantage of the many free bets offered by online bookmakers who try to entice us “mug punters” into opening accounts with them.
A bookmaker will try to tempt you into joining them by offering you free bets. “Open an account have a bet of £25 for example and we will give you a free bet for £25” are typical examples. A bit like the BOGOF offers you see in supermarkets etc. You buy one bet and get another free.
The online bookmakers know that the majority of cases a “gambler” will open their account, lose one or even both of these bets and even if they win they will continue to bet with the bookmaker and lose their money meaning the bookmaker coming out on top in most cases.
The more savvy non-gamblers amongst us use the method of Matched Betting to lock in risk free profits from these offers.
Despite the term Matched Betting, you are not actually gambling, you just place bets. The most common sports I use are Football and Horse Racing.
The reason we are not actually gambling is that we don’t actually care what the outcome of the bets we place are. We place the bets as part of the system, not taking a “gamble” on who will win the big match or big race. The bets can win, lose or draw it doesn’t matter to us.
First off you will need to open a Betting Exchange Account with Betfair being the most popular but also Smarkets & BetDaq offering good alternatives. It is a good idea to open all 3 but if you decide to use only 1 then Profit Ninjas recommend Betfair, due to its popularity means the liquidity (the money available in the markets) is a lot higher.
The reason you need a Betting Exchange account is to lay off your qualifying bets (your first bets with the online bookmaker that qualifies you for a free bet) and also a proportion of your free bets (where you lock in your risk free profits).
View the current Sign Up Offer List Here
Some bookmakers have minimum requirements that your first qualifying bet has to pass in order to qualify for the free bet. This may be that the bet you place has to be at odds of evens or greater and in our example below this is the requirement used.
For your bets you need to select a sporting event, football match, horse race, etc where the odds being offered by the bookmaker are as close to the odds being offered at the Betting Exchange as possible.
To find the best bets for Matched Betting please see our guide on using our Odds Ninja software where all the hard work is done for you. Simply select the bookmaker you are using and let the software do the rest.
The Free version provided for the Profit-Ninjas service is a delayed version of the software where the odds are delayed by upto 20 minutes. This should be fine for giving you a feel for the software although you may encounter instances where the odds have changed when you check the odds on the bookmaker or exchange site.
Once a bet has been found it would go like this;
1. Back Team A @2.0 (Even Money) with the online bookmaker for £25
2. Lay Team A @2.0 (or nearest price) on a betting exchange for £25. This covers your qualifying bet and puts you in a no win/no lose situation. No matter what the result you pretty much break even.
3. Wait for the bets to be settled and receive your free bet.
4. Once credited we look for the best bets to place our free bet on. Again we use our Odds software for this to cut out all the hard work, time and effort involved.
5. Back Team B @4.0 (3/1) with online bookmaker for £25
6. Lay Team B @4.1 (or nearest price) for £18.50 (don’t be concerned in the staking if using our Odds software as this is all worked out for you).
7. This then gives an overall risk free profit of around £17.50
a. If the free bet wins we receive £75 from the online bookmaker and lose £57.35 on the betting exchange giving us a risk free profit of £17.65
b. If the free bet loses we get nothing from the online bookmaker (but don’t lose anything as it was a free bet) and win £17.57 on the betting exchange (£18.5 minus 5% that is the commission on winning bets on the exchanges)
This is just an example of how to place your matched betting selections but by using our Odds software and built in calculator all your profits will be calculated before the bets are placed.
Please be patient when looking for a qualifying or free bet selection as the closer the odds between the bookmaker and the exchange the better resulting in increased profits.
As a general rule we would want a minimum return of 65% of the free bet value but with a bit of patience we generally get 75-80% or better.
If you have any questions or help with matched betting please get in touch support@profit-ninjas.co.uk and we will gladly help out and advise where we can.
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