In this matched betting guide we will show you exactly how matched betting works and how you can make money online from it. We will explain the process of matched betting in detail while also walking through examples.
What is Matched Betting?
Matched Betting is the process of betting on all possible outcomes of an event in order to guarantee a profit from bookmakers. While you can do this in physical betting shops, matched betting is mostly done online and this is what we focus on.
You can bet on all possible outcomes either by 'dutching', or by using an exchange to place lay bets. Dutching is where you place a back bet on a different bookmaker for each outcome.
For example, dutching the Arsenal Vs Liverpool match would involve: betting on Arsenal to win on Bet365, betting on Liverpool to win on Paddy Power, betting on Arsenal and Liverpool to draw on Skybet.
Check out Our Dutching Calculator and Our Dutching Guide!
You will always win one of the bets since you have a bet on every possible outcome. However you usually won't make any money as you will also always lose 2 bets despite winning the other one. We say 'usually' though as sometimes there is an opportunity to guarantee profit and we will get back to this later.
The more common method of covering all possible outcomes of an event is to use an exchange to lay the bets. A lay bet is the opposite of a normal bet as instead you are the one who is 'playing the bookmaker'.
For a lay bet, if the event occurs you pay out your liability which depends on the stake and the odds, but if the event doesn't happen then you gain the stake as profit. With a lay bet you can bet against something to happen, for example, you could bet against Liverpool to win, meaning you win the bet if Liverpool either lose or draw.
Now you know how to bet on all outcomes of an event, you should already have a good idea of what matched betting is, since matched betting is where we bet on all possible outcomes and guarantee a profit.
We can only do matched betting on some events as there isn't always the opportunity to profit, and we explain what these opportunities are and how to find them below.
How Can You Guarantee Profit by Betting on Multiple Outcomes?
Sometimes the bookmaker will give us a promotion or offer where they give the bettor extra value (or added value). This could be a promotion such as an extra place offer, a 2up offer, or a simple price boost, where they boost their odds for a specific event.
The bookmaker running a promotion or giving extra value does not always guarantee that we can profit by matched betting that event. For example with a price boost we can only actually make a profit if the odds on the bookmaker are higher than the odds on the exchange (if we are using an exchange and not dutching).
For Example TalkSport Bet could boost the odds for Harry Kane to Score a header from 10/1 to 12/1 (or 13.0 in decimal form). We can't use dutching to cover all outcomes of this event, so we're going to have to use an exchange to lay it. Lets say the lay odds for Harry Kane to score a header are also 12/1 (or 13.0) on the Smarkets exchange.
This means the back odds and the lay odds for Harry Kane to score a header are the same because of the price boost offer on TalkSport Bet. But we can't profit from this offer using matched betting since if we were to bet on both sides our profit would be £0.
This is because 1 bet will win and 1 bet will lose and they will always offset each other. Imagine we place a £10 bet on TalkSport Bet and also place a £10 lay bet on Smarkets.
If Harry Kane does score a header:
We win our bet on TalkSport and they pay us £120 since the odds were 12/1.
We lose our bet on the Smarkets exchange and have to pay out £120 since the lay odds were also 12/1.
Overall our profit is £0 as we lose and gain £120.
If Harry Kane doesn't score a header:
We lose our bet on TalkSport and therefore lose our £10 stake.
We win our bet on Smarkets and gain the £10 stake.
Overall our profit is £0 as we lose and gain £10.
However imagine if the lay odds on Smarkets were actually 10/1. This would completely change the bet such that we can actually make a profit from this event since the back odds on the bookmaker are higher than the lay odds on the exchange.
This wouldn't change the outcome for 'If Harry Kane doesn't score a header' and we would still profit £0.
However, if Harry Kane does score a header:
We win our bet on TalkSport and they pay us £120 since the odds were 12/1.
We lose our bet on the Smarkets exchange and have to pay out £100 since the lay odds were 10/1.
Overall our profit is £20 as we gained £120 on TalkSport Bet and lost £100 on Smarkets.
If we were to place a £10 back bet and a £10 lay bet then the possible profits would be either £20 if he does score a header, and £0 if he doesn't score a header as explained above. However, usually we would want to guarantee a profit no matter if he does score a header or not. To do this we would have to change the lay stake that we use such that the profit is the same.
We would use a matched betting calculator, and after entering the details of the bet, the calculator would tell us that if we instead placed a £11.82 lay bet on Smarkets then we would profit £1.82 regardless of Harry Kane scoring a header. This means we guarantee a £1.82 profit from this event because of the price boost from TalkSport Bet.
This is just one example of many offers that bookmakers give us that we can profit from, and we chose to explain price boosts since they're one of the simplest.
Another easy part of matched betting is free bets. This is the simplest method to understand in matched betting and it's where we take advantage of free bet offers from bookmakers and guarantee a profit from them.
You probably won't retain the full free bet amount when matched betting as lay odds are typically higher than back odds i.e., we can usually only turn a £30 free bet into around £22 withdrawable profit.
The concept for this is much simpler. We place the free bet on the bookmaker and then cover the other possible outcomes using the dutching method or by placing a lay bet on a betting exchange. We use a free bet calculator to calculate what stake we should lay at the exchange and then we guarantee a profit since one of the bets is a free bet.
Where Can You Find Matched Betting Opportunities?
There are so many bookmaker promotions and offers as gambling companies use these to incentivise users to bet with their specific company. You can find these offers and promotions on the bookmakers app or website, but you have to manually check if it is actually profitable.
Also, bookmakers will send free bets and other promotions directly to you via text and email if you agree to receive marketing in the bookmakers settings.
All free bets, such as the one above, can be profited from, and almost all UK bookmakers have sign up offers for new customers. You can make up to £700 in total working through all of the offers in our sign up offer list.
If you want to find other matched betting opportunities such as price boosts and '2ups' then you can find them manually, or you could also join a group where people work together sending matched betting opportunities for each other to use. You can do this with a group of friends or you can also join our discord group to get betting alerts from our members.
How to Start Matched Betting
We recommend beginners start by completing sign up offers, not just because this makes sense chronologically but also because they tend to be the easiest. Most sign up offers are simply bookmakers offering you a free bet if you make an account and place a bet with them.
However, you can make an account, place the bet, then also place another bet to cancel out your first bet. This means you don't actually risk anything on the bet, and you gain a free bet from the bookmaker. Then you just repeat this process with the free bet and withdraw the money.
As we already said you can find all of the UK sign up offers in our sign up offer list.
We also recommend you go through our sign up offer tutorial where we walk you through the Betfred sign up offer step by step, with a video example.
Then, once you have completed the sign up offers you can begin to learn other techniques as you become more comfortable with matched betting. You can start doing weekly bet club offers, which are similar to sign up offers, and you can learn more complex matched betting strategies in our matched betting guides.
Conclusion
Hopefully you now have a good idea of what matched betting actually is, and hopefully you now feel confident enough to actually start doing it. Matched betting is probably one of the best side hustles out there as it is so easy once you just get started. The biggest thing holding people back from matched betting is the false idea that it's a scam, since it does sound too good to be true.
Luckily it's not a scam, and it is probably the best low-risk method of making money online.
Thank you for reading, and good luck in your matched betting journey!
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