What is matched betting?

[Zofloramummy]

I’ve noticed on a few threads MN’s saying that they are making money from matches betting. What is it exactly and is it worth it?

Single parent, low income and on UC. I work full time and I’m basically looking for any legitimate ways I can boost my income that doesn’t require me spending a fortune on childcare or a large outlay.

It’s where you can take advantage of bookies introductory offers and their offers to turn them into cash.

You open an account at a bookmaker, (typically) follow their terms to place a bet with your own money but at the same time “lay” the same bet at an exchange so this transaction will only cost pennies regardless of outcome. You then repeat the process with a free bet that the bookmaker will award you, therefore turning that free bet into actual cash.

That’s the basics anyway.

Do you require

• a large amount up front
• a good awareness of betting odds
• lots of time

And does it actually make much money?

Shouty I didn't understand a word of your explanation! Would you mind saying a bit more?

What does 'follow their terms' mean?
What does 'lay' the same bet at an exchange mean?
What is an exchange?
How does doing this only cost you pennies?
Why do you get awarded a free bet?
If you repeat the process are you placing the same bet on the same match or spreading your options?

I am also confused as to how all this works, if somebody could explain it all as though they were talking to a very small child I would be greatful.

I’m just starting out this month - I wrote out an explanation but it’s far too confusing that way.

The two best things to get your head around it - watch the Team Profit videos and join their FB page. I got it within 10 mins!

In terms of how much money is needed to start, you could start with £10 but since a lot of the profit initially comes from taking advantage of introductory offers, I’ve decided to wait until payday so that I can have a decent float (liability) as I wanna to maximise the profit from these offers.

In order to make profit, essentially you have to bet on opposing outcomes of the same match - 1 outcome with bookies and 1 on the betting exchange (a site where you’re betting against other people, eg Betfair) but you won’t be able to make high odds bets on the exchange if you don’t have enough liability - money in your account (this is what you would need to pay out should the bet on the exchange lose). You profit from the opposing bet on the bookies which would have won.

It’s definitely worth investing time in watching the videos and reading throug the FB page as there are little bits to be aware of - like being ‘gubbed’ - banned from the bookies because they’ve cottoned on to what you’re doing, you wouldn’t be a very profitable customer so you need to appear to be behaving like a regular punter!

If you don’t mind me asking, what kind of profit are you hoping to make from it? And how much are you putting in as your float?

Completely agree with @SplitEndsBushyEyebrows... if you go onto team profit website, there are step by step walk through videos, then step by step instructions for each week.

Once you get your head around it, it's pretty simple. It also tells you what all the lingo actually means if you are like me and had never made a bet in your life!

An example...

Coral has an offer of bet £10, get £30 free bets when you sign up.

So you sign up to coral, and also to Betfair exchange.

Find a game, so say Man City vs Charlton.

You bet on Man city to win with your coral account. (Your 'back bet'... you are backing this team to win)

You bet on Man city to lose with Betfair exchange account. (This is a lay bet...you are betting that they will lose)

You pick your bets based on closest odds so you lose minimal money, less than £1 (team profit explains this really well)

This bet is called a trigger bet as it triggers all of your free bets.

Do the same with your £30 of free bets, and you will make a few pounds off each bet. Do this again and again with loads of bookies and all of those few pounds suddenly start adding up.

Then you move onto more complicated things like 2ups, accumulators, low risk casino etc.

Hope that kind of explains it. Team profit definitely explain it really well and have guides for you to start of with £10, £25 or £100. Good luck if you go for it!

I’ve done that really annoying MN thing of posting and then going out (rare for me!!) so I definitely will be able to answer the questions in the morning no problem. It is genuinely a good way to make money if you are careful and follow the guides properly.

I read about this on a thread yesterday and am keen to give it a go too.
Also waiting for payday so I have a bigger 'float'

I’ve only got one issue with what you’ve said Belladonna, which is with the lay bet you are not betting on the team to lose, but for them NOT to win. So in your example if Man City win, you bet would win at coral. If they lose, OR if they draw, your lay get would win at the exchange. So the lay bet is betting AGAINST an outcome to happen. This is important to be understand in football in particular because there are 3 possible outcomes to a match ( so called “match odds” at some bookies): team A win, team B win,or draw. If you back team A to win at your bookie, you then need to “lay” (bet against) team A at the exchange. This is not the same as backing team B because that would not cover the eventuality of a draw.

Belladonna - that's the clearest explanation I've ever heard. It's been confusing me for years. Thank you.

My brain literally melted at that last explanation

It's like someone tried to explain how many overs and what an over is in cricket ....

😴

I'm just too dim

I started with £60 of my own money in March 2017 and have made over 20,000, it takes time and the more you build your pot up the more you can make, advice is to reinvest everything you make to build your float up to several k before taking money back out to spend as the more you have available the easier it is

Life changing for me.
It's confusing to learn at first and not something you can explain in a few posts though and I wouldn't advise anyone to start doing it until they understand the process as it's not as risk free as some sites say, a mistake can and has cost people hundreds of pounds but it's not as hard to learn as it sounds.

It takes more than a few replies on a thread to learn everything but there's currently long running threads in finance and a brilliant Facebook group called team profit that has all the info you need to know to start but be prepared to spend hours, days and in my case several weeks of reading and re reading and reading again and again until it clicks.

I've been matched betting for around 18 months (some months I've done lots, some very little). I've made around £7000 in total. I'm going at it quite hard at the moment to pay for a forthcoming holiday - have made around £1400 since November. Generally average around £400 a month ish.

Definitely sign up to Team Profit and OddsMonkey. Watch the videos and read the guides and then watch and read again. Ask questions on the Team Profit Facebook group if you don't understand things.

In general, the more money you start with, the more quickly you can make more. I started with £100 but it's doable on less, you'll just make profit more slowly.

It's a great hobby and I love it! Before I started I'd never placed a bet in my life. The learning curve has been immense! But you need to be careful and don't try and run before you can walk - mistakes can be costly.

Good luck!

@LaurieFairyCake

I'm as thick as fuck, I really am, if I can do it anybody can. I'd never placed a bet on anything other than grandnational and even then that was on store.

I've gone from knowing fuck all about sports to becoming my nephews favourite family member as I'm the only one who can discuss the weekends footie stats. It becomes second nature over time 😀

Thanks for the clear explanation . . .I have wondered about this for a while!

Will try to answer your questions, Onestep:

What does 'follow their terms' mean?
There will be terms and conditions for each offer you take up. Typically these would include things like: minimum amount £ you need to bet, minimum odds, type of event (football etc) in order to qualify for the free bet. So if it says “bet £10 get a free £10 bet, then you would need to stake at least £10 to claim the offer.

What does 'lay' the same bet at an exchange mean?
Bet against the exact same outcome at another site. So your “back” bet might be £10 on arsenal (backing arsenal) at eg Coral, to win a certain match. Your “lay” bet would be against arsenal winning (laying arsenal) at the exchange. You have therefore covered all possible outcomes of that event.

What is an exchange?
A betting website such as betfair, smarkets, betdaq etc at which you can opt to place “lay” bets as above.

How does doing this only cost you pennies?
You find a close match - this means the back odds are very close to the lay odds- Then using a calculator or spreadsheet you work out how much you should lay in order to cancel out your back bet. So when the event is finished, you have either “won” at the bookie or the exchange regardless of outcome. The pennies referred to are normally in commission at the exchange so it would normally cost 50p or so to do a qualifying bet such as this, but you will make this back on your free bet.

Why do you get awarded a free bet?
This is the tactics the bookmakers use to encourage new customers. Look at the adds on tv in the football coverage or other sports. They are trying to attest our average mug punter.

If you repeat the process are you placing the same bet on the same match or spreading your options?
For the free bet it is generally approached as a phase 2, where you would look for a new match. This is largely because free bets are often “stake not returned” meaning that in order to get a good cash return, you need to look for higher odds- over 7 or so- so it would need to be a different market if not a different event all together.
For eg you could bet on the “match odds” market of a football game and back team A to win at odds of 2. Within the same football game you could get on the “correct score” market for the score to be 2-2 at odds of 7.5.

I agree wholeheartedly with Namenot, that you can’t learn all this on a few posts and it does take a bit of research. I started doing this over 10yrs ago and at the time all the info and spreadsheets was free to acccess at moneysavingexpert.com forums which is how I learnt it all. I’m sorry if I mention any “jargon” it’s only due to the fact I’ve been doing t for so long. Previous to that I had no knowledge at all of sports or betting and have just picked up bits along the way.

Just replying really to reassure that it is genuinely a way to make actual money and not some kind of scam. Although absolutely mistakes can be made and you have to be careful and understand your chosen guides. I use odds monkey nowadays rather than trawling through sites to find matches. I think there are plenty of other similar sites out there that offer tutorials.
There’s also loads you can do in terms of risk free or low risk bingo (boring!) or casino offers if you have the time and inclination.
A lot of my accounts are useless now due to being bonus banned or limited so definitely take advantage while you can!
Top tip is open up a separate bank account for matched betting so that you don’t have hundreds of gambling transactions showing if you ever need to produce statements for anything

The team profit website is very helpful and most of it is free to read

Quick question, are winnings tax free? I've currently got the post Christmas come down of my tax return hanging over me (why I don't just get on and do it is beyond me.....) and I really wouldn't want to make it any more complicated!

What if there is a draw?

It doesn’t matter if there’s a draw, the outcome doesn’t matter at all. You need to sign up to a trial of Profit Accumulator. They make it very easy to understand.

There’s a newbie Mumsnet thread here and a video that explains it really well here I started with £10 pounds about 3 years again and make consistent profit every month- it’s like anything really, the more time and effort you put In, the more you can make but realistically it’s pretty easy to make a few hundred with not much time every month

I used to do matched betting in 2015 during Mat leave but had to stop when I went back to work and had a little tot to entertain.
I did the sign up offers way back then but my accounts have been dormant for almost 4 years.
Is there anyway I can get back into it without the bookies becoming suspicious and gubbing me.