Risk Free Bet Bookmakers
If you’re familiar with our website you may notice we don’t advertise nearly as many free bets as our competitors do. This strategy works well for affiliate marketers but, for sophisticated players looking for the best sports betting value, free bets are very far from the end all. In fact, their overall value is quite lacking in most cases.
Take the case of one the best free bet offers I know of, www.ladbrokes.com which offers UK residents a £50 free bet. All you need to do is sign up, deposit £50, bet it, and if your wager loses your stake is returned. Of course, in the times you win your stake is returned as well, as is the case with any bet – so, no gain there. Now let’s say you stake the £50 on 1/1 – on average half time you lose, so your free bet has a £25 average value. If you instead stake it on 10/1, 90% of the time you lose so in this case it has an average £45.00 value. It is not possible to use your free bet in such a way that it is ever worth more than £50; it will always be worth less from an EV perspective.
This is why educated players are often looking for online bookmakers who offer either cash bonuses or superior odds, as opposed to just free plays. For example www.bet365.com offers a 100% up £100 initial deposit match. The difference here is this is not a free bet; it’s a legit one-hundred quid free that is yours to keep. Of course, to withdrawal it you’ll need to meet a small three times turnover, but this no challenge for most punters. In comparison, at Ladbroke – would you really risk your free bet on 10/1 odds – thus probably getting no payout? Most punters would probably do closer to 1/1 or 2/1 or maybe even 3/1 or 4/1. In any case the bonus probably has value between £25.00 and £37.50 for most. Considering you needed to deposit fifty quid anyways – why not make it one-hundred at Bet365 instead, this way you get £100 completely free.
Can you see now how free bets are often not as good as bonus offers? Meanwhile, even if you start out with a strategy of claiming every free bet you can find, eventually you’ll run out of free bets. Are you going to keep betting anyways? Most sport fans are gamblers – we’re always going to bet and keep a little action going somewhere. In this case wouldn’t it make more sense to use a betting site that offers great odds such as Betfair Peer to Peer Betting Exchange, or Pinnacle Sports who has the highest betting limits, lowest margins and fastest payouts of all betting sites? Of course it would. Sites with less than superior odds give away free bets hoping that you’ll get used to betting with them, and then keep betting with them later while getting worse odds than can be found across the virtual street.
Best Free Bet Bookmakers
Now with that said free money is free money, whether we’re talking one quid or a hundred, why not take it? So as a service to punters I’ve decided to provide a list of the top free bet offers available in GPB to UK residents.
Ladbrokes £50 Risk Free Bet – Ladbrokes is constantly in a neck and neck competition with William Hill over which is the largest bookmaker in the UK market. Their online website has odds on all major domestic and international football competitions, cricket, horse racing, Formula 1, darts, rugby and dozens of other sports. They also offer live in-play betting, financial betting, poker and casino. With a £50 risk free bet available, it would be foolish not to give them a try.
188Bet £25 Risk Free Bet – As covered in my article on UK betting sites, Betfair is the top Asian bookie for UK punters. They’re licensed in the Isle of Man which is a British Crown Dependency with a strong gambling commission. They also sponsor a number of UK football and rugby teams, namely Bolton Wanderers, Wigan Athletic, Chelsea, Liverpool, Aston Villa London Wasps and Wigan Warriors. With a £25 risk free bet, more live betting markets than any other site, and the best Asian handicap odds in the industry this is certainly an offer worth taking.
Betfair £25 Risk Free Bet – Betfair is not an online bookmaker but rather a peer to peer betting exchange. Here bettors can back and lay teams in a method that resembles more of day trading and financial exchange than it does sports betting. If this sounds confusing it only is at first, and is a great way to get the best odds possible when betting sports. I strongly suggest reading my article How Betfair Works, and then taking them up on their £25 risk free bet offer.
So for now we have £100 in free bet offers available for UK residents betting in GBP. I’ll keep an eye out and update this list as new free bets of at least £25 or more are discovered. Until then I wish you the best of luck betting and encourage you to return to this page at a later date for more free betting offers. Again, good luck!