Money back free bets in Great Britain: who gives them, what they cost

Updated October 2026

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A money back offer sounds generous until you read the line under the headline. Almost every welcome package on a British sportsbook now ends with the same two notes: the stake is not returned, and the credit expires inside a month. The difference between a £10 free bet and a £40 free bet is not £30. It is the difference between two turnover requirements, two minimum prices and two deadlines, and the better-looking one is often the worse of the two once those numbers are placed side by side.

This page works through ten UK-licensed bookmakers that publish a money back or free bet welcome offer, and treats the comparison as a cost question. Every offer is examined for what it asks the bettor to do before a penny of winnings can be withdrawn, and the closing line of each review names who, if anyone, that offer actually suits. The page is built on each operator’s own published terms, the Gambling Commission’s public register, and the bonus rules that came into force on 19 January 2026.

“Current as of 27 October 2026”. Licence data verified against the Gambling Commission’s public register of remote operating licences; offer terms taken from each operator’s support pages and app store listings as published on 16 October 2026.

The shortlist at a glance

The ten brands below all hold a Gambling Commission remote licence for real-event betting. They are listed in the order their offer terms read from worst to least-bad on the wagering question, which is the one that decides how much the welcome package really costs. A licence number, the holder named on the Commission’s register, and what the operator’s own terms say about the offer sit side by side in the table that follows.

That is the shape of the market. The next section explains what each of those licence lines, and the offer alongside it, actually means.

How a money back offer works in practice

A money back offer is, on the face of it, the simplest promotion in the book: place a bet, get your money back if it loses. In practice the bettor sees a string of variants that all do similar things in slightly different ways, and the differences matter.

A “money back as a free bet” is the commonest of the three. The bookmaker refunds the stake of a losing wager not as cash but as a free bet credit, which can be spent on another selection. The catch is the one the marketing rarely mentions: when the free bet wins, the stake is not paid back, so a £10 free bet at odds of 3.0 returns £20 in profit, not £30. The next section of this page works that example through to a number.

A “money back as cash” is rarer at the sign-up stage, and where it appears it is usually capped. Betting shops in Britain sometimes refund small stakes in cash for specific promotions, but online the same offer is almost always paid as a free bet, both for tax reasons and because the operator does not want a customer walking off with the original stake on the first day.

A “money back if a condition is met” is the shape most offers take. VBet refunds the first £10 if the customer’s very first bet loses. Sky Bet voids a first-goalscorer bet, returning the stake, if the chosen player does not start or comes on after a goal has been scored. Fafabet pays Best Odds Guaranteed when the starting price beats the price the bet was taken at, which is a different mechanism but lands in the same place: the customer ends up with a better number than the one on the slip.

Two further terms decide the value of any of these. Minimum odds mean the qualifying bet cannot be placed at any price the operator chooses; a £20 wager at 1.10 does not count. Wagering requirements are the number of times the bonus must be turned over before any winnings can be withdrawn, and they are now capped at ten times the bonus by the Gambling Commission’s promotion rules that came into force on 19 January 2026.

The cluster of terms is sometimes called rollover, sometimes playthrough, and sometimes the wagering condition. The arithmetic underneath is the same: required turnover equals the bonus multiplied by the factor, and a higher factor costs the bettor more in expected losses on the bets that clear it. Where a welcome offer has no wagering requirement, the offer still costs something, because the free bet is not returned when it wins.

Why the Commission’s bonus cap changed the picture

The bonus rules in force since 19 January 2026 rewrote the headline numbers across the British market. Before that date, a £10 bonus with a fifty-times wagering requirement needed £500 of qualifying bets; after it, no bonus may carry a wagering factor above ten, so a £10 bonus at the new ceiling needs £100 of qualifying bets. The cap is a hard ceiling. The same rules also banned mixed-product promotions: an offer that asks the customer to bet on football in order to claim free spins, for instance, can no longer be advertised to British customers.

Three points follow for the bettor comparing offers. First, the size of a welcome package on its own is a weaker signal than it used to be, because the largest bonuses in the market now come with a turnover the customer must clear inside a deadline. Second, a free bet with no wagering condition is unaffected by the new cap, because there is no bonus amount to multiply. Third, the ban on mixed-product offers means a casino-style bonus that is unlocked by betting on sport is no longer legal in Great Britain, so an offer that mentions free spins and a sports bonus in the same breath is not one British customers will see at a licensed site.

The Commission’s role in setting those rules is administrative rather than advisory. The promotion rules sit inside the Licence Conditions and Codes of Practice that every remote licence holder signs up to, and an operator that breaks them risks a regulatory warning, a financial penalty or, in serious cases, the loss of the licence altogether. None of that changes the fact that a money back offer at a licensed bookmaker is a contract between two parties, and the small print is where the contract lives.

Safer gambling and the welcome offer

Every brand on this page is part of GAMSTOP, the national self-exclusion scheme that has been a mandatory licence condition for online operators since 31 March 2020. A customer who has signed up to GAMSTOP cannot open an account with any of them, and a fresh welcome offer is therefore not a path around a self-exclusion that is already in place. The minimum self-exclusion period is six months, and the longest is five years, after which the exclusion stays in force for a further seven years unless the customer asks GAMSTOP to remove it.

A second layer sits on top of the sign-up offer. Since 7 May 2019, every licensed operator has had to verify the customer’s name, address and date of birth before the first deposit is accepted or a first bet is placed, and a free bet or bonus cannot be used to side-step that check. The operator runs a public-record check rather than a credit-reference check, and from 28 February 2025 a financial vulnerability check kicks in once a customer’s net deposits over a rolling 30 days exceed £150, scanning for bankruptcies and county court judgments rather than for income. The Commission’s “affordability checks”, the financial risk assessments in the press, are a separate, staged plan that has been announced but has no start date.

The net effect on a money back offer is that the customer who claims one has already cleared two checks before the bet is placed, and a third becomes possible once the deposit pattern crosses the £150 threshold. None of those checks is a barrier to gambling in the way a credit check is, and none of them is hidden in the small print, but the offer the customer eventually receives has been shaped by them in ways the marketing does not explain. A free bet that is credited only after a customer has been verified is, by definition, a free bet that has not been claimed by anyone who is barred from claiming it, and the bonus cap on wagering that came in on 19 January 2026 is itself a piece of consumer protection.

Help is available outside the operator. GamCare runs the National Gambling Helpline. GambleAware funds treatment and research. The NHS runs gambling clinics across the country, and Gamblers Anonymous runs peer-support meetings. None of these is a service the welcome offer replaces, and the existence of a free bet on a sportsbook does not change what those services are for.

The shape of a British money back offer

The ten offers on this page cluster into three families, and the family an offer belongs to is the quickest way to read it.

The first family is the fixed free bet for a fixed qualifying bet. Coral’s £20 qualifying bet at minimum odds of 2.0 for £40 in free bets, Bet600’s five singles of £10 at 2.0 or greater for one £10 free bet, and Sporting Index’s £10 qualifying bet at 1/2 for three £10 free bets and a handful of spread-bet credits are all variations on the theme. The customer wagers a set amount at a set price, and a free bet (or a small bundle of them) is credited on settlement.

The second family is the conditional refund. VBet’s £10 free bet if the first bet of £10 or more loses is the clearest example. The bet loses, the stake is refunded as a free bet, and the customer goes again. Sky Bet’s first-goalscorer rule sits in the same family, with a narrower trigger: the chosen player does not start, the bet is void, the stake is refunded. Coral’s Reward Shaker is a looser version of the same idea, paid out in small daily credits rather than as a one-off welcome bonus.

The third family is the price or feature enhancement. William Hill’s Football Acca Boost, Kwiff’s Supercharge, 10bet’s daily free bets and Fafabet’s Best Odds Guaranteed on horse racing do not credit a free bet at all; they make the existing bet pay more if it wins. The size of the bonus depends on the odds of the bet the customer has already placed, and the wagering question does not arise, because there is no bonus to clear. The trade-off is that the customer must place a bet at a price the operator’s boost applies to, which is rarely the price the customer would have picked.

The cluster a brand belongs to is the first thing the comparison below has to say. An offer that pays a free bet after a qualifying wager costs the customer two things: the stake of the qualifying bet, and the expected loss on the turnover the wagering requirement asks for. An offer that refunds a losing first bet costs the customer only the stake of that first bet, because the free bet is credited whether or not the wagering requirement is met. A price boost costs the customer the stake of the original bet, with the value coming from the bigger payout on a winner.

What a free bet is worth

The headline price of a free bet is rarely the price the bettor keeps. A £40 free bet at Coral, a £10 free bet at Bet600 and a £20 free bet at Smarkets are all paid under the same rule: the stake is not returned with the winnings. That single line does most of the work of cutting the headline value down.

Work through a simple example. Take a free bet of £10 placed at decimal odds of 1.90 on a two-way market — the kind of price that sits just below evens. A winning bet pays the stake multiplied by the odds, so £10 × 1.90 = £19, of which £10 is the stake and £9 is profit. Because the stake of a free bet is not returned, the bettor keeps the £9. The market itself, being priced at 1.90 on each side, returns roughly 1 ÷ (1 ÷ 1.90 + 1 ÷ 1.90) = 0.95 in payout share, which means the operator keeps around 5% as margin. The expected value of the free bet is therefore roughly £10 × (1.90 − 1) ÷ 1.90 × 0.95, which is in the band of £4.50. A £10 free bet is, on average, a £4.50 free bet, and the rest of the headline is the marketing.

A free bet at longer odds is worth more in absolute terms but worth the same proportion of the stake, because the formula is the same shape. A £10 free bet at 5.0 returns £40 in profit on a win, and at the same 5% margin the expected value lands in the band of £7.60, or 76 pence in the pound. A £10 free bet at 1.40 returns £4 in profit on a win, and the expected value lands in the band of £2.70, or 27 pence in the pound. The free bet is worth more at longer prices, and worth less at shorter ones, and the only thing that changes between them is how much of the stake the bettor is willing to put on a longer-priced outcome.

A band, not a single figure, is the right answer. The expected value depends on the odds of the bet the free bet is placed at, and the bookmaker’s margin on the market it is placed in, and the bettor’s choice of price is the largest of those variables. A bettor who uses a free bet at 1.20 to back a heavy favourite gets roughly a third of the stake back in expected value. A bettor who uses the same free bet at 4.0 on an outsider gets more than two-thirds back. The free bet is the same; the price is the bettor’s.

The corollary is what the welcome offer actually costs. A £40 free bet at Coral, used at a price of 1.90, is worth in the band of £18 in expected value. The qualifying bet of £20 at 2.0 has its own expected loss, and at the 5% margin of a typical football 1X2 market that lands in the band of £1. The full cost of the welcome package to the customer is therefore the £20 stake of the qualifying bet plus the £22 of headline value that the free bet does not deliver, or about £42 against a headline price of £40. The arithmetic is close to break-even before the customer has placed a bet, and the only way to make the welcome offer pay is to find a price at which the free bet is worth more than the formula predicts, which is what the rest of this page is for.

Spreadex, Sky Bet, bet365 and Midnite: the brands that did not make the shortlist

A money back comparison only makes sense if the brands on it run the same kind of offer, and four notable names do not, so they are not in the ranking above. Their absence is a feature of the comparison rather than a miss.

Spreadex combines a fixed-odds sportsbook with a financial spread-betting product. The financial side is regulated by the Financial Conduct Authority rather than the Gambling Commission, and the firm’s own homepage states that losses on spread bets can exceed the original deposit. A bettor who opens a Spreadex account to claim a sports free bet is also opening an account with a firm that offers leveraged financial products, and the two sides of the business run under different rules. For a customer looking for a money back offer on football or horse racing, that asymmetry is the reason to look elsewhere first.

Sky Bet is the trading name of Bonne Terre Limited and sits inside the same Flutter group as Paddy Power and Betfair. The brand does run money back features — the first-goalscorer rule that voids the bet and refunds the stake if the chosen player does not start, for instance — but those rules are written into the sportsbook’s market-by-market terms rather than bundled into a welcome offer. A new Sky Bet customer opens with a different sign-up deal rather than a money back guarantee on the first bet.

bet365 is one of the larger sportsbooks in the world and runs a long list of price features, from Bet Builder+ to Super Boosts to Winnings Boosts on selected singles. The welcome offer on the bet365 app at the time of writing is not a money back free bet in the form this page compares, and the brand is left out of the ranking for that reason.

Midnite runs a sportsbook and a casino under Gambling Commission licence 101839, and its site shows in-play events, an acca builder, popular accas and price boosts with maximum-stake limits. The brand is too new for the welcome offer to have settled into the kind of money back format the ranking tests, and the comparison on this page is left to the brands that publish one.

The four names above are not ranked, and the absence is not a judgement on the bookmaker; it is a judgement on the offer. A bookmaker that runs a strong sportsbook but a thin welcome package is not the same proposition as one that runs a thin sportsbook and a strong welcome package, and the page is built around the second kind of comparison.

The ten bookmakers, reviewed

Each review below states the offer, the wagering requirement if there is one, the minimum price, the deadline and any feature the brand’s own terms treat as part of the welcome package. The closing line is the verdict, and the verdict names the bettor the offer suits. None of the prices below are printed for a real event, because the comparison is a structural one and the snapshot is structural too.

Smarkets and SBK

Smarkets is a betting exchange; SBK is the same company’s sportsbook. The welcome offer on SBK is a £20 first deposit and a £20 bet at minimum odds of 3.0, which unlocks £60 in free bets within 48 hours. The 3.0 minimum is the standout number, because it forces the qualifying bet onto a market where the bettor is taking a real view rather than laying a 1.10 favourite, and the £60 in free bets is paid on three tranches rather than as a single credit.

The free bets themselves are governed by SBK’s own terms, and the deadline for spending them is short. The offer sits inside the 10x cap on wagering requirements that the Commission brought in on 19 January 2026, and the size of the package relative to the qualifying bet is generous, at three pounds of free bet for every pound staked.

The verdict: this is a compelling choice for anyone holding a list of outsiders at 3.0 or higher, but it falls short if you prefer shorter-priced markets, as the qualifying requirement at minimum odds of 3.0 effectively filters out those smaller-margin plays.

William Hill

William Hill’s headline offer on the football side is the Football Acca Boost, which applies to accas of two or more legs at 1/5 or bigger per leg, with a boost starting at 3% on a double and rising to 200% on twenty or more legs, capped at a maximum boost of £10,000 per online bet, and running until 30 May 2027. The boost is paid as additional winnings on a winning acca, and the stake is not subject to a separate wagering requirement.

A bettor who already builds football accas will find the boost costs nothing, because the qualifying acca is one they would have placed anyway. A bettor who backs singles is not in the offer at all. The 1/5 minimum odds on each leg is a low bar, and the 200% boost on twenty legs is generous for a long-form bettor.

The verdict: the right offer for a customer whose natural bet is a long acca, and a free pass for a customer who backs singles.

Bet600

Bet600’s welcome offer is structured as five qualifying single bets of £10 or more at minimum odds of 2.0 within seven days, after which one £10 free bet is credited. The structure is unusual: a single free bet is the reward for five qualifying singles, and the seven-day window is the deadline for all of them. The 2.0 minimum is higher than the 1/2 minimum on Sporting Index’s qualifying bet, but the qualifying volume is higher too.

A bettor who would place five singles in a week anyway will not notice the offer. A bettor who places one or two singles in a week is being asked to place three or four more to claim a £10 free bet, and the value of the free bet does not, on its own, pay for the expected loss on the qualifying singles. The 10x cap on wagering requirements under the Commission’s new rules does not bind here, because the free bet carries no wagering requirement.

The verdict: a fair offer for an active bettor, and a limited one for an occasional one.

Coral

Coral’s welcome offer is “Get £40 in Free Bets when you bet £20”: a deposit and a sports bet of £20 or more at minimum odds of 2.0, after which £40 in free bets is issued within seven days and expires seven days after issue. The free bets are paid as bet credits that are non-withdrawable and do not return the stake with winnings, and the qualifying bet cannot be placed on a market the operator excludes from the offer.

The offer sits next to the daily Reward Shaker, the Odds Booster on hundreds of markets, and the free-to-play Football Super Series with a £10,000 jackpot, none of which is part of the welcome package itself. A new customer at Coral is buying into a longer product rather than a one-off deal.

The verdict: choosing this platform makes sense if you intend to use the account consistently after the initial welcome package is exhausted, whereas it becomes a poor value proposition for the bettor who intends to switch services immediately.

VBet

VBet’s welcome offer is a £10 free bet if a new, verified customer’s first-ever bet of £10 or more loses. The customer deposits, places a bet of £10 or more, and if the bet loses the stake is refunded as a free bet, with the stake of the free bet not returned on a win. The offer is a clean money back deal: there is no wagering requirement, no minimum odds on the qualifying bet beyond the operator’s general rule, and the deadline is the deadline on the free bet rather than on the qualifying bet.

The bet is also the bettor’s choice. A bettor who backs a 1.20 favourite is taking a small expected loss on the qualifying bet in exchange for a near-certain free bet, while a bettor who backs a 4.0 outsider is taking a larger expected loss in exchange for a free bet that may or may not arrive. The free bet is the same in both cases.

The verdict: our assessment is that this is a solid promotion for those looking for a single-time bonus, while those comfortable selecting their own qualifying stake price to secure the refund will find it equally balanced.

Kwiff

Kwiff’s Supercharge feature can boost the odds on a bet instantly, with the example on the app store listing of a boost from 2/1 to 20/1. The boost can apply to single or multi bets on any sport, and the welcome offer built around the feature uses the same engine: a customer’s first bet is the bet that gets boosted, and the boost is paid as additional winnings if the bet wins.

A Kwiff customer is buying access to a feature rather than a credit. The boost is unpredictable, and the price of the bet is set by Kwiff’s engine rather than by the customer. A bettor who likes the idea of a randomised boost will find the offer entertaining; a bettor who wants to know the exact payout before placing the bet will not.

The verdict: this is a unique promotion for bettors who enjoy the random nature of odds boosts, though it creates a significant disadvantage for those who prefer to calculate their potential return before locking in their stake.

10bet

10bet’s app advertises a 100% up to £50 betting bonus for UK sign-ups, with daily free bets and free spins on the side. The bonus is paid in cash rather than as a free bet, and it carries a wagering requirement that sits inside the 10x cap on bonuses that the Commission brought in on 19 January 2026. The maximum bonus is £50, so the maximum turnover under the cap is £500, and the qualifying bets must be placed at the minimum odds the bonus terms name.

The daily free bets are a separate credit and run on their own terms. The free spins are paid into the casino product, and the Commission’s ban on mixed-product promotions means a customer cannot be required to bet on sport in order to claim them. The offer is a bonus-led one, which is the family of offer that the new cap most affects.

The verdict: this represents a reasonable incentive for bettors aiming to reach the required turnover, while it provides minimal value to the individual who stakes only occasionally.

Star Sports

Star Sports offers pre-event and in-play markets with Bet Boosts, Daily Specials and Weekend Enhanced Boosts, with in-play coverage of football, horse racing, golf and US sports. The welcome offer is structured as a series of price enhancements rather than as a free bet credit, and the operator’s own terms set the maximum stake on each boosted market.

A Star Sports customer is buying into a sportsbook that prices aggressively on the enhanced markets and lets the rest of the book run at the operator’s own pace. A bettor who likes a Daily Special will find the brand suits them, and a bettor who places long-form bets on niche sports will not.

The verdict: an entertaining proposition if you focus on the sports Star Sports covers aggressively, but it is unlikely to satisfy the needs of bettors who do not target those specific markets.

Sporting Index

Sporting Index runs both a fixed-odds sportsbook and a spread-betting product, and the welcome offer is a hybrid: a £10 fixed-odds qualifying bet at minimum odds of 1/2 unlocks three £10 fixed-odds free bets, three £5 Total Goals spread bets, three £5 Winning Favourites spread bets and a £1 Race Index spread bet. The qualifying bet cannot be placed in play and cannot be cashed out early.

The free bets across the fixed-odds and the spread side sit on different terms, and a customer who only wants the fixed-odds free bets is being asked to take the spread credits as well. The 1/2 minimum odds on the qualifying bet is a low bar, and the qualifying volume of £10 is the lowest on the page. The deadline is governed by the operator’s general free bet terms.

The verdict: you might consider this if you are interested in exploring spread betting alongside traditional fixed-odds, though it is far less appealing if your focus remains strictly on the fixed-odds side.

Fafabet

Fafabet pays Best Odds Guaranteed on UK and Irish horse racing win and each-way bets from 9am on race days: if the starting price is bigger than the price on the slip, the bigger odds are paid. The feature is not a welcome offer in the strict sense, and the brand’s sign-up deal is built around it rather than around a free bet credit.

A horse racing bettor who places bets on the day gets the bigger of two prices automatically, and a bettor who bets the night before is locked into the original price. The offer is the kind that suits a particular rhythm of betting rather than a particular stake, and a customer who only bets on football will not use it at all.

The verdict: the right offer for a horse racing customer who bets on the day, and a near-irrelevant one for everyone else.

How the offers compare on the wagering question

Two of the offers above carry a wagering requirement. 10bet’s £50 betting bonus has a turnover that sits inside the Commission’s 10x cap, so the maximum turnover is £500 at the new ceiling. The Coral £40 in free bets is a credit rather than a bonus, so the 10x cap does not apply. The remaining eight offers are free bet credits, price boosts or conditional refunds, and the wagering question is decided by the stake of the free bet rather than by a turnover factor.

A wagering requirement of none is the cheapest possible answer under the current rules, and a wagering requirement of 10x at the maximum bonus is the most expensive legal answer. The two together cover the full legal range.

Reading the small print

Three clauses turn up often enough to be worth naming, and each costs the bettor in a different way.

The stake is not returned with the winnings. This is the clause that does the most work in cutting the headline value of a free bet down. It is also the clause that the marketing rarely mentions. A free bet of £40 at Coral, used at 1.90, is worth in the band of £18 in expected value rather than £40.

The free bet expires seven days after issue. Coral’s free bets expire seven days after issue, and Sky Bet’s expire thirty days after crediting. A bettor who does not use the credit inside the window loses it, and the headline value of the offer is reduced by the value of the credit that is not spent. A long deadline is more generous than a short one, and a customer who bets occasionally is better served by the long deadline.

The minimum odds on the qualifying bet is a real number. A minimum odds of 2.0 on Coral and Bet600 is not a token barrier, and a customer who wants to back a 1.50 favourite on the first bet is being asked to take a different bet. The minimum odds on the free bet itself, where one is stated, is a different number, and a customer who wants to use a free bet on a short-priced favourite may find the offer does not allow it.

The clauses are written into the operator’s own terms, and a customer who claims an offer without reading them is taking the headline at face value. The headline is rarely the price.

What the page is not for

A money back offer is a contract between a bookmaker and a customer, and the page is built to help the customer read that contract. It is not built to recommend one offer over another, and it is not built to predict the outcome of any sporting event. No page of this kind can tell a reader which team will win on Saturday, and a reader who treats a comparison of welcome offers as a tip will lose money on the page’s word.

The page is also not a route around a self-exclusion. GAMSTOP is in place across the whole licensed market, and a customer who has signed up to it cannot open an account with any of the brands reviewed here. The bonus cap and the verification checks are part of the same framework, and the offer a customer eventually claims has been shaped by both. None of this changes the fact that the offer is the offer, and the comparison on this page is the comparison.

Frequently asked questions

What is a money back as free bet deal?

A money back as free bet deal is a promotion that refunds the stake of a losing wager as a free bet credit rather than as cash. The credit is then spent on a second selection, and if that second selection wins, only the profit is paid out — the stake of the free bet is not returned. The structure keeps the headline price high while shifting the actual cost onto the second bet. It is the format the majority of welcome offers at licensed British bookmakers now take.

What does money back in free bets mean?

Money back in free bets is the same mechanism described from the customer’s side: the bookmaker returns the value of a losing bet as a free bet, which the customer spends on another market. The phrase is shorthand for a non-cash refund, and the value of the free bet is set by the same formula that sets the value of any other free bet. A £10 free bet at 1.90 is worth in the band of £4.50 in expected value, not £10, because the stake is not returned on a win.

What does use money back in free bets mean?

To use a money back in free bets credit, the customer adds a selection to the bet slip, marks the free bet as the stake, and places the bet. The bookmaker settles the bet as a normal wager, with the profit paid out and the stake of the free bet retained. Any winnings are paid into the withdrawable balance, subject to the operator’s identity and source-of-funds checks, while the free bet itself is consumed in the wager.

What is the maximum wagering requirement on a betting bonus in Great Britain?

Since 19 January 2026, the maximum wagering requirement on a betting bonus offered to British customers is ten times the bonus amount, under the Gambling Commission’s promotion rules. A £10 bonus at the new ceiling needs £100 of qualifying bets to clear. The same rules also ban mixed-product promotions that require a customer to bet on sport in order to claim a casino-style bonus. The cap does not apply to free bets with no wagering condition, because there is no bonus amount to multiply.

What do minimum odds and the wagering requirement mean in a sign-up offer?

Minimum odds are the lowest price at which a qualifying bet will count towards the offer, and a wagering requirement is the number of times a bonus must be turned over before winnings can be withdrawn. The two terms are the two numbers that decide what an offer costs, because a high minimum odds forces the customer onto longer-priced outcomes and a high wagering requirement forces the customer to place more bets than they would otherwise. Both are written into the operator’s own terms, and the headline price of a welcome offer is rarely the price once the two numbers are placed beside it.

Why is the stake of a free bet not paid back with the winnings?

A free bet is a credit rather than a cash stake, and the operator pays out the profit only. The structure is part of the offer: a £10 free bet at 3.0 returns £20 in profit on a win, not £30, and the difference is the value the bookmaker keeps in exchange for the credit. The clause is consistent with the Commission’s bonus rules, which do not require the stake of a free bet to be returned, and it is consistent with the way free bet value is calculated across the British market.

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