How Does Matched Betting Work?

Jordan Atkinson

25 Jan 2018

Updated: 19 Nov 2023

How does matched betting work? Well firstly, matched betting is not gambling (most people assume it is!), it is one of the one surefire ways to 'beat the bookies' and profit from bets - if they're placed correctly. There is a lot of money to be made using this technique if done correctly.

How Does It Work?

Matched betting works by using free offers and incentives give by bookmakers to new customers in the form of 'signup offers' (they also offer incentives to existing customers, more on that later).

An example would be:

Bookmaker X is giving away a £10 free bet if you place a £10 bet in the first place. You place your initial £10 on the bookmaker website, this is known as a 'back bet'.

You then place another bet covering the exact opposite result on a betting exchange at the same odds, this is known as a 'lay bet'. Once the two bets finish you will neither be up or down money, however, you will have qualified for the £10 free bet. You simply repeat the process again in order to cash your £10 up. If done correctly you should profit around £8 to £9.

Simple, right? It can be daunting at first but once you have completed a couple of offers you will get the hang of it. It's an alien technique at first but overall it's a very easy concept to learn.

How Much Profit Can I Make Initially?

There are hundreds of bookmakers in the UK, and the vast majority of them offer incentives to first time customers. Our Signup Offers section of the website should see you profit in the region of £1000+ by the time you have completed them all - providing you haven't signed up to many, or any, bookmakers before.

Reload Offers

Once you have completed all of the signup offers, you can then move onto what's called reload offers. These are offers given to existing customers by bookmakers in order to keep them betting. They work in a similar way and allow you to cash out up to 90% of the total being given to you.

We have a full-time offers team that update our reload offers daily on our website - this means your profits will never dry up if you're completing the offers correctly.

Can I Continue Profiting?

Once you move onto reload offers you're already on the right tracks to profiting long term. We run two threads on our forum, the "how to make £1000 per month" thread and the "how to make £300 per month part-time" thread. Both threads are updated daily with enough offers to hit those targets respectively. If you follow along with them there's no reason why you can't make thousands from matched betting.

Our profit total for last year on these threads was £17,691, read about the profit breakdown here.

Software To Make It Easy

Searching for bets manually and calculating your back and lay stakes can be very time consuming. We have a whole host of software available to take the labour out of matched betting and speed the process up as much as possible.

Our Oddsmatching tool will search through all bookmakers and exchanges in order to find you a back and lay bet where odds match. It is a crucial bit of kit for when it comes to profiting from matched betting.

Read What Our Members Are Saying

We've helped tens of thousands of people profit from matched betting since we started in 2014. Have a read of our 'Meet The Members' section and get an idea of some of their stories, how much profit they make and also what they spend their winnings on!

Give It A Go

If you're looking to get stuck into matched betting then now could be the perfect time. We have a free trial that gives you access to the required software as well as two free offers that should see you profit up to £45. It's a good way to test the water and see if matched betting is for you.