How To Make Money From Football Betting

Usually if you find a website that tells you that there is a completely genuine and safe way to make money from betting on football matches then you will probably be a little sceptical to say the least. Most websites that boast of knowing of a way of making money from football betting will only pass on their “amazing system” to you after you make them a payment, usually around £50 or so. They then go on to tell you that in just a few hours you will have quadroupled your £50 investment, and within a few days you will be sat on a beach in the Bahamas sipping cocktails with your page 3 stunner wife.

Most of the systems available on the Internet that claim to make you rich from betting on football matches are simply wrong, misleading or just provide statistical information on previous football matches, expecting you to gamble using their system which eventually fails – leaving you hugely out of pocket not just for the cost of the system but also for the cost of the mis-placed bets.
If I were to tell you that there is actually a legitimate and very lucrative way to make money from football betting then you probably won’t believe me. But you have my word that it does exist and it does work, you will just have to trust me and have a look for yourself. And no, before you ask, I’m not simply going to tell you to lump your weeks’ earnings on Manchester United to beat Sunderland simply to get back £20, because as tempting as it may sound this is simply gambling – not something I would ever recommend. And neither will I be telling you of my hunch that Fulham are going to beat Chelsea at odds of 5/1. Again, this is just gambling, which has a great risk. Our way of making money from betting eliminates the risk involved in gambling, and providing you do everything correctly you will be able to gamble with no fear of losing any money.

Before I begin telling you the “system”, I should first say that I’m not claiming any credit for thinking-up the whole process – it has been in existance for a couple of years now, and I can’t tell you who is responsible for thinking up the system. Whoever it is, they have made many many people a huge amount of money. Also I will be providing this information for free, and it wont cost you any money to use the system – but obviously you will need enough money to place the bets. The only thing that I ask of you is that when you join a bookmaker you do so using the links provided on this page

The Football Betting System

The system, or technique, is called Matched Betting. It involves joining bookmakers just to take advantage of the free bets that they offer to new customers, and it enables you to turn this free bet into profit. If a bookmaker offers new customers a £20 bet, you could expect to turn this into about £19.50 profit (depending on the odds available). There are hundreds of bookmakers available to join, and so you can easily expect to earn a few thousand pounds from the Matched Betting process. Many bookmakers offer repeat promotions to their customers, and some even offer £200 in free bets to their customers – so there is plenty of money available to earn constantly throughout the football season.

When a bookmaker offers a free bet to a new customer, usually to trigger the free bet they first have to make their own bet. So for example if you were to join William Hill you will need to place a £20 bet to receive your own £20 free bet. The Matched Betting technique has a few steps; firstly you place a bet at the bookmaker and then you lay that bet at a betting exchange. This enables you to bet with no risk involved. Now you repeat the process using the bookmakers free bet. Because it is a free bet, you end up turning the free bet into profit, which is usually around 95% profit. Once you’ve triggered and used the free bet you have finished with that selected bookmaker and you look for the next one to join. This is the Matched Betting system in a nutshell.

The biggest hurdle when it comes to performing Matched Betting yourself has to be the actual learning process. It is very hard to understand the concept at first, and it might even help if you were to print this page out and read it over and over again. It is important that you understand the outline of Matched Betting though, before you delve into the details. Remember that we are trying to make a bet with a bookmaker at zero risk, to enable the use of their free bet. It is actually very easy to make a bet at no risk, you just need to know how. This is done by laying a bet at a betting exchange website.

The Betfair Betting Exchange

You have probably heard of Betfair before. They are a hugely popular betting exchange website. A betting exchange enables you to place bets with other people on the Internet. You get to set your own odds for an event, and set the amount of money that you are willing to take on this event, and other users can take you up on your bet. If they do so and the event happens, you have to pay out money to that person at the odds agreed. However if the event doesn’t happen, and that person loses their bet, you get to keep their money. In simple terms, the Betfair betting exchange enables you to take the place of a bookmaker.

Without a betting exchange the whole Matched Betting system would not work, and we would not be able to make money from betting on football matches. Thanks to Betfair we are able to place bets at a bookmaker at absolutely no risk at all. At Betfair you can either back or lay on a football match. This means you can place a bet (back) on an event, just as you would do at a bookmakers. You can also bet against (lay) something happening. This is where you are taking the place of a bookmaker, and laying is what we do when we are matched betting.

A Matched Betting Example

Now lets look at laying in more detail. Say Chelsea were playing Westham and we don’t fancy Westham winning the match, we would want to lay Westham. What we would then do is go to Betfair and find the Chelsea vs Westham market, and we would find the pink section and find the match odds. We would choose the odds to lay (either select the ones on the screen or set our own odds) and set the stake. So if it was possible to lay at odds of 5 (this is the same as 4/1), we would put whatever stake down that we wanted. If we put down a stake of £10 then the maximum we could lose is £50 (5 of £10 = £50). The maximum we could win is just £10.

This is a screenshot from the Betfair exchange – the blue squares show the odds to Back an event, and the pink squares show the odds to Lay an event. You can also see how much money (liquidity) is available to use on each event.

Now, if Chelsea win the match we earn the £10 that we layed. If the match is a draw we also earn the £10. However if Westham do win the match, we have to pay out £50. This is because the odds were 5.0 on Westham to win, and 5 x £10 (our lay stake) equals £50.

At Betfair there are loads of different markets available to bet on with the football. You can back and lay as much and more so then you can at any normal bookmakers – total goals, red cards, first goal scorers, time of first goal, etc etc. Usually when people do Matched Betting they tend to stick on the more simple match odds market – which is simply betting on which team will win a match.

Now hopefully you understand what laying a bet means (betting against something happening, acting as a bookmaker). Laying is just another form of gambling, but when it is combined with backing it provides a way of gambling with zero risk involved – which is exactly what we wanted to be able to do, to take advantage of bookmakers free bets.

We can now join a bookmaker, place a qualifying bet and lay this exact same bet at a betting exchange. Then, no matter what happens in the football match, we will be left where we started as we will have won no money but we would have also lost no money. However we will have unlocked our free bet from the bookmaker. When we repeat this process using the free bet, we magically end up with a profit. I will try to explain how in the paragraphs below by using a few examples.

Making A Zero Risk Bet To Qualify For A Bookmakers Free Bet

Before I show you how we turn the free bet into profit, I will show you how our bets at a bookmaker will be cancelled out by our lays at a betting exchange. Say we have placed a £10 bet on West Brom to beat Newcastle at an online bookmaker at odds of 3.0 (2/1).
And lets say that we have managed to lay West Brom at an online betting exchange at odds of 3.0. Here’s the possible scenarios at full-time:

West Brom Win
= £20 profit at bookmakers (£10 x 3 = £30).
= £20 loss at betting exchange (£10 x 3 = £30).

Draw
= £10 loss at bookmakers (we lost our bet on West Brom to win)
= £10 profit at betting exchange (we keep the lay stake made as West Brom didn’t win)

Newcastle Win
= £10 loss at bookmakers (we lost our bet on West Brom to win)
= £10 profit at betting exchange (we keep the lay stake made as West Brom didn’t win)

Now from the above results you should be able to see that each scenario (West Brom win, draw, Newcastle win) ends up with us back at square one. We have not win and we have not lost either. All this may sound a bit pointless but in actual fact its not – its hugely important. What we have just done is made a bet at a bookmaker with no risk. The bookmaker doesn’t know that we’ve laid the bet at a bookmaker (not that they would care), but by making this bet we have qualified for the bookmakers own free bet. This means we have triggered their free bet without having lost any money at all. Now all we need to do is to repeat the process using their free bet, and to turn this into a profit.

Making Money From The Free Bet

Lets see what happens if we repeat the process using the free bet on the exact same odds as above, for the West Browm Newcastle match. So we have placed the £10 free bet on West Brom to beat Newcastle at odds of 3.0 and we have layed this at a betting exchange at odds of 3 also.

West Brom Win
= £30 profit at bookmakers (£10 x 3 = £30).
= £20 loss at betting exchange (£10 x 3 = £30).

Draw
= £0 loss at bookmakers (we lost our bet on West Brom to win but it was a free bet)
= £10 profit at betting exchange (we keep the lay stake made as West Brom didn’t win)

Newcastle Win
= £0 loss at bookmakers (we lost our bet on West Brom to win but it was a free bet)
= £10 profit at betting exchange (we keep the lay stake made as West Brom didn’t win)

As you can see above, a magical thing has happened – we have made £10 no matter what the result is from the football match. If West Brom win we have made a £30 profit at the bookmakers because we get to keep the free bet stake (where as previously this was our own money, and so wasn’t classed as profit). So we have won £20 plus we get to keep the free bet stake of £10, meaning £30 profit. We have made a £20 loss at the betting exchange as usual, thus giving us £10 profit.
If the match is a draw then we’ve not lost any money by placing the bet with the bookmaker because the bet was completely free! And we get to keep the £10 stake at the betting exchange and thus we have made £10 profit.
If the match is a Newcastle win then its exactly the same; we’ve not lost any of our money because we weren’t betting with our money, it was a £10 free bet from the bookmaker. Again we get £10 profit from the betting exchange as we get to keep the £10 that someone had staked on a Newcastle win.

So as you can see, from the above we have made a £10 profit just from one bookmaker. This is quite a bad example if I’m honest, usually bookmakers offer at least a £20 bet to new customers. Some even offer £200 free bets. But if you were to make around £20 per bookmaker and there are literally hundreds to join, you’re talking about a few thousand pounds profit from very little hard work.

Things To Watch Out For When Performing Matched Betting

One thing to look out for is the terms and conditions of the free bets. Sometimes free bet stakes are not returned with their winnings, and in this scenario it is best to look for matches to bet on which have really high odds (like 6.0 and above). The higher the odds, the higher the percentage of the free bet that you get to keep as profit.

For example, lets say we find odds to back at 2.5 and odds to lay at 2.0 and we are using a £25 free bet which is stake-non-returnable (often referred to as SNR). As you can see from the image below, we will receive £18.29 no matter what happens in the football match.

However, if we had found odds to back at 7.0 and odds to lay at 6.5 and again used our £25 free bet (SNR), you can see from the image below that no matter what happens in the football match we would have received £22.14 out of the possible £25.

Remember that from the Matcher program that we used for the above examples we have also included the commission that we have to pay at the Betfair betting exchange, in this case it is set as 4.75. This commission has not been included in any of the earlier examples as it might have been overly-confusing (and also it only marginally affects the outcome of the bet). However it is important to remember to factor in the commission charged at the betting exchanges when doing your matched betting, as this will enable you to maximise your earnings.

As mentioned above, throughout this page I’ve used some very simple examples and haven’t taken all things into consideration which you will need to do when performing Matched Betting for yourself. Firstly, I’ve not really touched upon the odds at the bookmaker/betting exchange – when looking for matches to bet on, you need to find odds to back which are similar (hopefully identical, even-better is when they are higher) then the odds to lay at an exchange.

Lets say you find odds to back Spurs to beat Liverpool at 4.0 and you find odds to lay Spurs to beat Liverpool at 5 and you back and lay £20.

No matter what the outcome of the match, you will receive £16 (an overall loss of £4).

Lets say you find odds to back Spurs to beat Liverpool at 4.0 and you find odds to lay Spurs to beat Liverpool at 4.0 and you back and lay £20.

No matter what the outcome of the match, you will receive £20 (you will not have made a profit or a loss, you will be back at square 1).

Lets say you find odds to back Spurs to beat Liverpool at 5.0 and you find odds to lay Spurs to beat Liverpool at 4.0 and you back and lay £20.

No matter what the outcome of the match, you will receive £25 (an overall profit of £5).

As you can see from this scenario, when the odds to back at a bookmaker are higher then odds to lay at an exchange, you will make even more profit. This is something called Arbitrage Betting, and is something I will cover in the future. It is simply when the odds to back are higher then odds to lay, meaning that you are able to lock in a profit. Many people search for arbitrage betting opportunities and bet thousands of pounds to back and lay, guaranteeing profits of hundreds of pounds. Arbs are very rare to find though and it takes time searching through the odds of bookmakers/betting exchanges.

Another very important part of Matched Betting that I’ve only just briefly mentioned is the commissions charged by the Betting Exchanges. Betfair and all other exchanges charge a commission on your winnings, and this is something that should be factored into all the bets that you make. Betting exchanges charge this commission because this is how they make their money – when you bet on Betfair you aren’t actually betting using Betfair’s money – you are betting your own money against other members of the site. Betting exchanges charge a commission on all winnings, so either way they make money from bets placed on their exchange.
To make things simple I recommend that you use a program called the Matched Betting Calculator. This program takes the strain out of the equations involved with matched betting, telling you how good a “match” the odds that you have are, and how much profit you can expect to make, how much commission you will have to pay, etc. This program is free and it is essential if you are serious about making money from betting on football.

If you’ve made it this far then I congratulate you, well done for not falling asleep or smashing your computer screen up. Matched betting can be very hard to comprehend at first, I really recommend you print this page off and try and read through the process again and again until you completely understand it. Remember that you could lose a lot of money if you don’t understand how to use a betting exchange, so do be careful. Odds can and do change, and money available at the exchange does change (a star player may get injured in the warm up for example) so be sure that before placing a bet at a bookmaker there is enough money available for you to place your lay at the exchange.

Bookmakers Free Bets

Matched Betting is all about taking advantage of boomakers free bets, and without them you wouldn’t be able to make money from football betting. That is why I have decided to compile a list below of free bets that are available to take advantage of currently on the Internet.

Free Bets list goes down here (coming very soon)

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