Explainer
What a free bet is actually worth
Most of the free bets in this market do not return the stake. That single condition takes roughly a third off the headline before any turnover requirement applies.
A free bet where the stake comes back is worth its face value. A free bet where it does not is worth the face value multiplied by the price minus one, which at even money is half and at the short prices most people back is less.
Several of the offers in this market attach a minimum price as well, sometimes as long as three, and exclude the markets a cautious punter would use to protect a free bet. That combination is deliberate: it pushes the credit onto selections where it is least likely to convert.
Then the turnover requirement applies to whatever it produces. The board’s model scores an offer on what survives all of that rather than on the headline, which is why the largest headline in this market is not the highest-scoring offer in it.
Set against a margin, the arithmetic is not close. An offer is a single event. The margin is charged on every slip afterwards, including the slips placed with whatever the offer produced, so a punter who takes a large offer at an expensive book pays for it repeatedly.
Questions this page gets asked
Are the offer figures on this site the bookmaker’s own?
Some are and some are not, and every offer says which. Where the operator’s own page could not be reached, several third parties agreeing is what is published, and the headline should be treated as firmer than the detail.
Which is worth more, a bigger offer or a better price?
It depends entirely on how much you bet afterwards. For anybody placing more than a handful of slips a year, the price wins, and the page on what the margin costs puts numbers on where the crossover sits.