When bookmakers offer temporary sign up offers with enhanced odds, at first glance they look extremely generous. However, are they actually more valuable than the normal sign up offer each bookmaker lists, and can we extract more money from them when matched betting?
It has to be said, the profit we can guarantee from these enhanced odds welcome offers are often less than we can make from the normal offer when using matched betting. To work this out, we first have to know how to calculate enhanced odds. Most matched betting websites will talk you through this process. It is important to know whether the enhanced odds are paid in cash, partly in cash or entirely in free bets.
There is also the option to take a risk and not lay an enhanced odds offer. As the maximum stake is often £1 for a big potential win, you can risk placing the £1 on the selection and the worst case scenario is that you will lose the £1. However, if the selection wins, you could gain a large profit.
A lot depends on how much you pay for your matched betting membership too. If you are with one of the cheaper sites such as MatchedBets.com or OddsMonkey, you may have more leeway to take a no lay risk on an enhanced odds offer. If you are a member of a site that charges a little bit extra, such as Profit Squirrel, you may need to take the guaranteed profit offers instead. You can find more information on their pricing in our Profit Squirrel review.
Lets take a look at some examples of enhanced odds welcome offers.
BetVictor – 100/1 for Conor McGregor to beat Floyd Mayweather
On the face of it, this looks like an amazing offer. However, through the use of an Enhanced Odds as Free Bets option on a matched betting calculator, it turns out we can only actually make a profit of around £15.65 when covering all potential outcomes.
Compare this to BetVictor’s normal sign up offer of Bet £10, Get £30 in Free Bets (plus a £10 Casino bonus). When matched betting, this offer is worth around £22, over £6 more than the enhanced odds offer.
Coral – 25/1 on Manchester United to beat Swansea
This may be an offer than take a no lay risk on, but to be honest there is no need to. The normal Coral welcome offer will bag you around £16 in guaranteed profit, while if Manchester United were to win, after spending the free bets you wouldn’t come out with much more than that anyway. It’s just not worth the risk.
When matched betting and covering both outcomes, after working out the enhanced odds using a calculator, you would have only come out with a profit of around £11 either way, again making it less valuable than the normal welcome offer.
Overall, we can see that although huge enhanced odds on selections looks appealing at first glance, you are probably better off sticking to the normal sign up offers that bookmakers offer as they are more matched betting friendly.