Earlier this season, William Hill launched a brand new promotion named 'Golden Goal. The offer has proved to be a huge success among punters and matched bettors. In this guide we'll show you what William Hill's Golden Goal offer is all about and how you can use it to potentially make a good profit with very little risk.

What is the william hill golden goal offer?

The Golden Goal promotion is available on selected football matches which are announced by William Hill. On eligible games, you can back either team to win the match and if they score the first goal, your bet will be paid out as a winner regardless of the result. The maximum payout should your team score first and not win the match is £50 and so if you are matched betting this offer, you need to take that into account and adjust your stakes accordingly. We'll go into that in a bit.

Lets take a look at an example.

Eligible Match: Southampton v Arsenal

Lets say that William Hill were offering odds of 5/1 for Southampton to win the match and we place a £10 bet on them to do so. Here are the returns for every outcome.

  • If Southampton score first and win the match our bet is settled as a winner and we make £50 profit
  • If Southampton score first and do not win the match, our bet is settled as a winner and we make £50 profit
  • If Southampton do not score first but go on to win the match, our bet is settled as a winner and we make £50 profit
  • If Southampton do not score first and do not win the match, we lose our £10 stake

As you can see, if we simply punted our £10 bet, we would make a £50 profit in every outcome apart from if Southampton didn't score first and they didn't win the match. 

As matched bettors we like to eliminate risk as much as possible which is why it is a good idea to lay your bets which minimises risk and also gives you the chance to make a good profit.

Matched betting the golden goal offer

As mentioned, we want to minimise the risk as much as possible and we do so by laying our bets. The advantage of this is that if the team we back do not score first or win the match, we will win our lay bet and only be down by the amount of our qualifying loss.

If the team we backed scores first, William Hill will pay our bet out as a winner. However, our lay bet is still running and it is from this that we will try to lock in a profit.

If your team scores first, you have a few options which are similar to the procedure when doing the Bet365 Early Payout Offer or the Paddy Power 2 UP offer when your team goes two goals ahead.

Your options are:

  1. Let your lay bet run. If the other team comes back to win or the match ends in a draw, you will win both your back bet and your lay bet.
  2. Trade out your lay bet straight away. Depending on the back odds of your team after they have scored the first goal, you should be able to trade out your lay bet for an overall profit.
  3. Hope the other team scores next and then trade out. If you wait and the other team gets a goal back to level the score, it's likely that the odds on your team to win will increase. This means that you can trade out your lay bet for a greater profit.

You can use the trade out or cash out features on Smarkets and Betfair to do this if you do not have any other bets on the match. Alternatively, you can use an Early Payout Calculator which some matched betting sites such as Profit Squad, MatchedBets and OddsMonkey provide.

determining your ideal stake

If you do choose to lay your bets then it's important to use the correct stake for your back bet. As the max winnings should your team score first but not win are £50, your stake should reflect this. Thankfully, it's relatively simply to work out the ideal stake using the formula below.

Bookmaker Stake = max winnings ÷ (odds – 1)

We know that the maximum winnings are £50 and so if we used example odds of 3/1 (4.0), our stake would be:

Stake = 50 ÷ (4 – 1)

Stake = £16.66

Tip: Do not set your stake so that your winnings are exactly £50 if the ideal stake is a random amount such as above. It looks a lot more natural to the bookmaker if you were to place a £15 or £20 bet on a team to win rather than £16.66.