Welcome bonuses at the top UK betting sites, weighed against the 10x cap

Updated October 2026

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Updated as of 27 October 2026 and verified against the Gambling Commission’s public register of remote operating licences. Figures and offer terms were checked against each operator’s own site and help pages on the same day.

A “free” £40 does not arrive as £40. It arrives as a stake you have to outlay, a price the book has trimmed to its own margin, a deadline that is closer than it looks, and a wagering hurdle that, until January, could run to fifty times the bonus. The cleanest way to read a sign-up offer in Great Britain is to read what the Commission has done to the bonus itself first, then walk down the offer terms with that ceiling in mind. The rest of this page is built on that order: the rule book that bounds the offer, the safer-gambling scaffolding around it, the shape of a welcome offer when you peel the marketing off, the ten operators the comparison ranks, and the books themselves.

The licence every GB-facing betting site has to hold

A bookmaker that takes a single bet from someone in England, Scotland or Wales is operating under the Gambling Act 2005 and needs a Commission licence for it. The Gambling (Licensing and Advertising) Act 2014 closed the loophole that let operators run on a Malta or Gibraltar permit and serve British punters on the side. Where the operator is based does not matter; the location of the customer does. The relevant licences for this page are the remote general betting standard (real events) licence for ordinary fixed-odds bookmakers, and the remote betting intermediary licence for exchanges. A virtual-events licence is a separate category, and pool betting on horse and dog racing sits under its own permit. Each category is searchable on the Commission’s public register, which is the only test of whether a brand is licensed at all. The register can be searched by trading name, by domain, by account number, or by the corporate entity behind the brand.

Two operators can share a single licence. Ladbrokes and Coral are run by LC International Limited under Commission account 54743; Paddy Power and Betfair sit under Flutter’s group. The licence belongs to the company, not to the high-street name. A name you recognise does not mean an independent operator. A brand the register does not list is not licensed, no matter how polished its homepage, and the Commission’s enforcement record is full of cease-and-desist notices, search-engine referrals and takedowns through hosts, registrars and payment providers. The Commission has also been given, or is about to receive, court-order DNS blocking powers; ISP-level blocking as a routine measure is not yet in operation.

Three practical consequences fall out of the framework. First, identity checks are not optional and not deferred. Since 7 May 2019 a remote operator has to verify name, address and date of birth before a customer can deposit or place a bet, and that covers free bets and bonuses, not only cash. There is no anonymous play at a GB-licensed site. Second, customer funds are held under one of three segregation levels the operator chooses and discloses; a higher segregation level does not mean a guarantee of return, but lower levels do mean the funds sit in the operator’s own pool. Third, the Commission publishes the licence, the categories the licence covers and the operating company. The register entry is the only piece of evidence the rest of the page relies on.

One product sits outside the Commission’s remit. Financial spread betting is regulated by the Financial Conduct Authority, not the UKGC. Spreadex holds both an FCA spread-betting permission and a Commission remote general betting licence for its fixed-odds product. The FCA rule book governs the spread side; the Commission’s bonus cap, the vulnerability check and the GAMSTOP requirement govern the fixed-odds side. Mixing the two on one account is normal for a hybrid bookmaker, but the rules that apply to the bet you place are the rules of the product, not the brand.

What the licence does and does not change for an offer

A licence does not change the arithmetic of a welcome bonus. The bookmaker still prices every market with a margin built in, the stake is still the punter’s risk, and the marketing line is still marketing. What the licence does is set the outer wall: a 10x wagering cap on bonuses that came in on 19 January 2026, a ban on mixed-product promotions that came in on the same day, a £150 rolling-30-day threshold at which a financial vulnerability check starts, and a hard prohibition on credit-card funding of any bet, including through an e-wallet. Inside that wall, the operator chooses. Outside it, the offer is unlawful.

Safer-gambling rules that travel with every licensed offer

The licence is the floor; the safer-gambling code is the scaffolding. Five pieces of it matter to a welcome offer.

GAMSTOP is the national multi-operator online self-exclusion scheme, and signing up with a GB-licensed remote operator is conditional on the operator checking the GAMSTOP database. A self-exclusion can be set for six months, one year, five years, or five years with auto-renewal. After the chosen period has run, the exclusion stays in place for a further seven years unless the customer asks GAMSTOP to remove it. The scheme covers online sites and apps; the over-the-counter self-exclusion at betting shops is a separate service. Once excluded, a sign-up offer cannot be claimed by definition, and any account opened in breach of an exclusion has to be closed and any deposit returned.

The financial vulnerability check is a public-record check, not a credit check and not an income check. Since 28 February 2025, once a customer’s deposits minus withdrawals cross £150 in a rolling 30-day period, the operator runs a check against public records such as bankruptcy registers and county-court judgments. A second wave of checks — the financial risk assessments that have been called “affordability checks” in the press — has been announced in a staged plan, with no start date. Write that as announced and staged, not as in force, because the Commission has not fixed a date the page can stand behind.

Deposit limits are the customer’s tool, not the state’s ceiling. The Commission’s Remote Technical Standards require a remote operator to offer a gross deposit limit on a fixed time frame. The first phase of changes has been in place since 31 October 2025; a second phase was postponed to 30 September 2026, and whether the second phase is live is not established. There is no statutory deposit ceiling for betting in Great Britain; the customer sets the limit, and the operator has to honour it.

The credit-card ban has been in force since 14 April 2020. It covers any payment that draws on a credit facility, including a credit card funding an e-wallet that is then used to deposit. Debit cards and bank-based instant transfers are not caught by the ban, and most welcome offers on this page are qualified through a debit card or instant bank transfer for that reason. Apple Pay, Google Pay, Revolut Pay, Open Banking rails such as TrueLayer and Trustly, and Visa Electron are typical routes.

The Commission publishes a list of routes to help. GamCare runs the National Gambling Helpline. GambleAware funds treatment and research. The NHS runs a network of gambling clinics across the regions. Gamblers Anonymous runs meetings in person and online. Each is a route an offer’s terms cannot displace and a route the operator has to signpost, on site, in app, and in the safer-gambling menu.

Why this matters to a welcome bonus

A welcome offer sits inside the safer-gambling code, not alongside it. The offer can be claimed only after identity is verified, only with payment methods that are not banned, only with deposits that the customer has chosen to allow, and only by a customer who is not on GAMSTOP. Every clause in the offer’s small print is enforceable against a customer who can be verified; the same offer, claimed at a site that does not verify, is not enforceable against anyone. That is the trade a licence makes: friction at the door, recourse inside.

What a welcome offer is, and what the 10x cap does to it

A welcome offer is a one-off incentive for a new account. It comes in five forms on this page, and the marketing word for each one is not the form.

A matched free bet credits the new account with a free bet worth a percentage of the first settled stake, usually up to a ceiling. Coral’s “Get £40 in Free Bets when you bet £20” and Unibet’s identical structure are matched free bets: a £20 qualifying bet at minimum odds of 2.0 earns £40 in free bet tokens, and the tokens expire within 7 days. The stake of the free bet is not returned with a win; only the profit lands. A “free” £40 is a stake the punter never has to outlay, and a return that is capped at the winnings.

A stake-back offer returns the qualifying stake as a free bet if the first bet loses. VBet’s £10 free bet on a losing first bet of £10 or more is a stake-back: a refund in free-bet form, with the same stake-not-returned rule on the refund. A “refund” is not a refund in money; the value lives in the free bet.

A “Bet X, Get Y” offer pays a fixed number of free-bet tokens, often split across products. BetGoodwin’s “Bet £10 & Get £15 in Free Bets” breaks into three £5 tokens: a sports token, an acca token and a Sub-Cover token. The split is a packaging choice by the operator and a constraint on the punter, who has to find a market for each token within the expiry window.

A percentage-back-as-free-bet offer refunds part of a losing first stake as a free bet. Octobet’s 50% back as a free bet up to £50 is the structure: a £100 first bet that loses returns £50 in free bets. The cap is the ceiling, and the percentage is the rate.

A matched deposit bonus credits the account with a percentage of the first deposit, usually as bonus funds rather than free bets, and the bonus carries a wagering requirement. The 10x cap, in force since 19 January 2026, governs this category most directly. A £10 bonus at 50x wagering, the pre-cap level on some offers, required £500 of qualifying bets; under the cap no offer can require more than £100 of qualifying bets for a £10 bonus. The cap is on the wagering requirement, not on the money value of a bonus. Whether the cap applies to free bets with no wagering condition, and any cap on the money value of a bonus, are not established. Mixed-product promotions — an offer that requires gambling on two or more product types, such as “bet on football to get free spins” — are banned outright under the same rules.

Three terms travel with every offer on this page. The minimum odds for the qualifying bet set the floor on the market a customer can use to unlock the offer. A 1/2 (1.50) floor is common; 1/1 (2.00) is on Coral and Unibet. The expiry is the time the free bets have to be used, often 7 days from credit. The stake-not-returned rule is the structural feature of a free bet: the winnings are paid, the stake is not, and any frame that talks about “risk-free” is talking about a stake-back as a free bet, not a money refund.

What a free bet is worth in plain terms

The value of a free bet is its expected return on the market it is used on. The stake is not paid back, so a £10 free bet at decimal odds of 3.00 returns £20 — the £10 free-bet stake times 2 — and not £30. A free bet is most valuable on a long-priced selection, where the winnings dwarf the stake, and least valuable on a short-priced favourite, where the winnings are roughly the stake. The bookmaker’s margin is still inside the price, so a free bet on a market with a 5% margin returns about 5% less than the same stake as a cash bet. The Commission’s 10x cap, by contrast, governs offers that need the bonus to be turned over, not free bets with no wagering condition.

The 10x cap, in arithmetic

The bonus-turnover calculation, in this page’s case, is the arithmetic of the worst offer the cap used to allow. Take the highest wagering multiple in regular use before 19 January 2026 — a 50x turnover on a £10 bonus, the kind of structure that was advertised at non-GB-licensed sites. The required turnover is £10 multiplied by 50, or £500. At a stake per bet of £10, that is 50 bets. At a stake per bet of £5, that is 100 bets. Under the 10x cap, the same £10 bonus requires no more than £100 of qualifying bets — ten bets at £10, twenty at £5. The cap is a ratio, not a refund: a £100 bonus at 10x still requires £1,000 of qualifying bets, and the structural cost of the offer, the margin the bookmaker earns on every pound of that turnover, scales with the bonus. The page describes this as a band — a £10 bonus at 10x needs £100 of bets, a £50 bonus at 10x needs £500 — because the cap is a ratio and the bonus is the variable.

Expected cost, in turn, sits on the market margin. A market with a 5% margin takes 5p of every £1 of qualifying bets as the bookmaker’s cut, so a £1,000 turnover at 5% margin costs the customer £50 in expected value across the clearing period. At 8% margin the same turnover costs £80. The clearing cost is on top of the stake, which is the punter’s risk in any event, and is not a fee paid to anyone. It is the bookmaker’s edge, multiplied by the number of pounds the offer forces the customer to bet. The 10x cap does not remove the edge; it caps the multiplier on the edge.

A worked example from the offers on this page

Sky Bet’s welcome offer is £30 in free bets, credited as three £10 tokens, after a deposit of at least £5 and a first single or each-way bet of at least 5p at minimum odds of 1/1. There is no wagering requirement on the free bets; the cap does not apply. The 7-day expiry does. A customer who lets the tokens lapse loses the offer, and a customer who uses them at very short prices — odds of 1/2, where the profit is half the stake — gets roughly half the headline value of the token back, because the stake is not returned. A customer who uses one token at decimal odds of 5.00 on a player to score gets back four times the £10 token, or £40, on a bet that cost them nothing. The arithmetic is the same on every token; the selection is the variable.

The shape of the ten operators on this page

The ten operators below each hold a Gambling Commission remote general betting standard (real events) licence, and each can be confirmed on the public register by its account number. Several of them run brands in the same group; that is a corporate fact, not a quality judgement, and the comparison ranks the trading name a customer signs up with. The list is ordered by the size and depth of the welcome offer against the licence category, the safer-gambling code and the operator’s own published terms, with the smaller and more specialised books weighted for what they offer in product depth rather than marketing spend.

The table is a licence check and a one-line summary of each offer’s headline, not a ranking. The 10x cap is the same on every row, the offer terms are the operator’s own, and the value of any offer is the value after the qualifying bet, the minimum odds, the expiry and the stake-not-returned rule are applied.

Coral

Coral runs under LC International Limited, the same group as Ladbrokes, and the licence is the same Commission account 54743. The sports welcome offer is “Get £40 in Free Bets when you bet £20”: a deposit and a sports bet of £20 or more, at minimum odds of 2.0 (1/1), with £40 in free bets issued within 7 days of the qualifying bet settling and expiring 7 days after issue. The qualifying deposit has to come through a debit card or an instant bank transfer; the site’s payment list includes Apple Pay, Visa, Visa Electron, Mastercard, Revolut Pay, Google Pay, TrueLayer, Earthport and Trustly, and credit cards are excluded by the LCCP ban.

Beyond the welcome, Coral runs a free daily Reward Shaker, an Odds Booster on hundreds of markets, and free-to-play games such as Football Super Series with a £10,000 jackpot. The product around the offer is dense: in-play markets on the major sports, a bet builder, and a price-boost feed that refreshes through the day. A customer who treats the welcome as a one-off and the daily boosts as the long-term value gets a different page than a customer who signs up for the £40 and walks. Coral suits a punter who will use the site more than once and who reads the small print for the daily boost caps.

Spreadex

Spreadex is the hybrid bookmaker on this list. The fixed-odds side holds a Commission remote general betting licence under account 8835; the spread-betting side is regulated by the Financial Conduct Authority. The two products share an account but not a rule book, and the welcome offer is fixed-odds only. The headline is £60 in free bets for a £10 fixed-odds qualifying bet, with the qualifying bet placed within 28 days of opening the account and the free bets usable across fixed odds and spread betting. The minimum odds on the qualifying bet are 1/2.

Spreadex’s risk warning is worth reading for what it says about the spread side: spread-betting losses can exceed the deposit. That sentence is not on the welcome page; it is on the homepage, and the FCA rule on a hybrid bookmaker is to display it on the same surface as the spread product. A customer who sticks to fixed odds gets a clean Commission offer; a customer who moves to the spread side gets a different product with its own mechanics. The fixed-odds welcome is generous on a stake-to-bonus ratio, and the qualifying window is the longest in the comparison at 28 days.

Spreadex’s acca product is a separate earner. Acca Boosts on football accas of three or more selections give a cash boost from 5% on a three-fold to 100% on a longer-line accumulator, paid in cash rather than free bets. The 5%-to-100% band is a tighter scale than the equivalent at all-sport books, and football-only.

William Hill

William Hill runs under WHG (International) Limited, Commission account 39225. The headline in the public material is the Football Acca Boost, which covers accas of 2 or more legs with each selection at 1/5 or bigger. The boost runs from 3% on a double up to 200% on 20 or more legs, with a maximum boost of £10,000 per online bet. The promotion runs until 30 May 2027 and is the closest the comparison comes to a permanent, rather than welcome, offer.

A 200% boost on a 20-fold acca is a marketing number; the underlying margin on a 20-leg acca is much wider than the margin on a single, and the boost is paid on a price the book has already trimmed. The acca boost is a feature, not a welcome offer, and a customer who treats it as one is reading past the small print. William Hill’s depth is the product: a deep horse-racing card, in-play markets on the major football leagues, and a Best Odds Guaranteed concession on UK and Irish racing. A racing-led punter gets a fuller card at William Hill than at a multi-sport book that treats racing as a vertical.

Fitzdares

Fitzdares runs under Fitzdares Limited, Commission account 400. The public material on Fitzdares’ GB app store entry does not name a headline welcome offer, and the product focus is on a smaller customer base than the high-street names. The payments stack is the strongest in the comparison: Apple Pay, Mastercard and Visa, with Visa withdrawals usually same-day and Mastercard withdrawals taking up to 48 hours. The same-day Visa payout is a quiet differentiator for a customer who values withdrawal speed over the size of a welcome bonus.

Fitzdares’ positioning is the high-touch bookmaker. A smaller customer base means a more curated card, particularly on horse racing, and the payments stack is the part of the offer a serious punter will check first. A welcome offer is a marketing entry point; a withdrawal window is a feature the punter lives with for as long as the account is open.

Betboro

Betboro runs under Webmedia Development N.V., Commission account 44181. The sports welcome offer is a 100% matched free bet of up to £25 on the first qualifying wager. The qualifying path is a debit-card deposit of at least £10 and a first bet of £5 to £25 with at least three selections each at 3/5 (1.60) or higher. The matched free bet is a clean structure: a percentage on a stake ceiling, with a market constraint on how it can be unlocked.

A three-leg acca at minimum odds of 1.60 is a 4.00 acca at the floor; an acca at higher combined odds is more likely to clear, because the structure’s purpose is to put the qualifying bet on a market with a wider margin. The 100%-up-to-£25 ceiling is a smaller offer than Coral’s £40-for-£20, and the difference is the qualifying route: Coral’s path is a single at 2.0; Betboro’s is a small acca. The customer who prefers singles to accas will find Coral’s path easier to clear; the customer who already bets accas will find Betboro’s path unremarkable.

VBet

VBet runs under SCGO Limited, Commission account 44662. The sports welcome offer is a £10 free bet if a new, verified customer stakes £10 or more on a first-ever bet that loses. The offer is a stake-back at a low ceiling: a refund in free-bet form on a losing first bet, with the same stake-not-returned rule on the refund.

The structure suits a customer who plans to place a first bet anyway and wants a safety net. A customer who plans a first bet at long odds and is happy to lose the stake to get a £10 free bet has read the offer correctly. A customer who reads the offer as “free money for signing up” has read past the structure.

BetGoodwin

BetGoodwin runs under Goodwin Racing Limited, Commission account 2927. The sports welcome offer is “Bet £10 & Get £15 in Free Bets”, made up of a £5 sports bet, a £5 acca and a £5 Sub-Cover bet. The split is the structure: three tokens, three products, one qualifying bet. A customer who bets singles will use the sports token; a customer who bets accas will use the acca token; the Sub-Cover token is a BetGoodwin product on a specific market type and has to be used on its own terms.

The £5 ceiling per token is small, and the 15% bonus on a £10 stake is in the same band as VBet’s £10 refund at a different structure. The split, however, is a packaging choice that costs the customer optionality: a £15 single token would let a punter use the full value on one bet. Three £5 tokens force three bets, three different products, and three expiries to track.

Octobet

Octobet runs under Octopus Game Limited, Commission account 62545. The sports welcome offer is 50% back as a free bet up to £50, plus a £10 casino bonus for new customers. The sports part is a percentage-back-as-free-bet on a losing first bet, with a £50 cap. The £10 casino bonus is the part to read carefully: it is a casino incentive attached to a sports sign-up, and the structure sits under the Commission’s rules on bonuses.

The 19 January 2026 rules ban mixed-product promotions — an offer that requires gambling on two or more product types, such as betting, casino, bingo and lottery. The £10 casino bonus is offered alongside a sports offer, not as a condition of claiming it; the structure is a sports offer with a separate casino element, not a single offer that requires gambling on both. The distinction is the distinction the rule draws, and a customer who claims the casino bonus on its own terms has read the offer correctly.

Betmaster

Betmaster runs under BM Solutions GB Ltd, registered in Malta, under Commission account 65699. The public material on Betmaster’s GB homepage does not name a headline welcome offer. The relevant fact for the comparison is the licence, the operating company, and the product that the site carries under those.

A licence without a headline welcome offer is a clean field for a customer who is not chasing a sign-up incentive. A customer who signs up for the product — the in-play markets, the bet builder, the price boosts — and ignores the welcome race is reading the offer the way the operator’s own page reads it.

DAZN Bet

DAZN Bet runs under DZBT Limited, Commission account 48756. The product stack is the offer: Cash Out, Bet Builder, daily bet boosts and in-play betting, with the operator’s own terms noting that cash-out availability is not guaranteed and that bets stand if cash-out is unavailable. The safer-gambling tools on DAZN Bet include deposit limits, loss limits and wagering limits, set in the account menu.

A bet that “stands if cash-out is unavailable” is a clause worth reading for what it says about the offer. The boost is paid at the operator’s discretion; the bet is the punter’s obligation either way. DAZN Bet is a fit for a customer who plans to use the in-play and bet-builder products and who treats the welcome as a feature, not a prize.

How a welcome offer is actually turned into value

The arithmetic of a free bet is the part of the offer the marketing line never reaches. A £10 free bet at decimal odds of 4.00 returns £30 — the £10 free-bet stake multiplied by 3 — and the winnings are paid, the stake is not. A £10 free bet at decimal odds of 1.50 returns £5, because the winnings are half the stake. The same token has a quarter of the headline value on a short-priced favourite as it has on a long-priced outsider, and the customer who uses every token at minimum odds has left the headline value on the table.

The minimum odds in the qualifying bet are the price floor for unlocking the offer, not the price floor for using the free bet. A Coral qualifying bet at minimum odds of 2.0 is a single at 1/1; the free bet can then be used at any market the site carries, including a 1/2 market. The minimum odds for the free bet, where the operator sets one, is a separate clause and is the floor the punter has to clear when using the token. QuinnBet’s free bet is valid for 7 days, usable on any market at odds of 1/2 (1.5) or greater, with maximum odds of 50/1, and straight accumulators are allowed but Trixies, Patents and Yankees are not. Each clause is a constraint on the punter and a margin earner for the book.

A welcome offer is rarely the best offer on the page. The best odds on a market sit on the operator’s price feed; the best boost on a market is the daily price boost; the best acca insurance is the long-term feature that protects against one leg letting the punter down. A welcome offer is the entry fee, and the customer who treats it as the headline of the relationship has not read the rest of the book.

What the comparison cannot do

The comparison is a licence check and a summary of headline offers; it is not a tip, a system, or a prediction. A bookmaker’s margin sits inside every price on the page, and a margin of 5% on a market is the bookmaker’s edge on every bet a customer places, including the qualifying bet and the free bet. The 10x cap, the safer-gambling code, and the operator’s own product terms bound what an offer can be; they do not change the arithmetic of the bet.

An offer at a GB-licensed site is enforceable against the customer and against the operator. The Commission publishes a register of complaints and an approved dispute-resolution route, and an offer’s terms have to be honoured when the customer meets the conditions. The same offer, at a site without a GB licence, is not enforceable against anyone, and the customer has no British recourse if funds are withheld. The trade a licence makes is friction at the door, recourse inside; the comparison ranks the doors.

Frequently asked questions

How do I claim a welcome offer at a UK betting site?

Open an account with the operator, complete the Commission’s identity check, deposit through a payment method the offer accepts (debit card or instant bank transfer for most), and place the qualifying bet at the minimum odds and minimum stake the offer specifies. Opt in where the offer requires it; free bets are usually credited after the qualifying bet settles, and the expiry clock starts at credit. The credit-card ban means credit-card-funded e-wallets will not qualify.

Which betting sites offer a welcome bonus in Great Britain?

Every operator on the public register can run a welcome offer; the offers on this page are from Coral, Spreadex, Betboro, VBet, BetGoodwin, Octobet, and the wider list at the major brands. The headline number, the minimum odds, the expiry, and the stake-not-returned rule vary by operator, and the Commission’s 10x cap on wagering applies to every offer with a wagering requirement since 19 January 2026.

Which welcome offer is the best value?

Value is the expected return of the free bet on the market the punter uses it on, not the headline number. A £10 free bet at decimal odds of 5.00 returns £40; the same token at odds of 1.50 returns £5. A 100% matched offer up to £25 with a three-leg acca qualifying bet is a different value profile from a £60 free-bet offer on a £10 fixed-odds qualifying bet, and a customer who already bets accas will read the first structure differently from a customer who bets singles. The best offer is the offer whose qualifying route matches the punter’s normal bet type and whose minimum odds do not force a market the punter would not otherwise take.

What is the maximum wagering requirement on a UK betting bonus?

The Gambling Commission’s rules in force since 19 January 2026 cap wagering requirements on bonuses at 10x. A £10 bonus at the cap requires no more than £100 of qualifying bets. Mixed-product promotions — an offer that requires gambling on two or more product types, such as betting and casino — are banned. Whether the cap applies to free bets with no wagering condition, and any cap on the money value of a bonus, are not established in the rules.

What are minimum odds and the wagering requirement in a sign-up offer?

The minimum odds are the floor on the price of the qualifying bet that unlocks the offer. A 1/2 (1.50) floor is common; Coral and Unibet set 2.0 (1/1). The wagering requirement is the multiple of the bonus the customer has to bet before any winnings become withdrawable. Under the 10x cap, a £50 bonus requires no more than £500 of qualifying bets. The minimum odds and the wagering requirement are separate clauses: one sets the floor on a price, the other sets the volume of betting.

Why is the stake of a free bet not returned with the winnings?

A free bet is a token the operator credits the account with, and the token is the stake. The bookmaker’s risk is the token, not a cash stake; the punter’s risk on the free bet is zero. The return is the winnings at the price the market offered, and the winnings are paid, the stake is not. A £10 free bet at decimal odds of 3.00 returns £20, not £30. The stake-not-returned rule is the structural feature of a free bet and the source of most of the gap between a free-bet offer’s headline and its realised value.

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