What a sign-up offer is really worth, in pounds and in time

Updated October 2026

Licensed

Available in US

Fast payouts

18+ Only

A sign-up offer looks like a gift. It is a contract — the bookmaker’s gift in exchange for the punter’s money on terms the bookmaker sets. The pound figure on the ad is only ever the ceiling of what changes hands; the floor is what the customer has to bet, at what price, inside what window, to unlock it. The Commission’s promotion rules, in force since 19 January 2026, put a tight cap on that side of the deal: wagering requirements on bonuses may not exceed 10x, and a promotion that ties two or more product types together — “bet on football to get free spins” — is out.

Snapshot: 30 October 2026, cross-checked against the Gambling Commission's public register.

The shopper who reads the headline price alone walks away with the wrong impression most of the time. A £40 free-bet headline can be worth less than half that to the punter who claims it, and it is worth more or less depending on the market the free bet is spent on. The aim of this page is the comparison the headline never makes: ten GB-licensed bookmakers, their welcome offers on the table, and what each one really asks for before a penny becomes withdrawable.

Top 10 sign-up offers compared

The ranking is not a recommendation. Every operator below holds a Gambling Commission remote licence — the test the Act sets for any brand whose product is consumed in Great Britain — and every offer below is each operator’s own current package as its own terms describe it. Where the operator’s terms and the regulator’s record diverge, the regulator’s record is the one that matters.

The table is a snapshot, not a verdict. Several brands — bet365, Kwiff and NetBet — gate the headline number inside the customer account, so the public home page and the Commission record do not carry an identical figure. That is normal practice: the bookmaker’s terms govern the offer once the account is opened, and the Commission’s public register is the test of whether a brand is allowed to publish one at all. A punter who wants the headline number before signing in has to read the bookmaker’s terms in full.

The next sections open up what every row above actually asks of the punter.

How each offer scores on the dimensions a punter feels

Four numbers move the value of a welcome package, and only one of them is the headline figure. The first is the qualifying bet — the wager the punter must place to unlock the offer, with its minimum stake and minimum price. The second is the reward size and form: a free bet whose stake is not paid back with the winnings, or a free bet whose stake is. The third is the expiry — every week-day a free bet sits unused is lost. The fourth is the market margin of the bet the free bet is placed on, because the value of a free bet is the price the free bet pays multiplied by the percentage the bookmaker keeps.

Coral’s offer scores on the qualifying bet alone. £20 at minimum odds of 2.0 (evens, 1/1) is a meaningful first stake on something the punter believes has a coin-flip chance of winning. The £40 in free bets that follow are split across the bookmaker’s sports markets, expire in 7 days, and require a debit card or instant bank transfer to qualify. No other rule the offer adds bends that picture: an acca insurance on losses over a given number of legs is not part of the welcome package.

Unibet’s offer is the same shape: £20 at minimum odds of 2.0, £40 in free bets within 7 days, expiry 7 days from issue. The decisive difference sits elsewhere — Unibet runs best-odds-guaranteed on horse racing, Bet Builder on a deep fixture list and Cash Out on thousands of markets. A punter who uses the welcome offer as a route into those features gets a different bookmaker for £40 in free bets than a punter whose welcome offer is just the opening page of the relationship.

Sky Bet’s £30 in free bets is the smallest headline on the table — and the smallest qualifying bet on it: a first deposit of £5 and a first bet of 5p at odds of 1/1 or greater. The 5p bet is the cheapest way on the page to qualify for a welcome package, and a 5p bet at 1/1 is a near-free qualifying trade. The three £10 tokens that follow are short-window free bets — each one has its own expiry and its own use-it-or-lose-it rule, which means a punter who doesn’t mind the calendar can stretch £30 across a month of weekend markets.

Spreadex’s £60 in free bets for £10 is the largest headline on the table and the only one that mixes spread betting with fixed odds. The qualifying bet is £10 at minimum odds of 1/2 — a heavy odds-on position that most punters will treat as a one-off punt rather than a value bet. The free bets are usable across both products, and the qualifying bet has 28 days to land rather than the bookmaker’s standard opening window. The wider window trades against the headline: the punter gets more time but locks the new account open longer.

Vbet’s £10 free bet is the oddest shape on the page. The offer is conditional on the first bet losing, which makes it a refund-shaped introduction rather than a bonus — and refund-shaped welcome offers are a different kind of thing than a matched-headline free bet. The £10 is a single free bet rather than a split, and the bookmaker’s verification rules apply before the stake goes on.

BoyleSports’s £20 in free bets for £10 is the closest comparison to Coral’s deal without being the same bookmaker. The free bets bundle standard sports and acca insurance (5+ legs, min odds 1/2, same-day settlement, 7-day refund expiry, capped at £20) as a separate offer. Acca Insurance is a refund on an accumulator losing by one leg, not part of the headline — a punter who claims the welcome offer gets both, but the insurance has its own opt-in.

BetGoodwin’s £15 for a £10 bet splits the reward into three £5 notes — sports, acca and Sub-Cover. A Sub-Cover free bet is a niche product, used to insure a stake against a specific player not playing; a punter who doesn’t play those markets would let the £5 sit unused. The smaller split makes the offer more honest about what the punter will use.

bet365, Kwiff and NetBet keep the welcome figure inside the account. The Commission’s public register shows the licence; the public record does not show the bonus. That is also true of Coral and Unibet, who publish terms but keep promos conditional on the customer’s record. The pattern is normal. A punter who wants to compare offers on the same day reads the bookmaker’s terms first.

Where the welcome package stops being a gift

The Commission’s promotion rules — in force since 19 January 2026 — set the ceiling. Two clauses matter.

The wagering cap is 10x. A £10 bonus at 50x required £500 of bets to unlock; under the cap no more than £100. The cap is the upper bound the law sets; nothing stops the punter from a smaller multiple on a particular offer. A bonus that asks for 5x of the bonus in qualifying bets sits inside the rule.

Mixed-product promotions are banned. An offer that requires gambling on two or more product types — betting and casino, betting and bingo, betting and lottery — is out. A welcome offer that hands out free spins on top of a free bet, or a casino bonus tied to a sports bonus, falls foul of the rule on its face.

The cap is the ceiling the Commission enforces; it is not a description of what every offer charges. A free bet with no wagering requirement — the most common shape on this page — may or may not sit inside the cap, and the Commission’s view on that is not established. The punter who reads “no wagering” should still read the rest of the terms: minimum odds on the free bet itself, expiry on the free bet, a list of markets the free bet cannot be placed on, a maximum-stake cap. The free bet itself is the wager: the punter’s real-money stake was the qualifying bet, and the value at stake on the free bet is the punter’s reward rather than the punter’s loss.

What a sign-up offer actually is

A sign-up offer is a contract between a bookmaker and a new punter, written in three moves. The first move is the qualifying bet: a stake the punter places at minimum odds by a deadline, paid in real money and settled on real events. The second move is the reward: free bets or a bonus credited on the qualifiers settling as winners (or, in the case of refund-shaped offers like Vbet’s, the qualifiers losing). The third move is the wagering requirement, where the offer imposes one: a multiple of the bonus the punter has to bet through before the reward becomes withdrawable.

A wagering requirement is the most expensive line in any offer the punter reads. A £10 bonus at 5x requires £50 of bets to unlock; a £10 bonus at 10x requires £100 of bets; the £10 bonus itself never reaches the punter’s withdrawable balance until each qualifying bet settles. Each qualifying bet is also a bet the punter is making — and on a margin-loaded market the punter’s expected cost is the bookmaker’s cut. A bookmaker that charges 5% on a market turns every £100 of turnover into £5 of expected loss to the customer; at 10x wagering the punter’s expected cost on a £10 bonus is the bookmaker’s margin multiplied by the £100 of required turnover.

A free bet is a different shape entirely. The free bet is, in industry terms, “stake not returned” by default: the punter who places a £10 free bet at 5.00 wins £40 in cash but does not get the £10 stake back. The £10 is therefore a stake the punter places out of the bookmaker’s gift rather than the punter’s own wallet, and what the punter can win is the gross winnings on that bet. A £10 free bet at 5.00 is therefore worth £40 on a winning bet — but only on a winning one. Across many bets, on markets at varying margins, the average value of a £10 stake-not-returned free bet is the free-bet amount multiplied by the odds minus one and divided by the odds, multiplied by the market’s payout share. A stake-not-returned free bet is a worse contract than a stake-returned one, and a punter who sees both shapes should prefer the second where the difference is offered.

An enhanced odds offer is yet another shape. The bookmaker prices a market up at a higher number than the same selection would normally get. A 6/1 shot at 8/1 is the headline. The punter’s stake is the punter’s own money — there is no separate qualifying bet — and the winnings are paid as cash unless the offer’s small print carves them out into free bets. An enhanced-odds offer without a wagering requirement is the best deal a punter can sign up to in pounds-per-bet; an enhanced-odds offer with a wagering requirement trades against itself.

A price boost is a recurring — usually daily — version of the same thing, applied to a particular bet rather than to a whole new account. The shape is identical to an enhanced odds offer, with the difference that the offer is repeatable. A punter who can run a £10 stake on a boosted fixture every Saturday gets the same kind of value each week; the welcome offer gets it once.

A bet builder is a feature, not an offer. A bet builder combines markets from one event — first goalscorer, total corners, both teams to score — into a single bet with combined odds. A bet builder’s odds are multiplicative; the margin compounds as more legs are added. A bet builder with three legs each at 1.80 has combined odds of 5.83, and the margin across the legs is wider than the margin on any of them in isolation. The punter using a free bet on a bet builder pays the bigger margin on the bigger combined price.

Cash out is a settlement feature that lets the punter close a bet before the bet is settled, at a price the bookmaker quotes. Cash out’s price is below the fair value of the bet — the bookmaker makes its margin on the cash-out price rather than on the original bet. The punter who uses cash out pays for the convenience with the spread between the cash-out figure and the true value of the bet at the moment of cashing out.

Is online betting legal in Great Britain

Betting in Great Britain is legal at licensed operators, supervised by the Gambling Commission under the Gambling Act 2005. The Act applies in England, Scotland and Wales; Northern Ireland has its own older law, and a GB licence does not regulate Northern Ireland. Since the Gambling (Licensing and Advertising) Act 2014, a remote operator whose product is consumed in Great Britain needs a Commission licence wherever it is based. A Curaçao, Maltese or Gibraltar licence is not a substitute. Multiple licences are allowed: a single brand can hold a remote general betting standard licence, a remote general betting limited licence, a pool betting licence and a betting intermediary licence if the activity covers all four.

The Commission’s public register lists every licensed operator and is searchable by business name, trading name, domain or account number. The domain proves nothing by itself — .com and .co.uk are both available to licensed brands. The market is open: there is no state monopoly and no cap on the number of licences. Anyone 18 or over may bet at a licensed operator, and every licensed operator verifies the punter’s name, address and date of birth before the first deposit or wager. Free bets and bonuses are subject to the same checks.

In-play betting is offered by GB bookmakers and controlled by each operator’s licence conditions and customer-protection duties. Esports are treated like any other event under a remote general betting standard (real events) licence; bets on virtual events sit under a separate licence category. No statutory list of permitted markets exists; operators run the LCCP’s conditions and their own house rules. Spread betting on financial markets is regulated by the Financial Conduct Authority rather than the Commission; financial spread betting is a distinct product.

No statutory cap on stakes in sports betting has been set. Operators set their own maximum stakes and may restrict customers. The single statutory cap that exists in the welcome-offer space is the wagering cap on bonuses, in force since 19 January 2026, at 10x. The mixed-product promotion ban was in force from the same date.

What an offer looks like under the rule book

A welcome offer takes one of four legal shapes, and the rule book treats each one differently.

A bonus is real money credited to the punter’s balance on a qualifying event, with a wagering requirement. Bonuses are subject to the 10x wagering cap. A £10 bonus at 10x requires £100 of bets; the punter’s expected cost is the bookmaker’s margin multiplied by the £100 of required turnover, on top of the £10 the punter’s never sees until the wagering is cleared. The £10 is real money in the punter’s account until the wagering is over; the punter cannot withdraw it before the bookmaker’s terms allow.

A free bet is the bookmaker’s stake, paid out of the bookmaker’s gift, with no wagering requirement by default. Whether the 10x wagering cap applies to free bets with no wagering condition is not established. A punter who sees “no wagering” on a free bet still has to read the rest of the terms: the free bet’s expiry, the markets the free bet cannot be placed on, the minimum odds on a bet placed with the free bet, the maximum odds on the same bet, the maximum-stake cap on the bet placed with the free bet.

An enhanced odds offer is a price boost offered to a new customer as part of the welcome package. The bookmaker pays the boost’s headline price as a price the punter’s stake qualifies for, with the same restrictions as a free bet — minimum stake, maximum stake, expiry, market restrictions. An enhanced odds offer is not a separate stake the punter places; it is the odds the punter’s qualifying bet is placed at.

A matched deposit offer is a bonus tied to the punter’s first deposit, with a wagering requirement. The matched-deposit shape is the most wagering-heavy welcome package on the market — and the most heavily capped by the 10x rule. A 100% matched offer at 10x still costs the punter £10 of bonus turnover for every £1 of bonus; the punter’s real money turnover is the deposit plus the bonus turnover, and the punter’s expected cost is the margin across the whole pile.

Responsible gambling tools that travel with every welcome offer

GAMSTOP is the national multi-operator online self-exclusion scheme. Every GB-licensed online operator is a GAMSTOP member; the requirement has been a mandatory licence condition since 31 March 2020. A punter can register for six months, one year, five years, or five years with auto-renewal. After the chosen period the exclusion stays in place for a further seven years unless the punter asks GAMSTOP to remove it. GAMSTOP covers online sites and apps; betting shops run a separate self-exclusion.

A financial vulnerability check is a public-record check — not a credit check and not an income check — that the operator runs when a punter’s deposits minus withdrawals exceed £150 in a rolling 30 days. The check has applied to remote betting since 30 August 2024 under LCCP condition 3.4.4, and the £150 threshold has applied since 28 February 2025. The check looks for markers the public record carries — bankruptcy, county court judgments, the registers of people in financial difficulty — and operates as a sanity check on the punter’s capacity to deposit what they are depositing.

Financial risk assessments, the more thorough checks the press calls “affordability checks”, have been announced in a staged plan. The Commission’s article of 7 July 2026 sets out the timetable; no start date has been published. The punter who reads the press for the latest start date is reading one figure ahead of the law.

Deposit limits are a customer-controlled tool, set by the punter at the punter’s choice. There is no state-set deposit or loss ceiling in GB betting. Limits are the customer’s option. Operators must offer a gross deposit limit on a fixed time frame; the first changes applied on 31 October 2025 and a second phase was postponed to 30 September 2026.

Help is available regardless of where the punter bets. GamCare runs the National Gambling Helpline; GambleAware funds treatment across the UK; the NHS operates gambling clinics across the regions; Gamblers Anonymous runs peer-support meetings. The help is free and confidential, and the help lines take calls from family members as well as from the punter. The help is also available to a punter who has been betting on an unlicensed site.

Bonuses and free bets, read like a punter

The bonus or free bet is the headline, but the value is in the small print. Every sign-up offer below is drawn from the operator’s own terms as those terms were published at the snapshot above.

Coral: £40 in free bets for a £20 qualifying bet

Coral’s sports welcome offer is “Get £40 in Free Bets when you bet £20”: a deposit and sports bet of £20 or more at minimum odds of 2.0 (1/1), with £40 in free bets issued within 7 days and expiring 7 days after issue, for new GB customers who opt in. The qualifying deposit must be made by debit card or instant bank transfer; e-wallets are excluded from the qualifying route.

Outside 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 headline is bigger than the median. The qualifying bet is a real £20 at real odds; the £40 in free bets follows if the £20 is a winner. A punter who treats the £20 as a coin-flip at minimum qualifying odds takes a real risk on the qualifying bet itself, which the £40 in free bets does not fully hedge.

Unibet: £40 in free bets for a £20 qualifying bet

Unibet’s sports welcome offer is “Get £40 in Free Bets when you bet £20”: a deposit and sports bet of £20 or more at minimum odds of 2.0 (1/1), with free bets expiring within 7 days of issue, for new GB customers using a debit card or instant bank transfer.

Beyond the welcome, Unibet runs Bet Builder on most sports, daily Uniboosts, live streaming through Unibet TV, in-play betting, Best Odds Guaranteed on UK and Irish horse racing, and Cash Out on thousands of markets. Coral’s odds booster, daily reward and free-to-play games are matched against features rather than rewards.

The decision between Coral’s £40 in free bets and Unibet’s £40 in free bets is rarely about the welcome offer. It is about the bookmaker the punter expects to keep using after the welcome is spent. Coral and Unibet are both LC International brands under different licences; the welcome looks the same but the rest of the product is different.

Sky Bet: £30 in free bets for a 5p qualifying bet

Sky Bet’s welcome offer for new customers is £30 in free bets, credited as three £10 free bet tokens after a deposit of at least £5 and a first single or each-way bet of at least 5p at odds of 1/1 or greater. The 5p qualifying bet is the cheapest entry point on the page.

The three-token split is a calendar shape: each token has its own expiry, and a punter who doesn’t mind the calendar can stretch £30 across three weeks of weekend markets. The small qualifying stake is a feature for a punter who wants to test the bookmaker on a 5p bet rather than a £20 one. The £30 in free bets is paid stake-not-returned on any bet it is spent on.

The bookmaker’s other features carry the rest of the value: Sky Bet runs Super Boosts, daily boosts, RequestABet on selected fixtures, and football-specific features on the Premier League and Champions League fixture lists.

Spreadex: £60 in free bets for a £10 qualifying bet

Spreadex is regulated by the FCA for spread betting and by the Gambling Commission for fixed-odds betting. The bookmaker’s loss exposure on spread bets can exceed the deposit — a feature of spread betting rather than a bug.

The new customer offer is £60 in free bets for a £10 fixed-odds bet, with the free bets usable across fixed odds and spread betting. The qualifying bet must be placed within 28 days of opening the account; the qualifying price is minimum odds of 1/2.

The qualifying bet at 1/2 is a heavy odds-on position. A punter who treats it as a 50p-on-a-coin-flip bets the £10 on something heavily favoured to win. The free bets split is the largest on the page; the qualifying requirements are the most unusual.

Vbet: £10 free bet for a £10 qualifying bet that loses

Vbet’s 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 shape is a refund rather than a bonus: the punter’s £10 is real money, and the £10 in free bets follows if the qualifying bet loses.

The refund-shaped welcome is rarer than the matched-headline one and tends to suit a punter who would have bet anyway and is happy to let the bookmaker insure the first leg. The £10 in free bets is paid stake-not-returned by default.

BoyleSports: £20 in free bets for a £10 qualifying bet

BoyleSports’ sports welcome offer for UK players is £20 in free bets when a £10 bet is placed. The free bets are split across standard sports, acca insurance and acca loyalty; Acca Insurance applies a minimum stake of £5, minimum odds of 1/2, pays a maximum refund of £20 as a free bet that expires in 7 days, and requires bets to be placed and settled on the same day. Acca Loyalty applies a minimum stake of £5, a minimum combined odds of 3/1, 5 or more settled legs, with a free bet expiring after 7 days.

The welcome offer’s headline is similar to Vbet’s, but the supporting products run deeper. BoyleSports runs a £20 acca-insurance cap rather than the bigger refund caps at Coral and Unibet.

BetGoodwin: £15 in free bets for a £10 qualifying bet

BetGoodwin’s 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 Sub-Cover free bet insures a stake against a specific player not playing — a niche feature on a niche market.

The small stake split is more honest about what the punter will actually use. A punter who plays Sub-Cover picks up the £5; a punter who plays accumulators picks up the £5; a punter who plays straight singles picks up the £5. None of the three £5s is a wasted token.

bet365, Kwiff and NetBet: account-gated welcome offers

bet365 offers Bet Builder+, which combines markets from one event into a single bet pre-match and in-play, plus Super Boosts, Winnings Boosts on Bet Builders and selected singles, and daily Bet Boosts. The bookmaker’s sign-up terms are set in the customer’s account. Kwiff’s Supercharge feature can instantly boost the odds on a bet, for example from 2/1 to 20/1, on single or multi bets on any sport; Kwiff also offers Bet Builder and Bet Builder+ across different fixtures. NetBet offers Daily Boosts, Profit Boosts and free bet offers, a Bet Builder with instant dynamic odds, and sports stats for major leagues. Each bookmaker’s sign-up terms are set in the customer’s account.

The three brands share an offer-routing model rather than an offer level. A punter who wants the headline figure before signing in has to read the bookmaker’s terms in full.

How much betting does the welcome take

Bonus turnover is the arithmetic the offer’s small print asks the punter to do. For a £10 bonus at 5x, the punter has to bet £50 through the bookmaker’s offer terms before the £10 of bonus becomes withdrawable; for the same £10 at 10x, the punter bets £100; and on top of that turnover the punter pays the bookmaker’s margin on every bet they place.

The model is conservative on purpose. The Commission’s 19 January 2026 cap of 10x on a bonus puts a ceiling on the worst offer in the market, but most offers sit well below the ceiling — many sit below 3x — and the punter who does not check the multiple does not know which band they are in. The arithmetic in this section uses a 5x bonus and a 10x bonus as the band the welcome offers typically travel in.

The required turnover is the bonus base multiplied by the wagering factor. A £10 bonus at 5x requires £50 of bets; at 10x requires £100. The bonus base is the smaller of the bonus and the deposit for matched offers, and the bonus alone for free-bonus offers.

The number of bets is the turnover divided by the stake per bet. A £50 turnover at £5 per bet is 10 bets; at £10 per bet is 5 bets. The punter who plays small bets pays the operator’s margin on more bets rather than fewer.

Only bets at or above the minimum price the offer names count towards the turnover. A £10 bonus at minimum odds of 2.0 requires £50 of bets at 2.0 or higher to clear; a £10 bonus at minimum odds of 1.5 requires £50 of bets at 1.5 or higher. The higher the minimum odds, the more selective the punter’s market has to be.

The expected cost is the required turnover multiplied by the margin of the market the bonus is cleared on. On a market at 5% margin — typical of major football 1X2 — a £50 turnover costs the punter £2.50 in expected loss; on a market at 8% margin — typical of secondary markets — costs £4. On a £100 turnover the expected cost doubles, to £5 and £8 respectively.

Reading the band as a band rather than as a single figure: a £10 bonus at 5x on a market at 5% margin costs the punter about £2.50 in expected loss; at 10x on a market at 8% margin costs about £8. The headline £10 of bonus rewards the punter for those bets; the punter’s expected cost absorbs part of the reward. The punter who claims the offer and clears it on the highest-margin market the offer allows is the punter who pays the most for the £10 they receive; the punter who clears on the lowest-margin market pays the least. Few offers on this page sit at the high end of the band.

How to verify a bookmaker’s licence

The Commission’s public register is the test. A punter who wants to know whether a brand holds a GB remote licence searches the register by business name, trading name, domain or account number. The register shows the licence type, the licence holder, the trading names the licence covers, and the activities the licence permits. Anything else — a footer on the bookmaker’s home page, a number supplied by customer service — is corroboration rather than proof.

Multiple brands under one licence holder are normal. Ladbrokes and Coral both sit under LC International Limited; Paddy Power and Betfair sit under Flutter Entertainment’s various UK entities; Sky Betting and Gaming sits under Bonne Terre Limited. The licence holder, not the trading name, is the unit on the register, and the punter who reads the register reads the licence holder rather than the brand.

A licensed brand is bound by the LCCP’s rules on marketing, customer interaction, safer gambling, anti-money-laundering and access to funds. An unlicensed brand is bound by its own house rules and whatever regulator, if any, exists in the jurisdiction it operates from. The customer of an unlicensed brand has no Commission complaints route, no approved dispute-resolution body, no British consumer redress if funds are withheld, and no GAMSTOP coverage. The punter who chooses to bet with an unlicensed brand is choosing a different product with a different risk profile.

Spread betting and the FCA

Spread betting on financial markets is regulated by the Financial Conduct Authority, not the Commission, and the FCA supervises spread betting on indices, shares, currencies and commodities. A bookmaker that offers financial spread betting alongside sports betting — Spreadex is the only example on this page — runs the FCA-licensed activity under the FCA’s rules and the sports activity under the Commission’s rules.

The loss on a spread bet can exceed the deposit. A spread bet on a moving index exposes the punter to unlimited losses in principle, and the spread bet’s margin requirement is a fraction of the notional exposure rather than a deposit. Spreadex’s terms state that spread-betting losses can exceed deposits and that the FCA supervises that part of the business; the Commission’s supervision covers the fixed-odds product.

A punter who opens a Spreadex account and only uses the fixed-odds welcome offer is a Commission customer rather than an FCA one. The distinction matters at the complaints stage: a financial-spread-betting dispute goes to the Financial Ombudsman Service, not to the Commission.

Frequently asked questions

The questions a punter reads most often come up in three places: how to sign up, what a wagering requirement does, and what the offer looks like under the Commission’s rules.

How is a betting account opened in Great Britain?

A punter who signs up at a GB-licensed bookmaker provides a name, address and date of birth, which the bookmaker verifies before any deposit or wager is accepted. Verification uses the customer’s electoral roll record, a credit-reference soft search, or a photo-ID upload. Once the verification is complete, the punter deposits by debit card, instant bank transfer or an e-wallet that does not breach the credit-card ban; bets are then placed on licensed markets under the bookmaker’s house rules and the Commission’s licence conditions.

What is the maximum wagering requirement on a betting bonus in Great Britain?

A wagering requirement on a bonus is capped at 10x under the Commission’s promotion rules in force since 19 January 2026. The cap is the upper bound the law sets; nothing stops a bookmaker from offering a bonus with no wagering requirement, and nothing stops the punter from taking it. The cap is on the wagering requirement attached to the bonus; the cap is not a guarantee that any bonus is fair.

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

Minimum odds are the threshold a bet must be priced at for the bet to count towards the offer’s qualifying conditions. A welcome offer requiring a bet at minimum odds of 2.0 (1/1) qualifies only bets priced at 2.0 or higher. The wagering requirement is the multiple of the bonus the punter has to bet through before the bonus becomes withdrawable: a £10 bonus at 5x requires £50 of bets. Bets that count towards the wagering requirement are themselves bets the punter is making, on margin-loaded markets, with the punter paying the bookmaker’s margin on every qualifying bet.

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

The default rule in the UK market is “stake not returned” on a free bet. The punter who places a £10 free bet at 5.00 wins £40 in cash and does not receive the £10 stake back. The £10 is the bookmaker’s gift, paid as a stake, and the punter’s reward is the gross winnings rather than the gross winnings plus the stake. A “stake returned” free bet does exist at some bookmakers and is the better deal; the punter who sees both shapes should prefer the second.

Can a bet on sport be tied to a casino bonus under the Commission’s promotion rules?

A promotion that requires gambling on two or more product types — betting, casino, bingo, lottery — is banned under the Commission’s rules in force since 19 January 2026. A welcome offer that hands out free spins on top of a free bet, or a casino bonus tied to a sports bonus, falls foul of the rule on its face. The ban covers promotion-shape rather than content: an offer that asks the punter to opt into two products in order to claim one falls under the ban.

How is it checked that a bookmaker holds a Gambling Commission licence?

The Commission’s public register is the test. The punter searches the register by business name, trading name, domain or account number; the register returns the licence type, licence holder, trading names and activities the licence permits. A register entry that does not match the brand the punter is looking at is the warning sign. A footer on the bookmaker’s home page is corroboration rather than proof; the register is the proof.

Content created by the «systembetsguide.com» team