Price boosts, examined: ten UK bookmakers side by side

Updated October 2026

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Data current as of 30 October 2026, checked against the Gambling Commission’s public register and each operator’s own terms page.

A price boost looks like a gift. The bookmaker posts a market above the price its own traders would set, and the bettor appears to get a free shot at a bigger return. It is rarely free, and it is almost never as large as the headline number suggests. The boost shrinks the overround, but it usually sits inside a set of rules that take it back: a maximum stake, a minimum number of selections, a market restriction, a payout cap, and — in many cases — a free bet whose stake is not returned. After the 19 January 2026 promotion rules came into force, a layer was added on top: a 10x wagering cap and a ban on offers that mix product types. The cap does not bind every boost, but it sets the ceiling on the bonus machinery that often sits behind one. This page is a read of ten UK-licensed bookmakers through that lens — what the boost actually pays, what it costs the bettor to claim, and which reader each brand suits.

The ten operators, ranked by what their boost actually delivers

The ranking is not a leaderboard of bookmakers overall. It ranks the boost, then the package around it. Each entry covers the licence, the boost itself, the welcome offer that often gates it, and the one or two features that change the comparison.

The ranking rests on what the boost pays before any free-bet concession is taken into account, what stake ceiling the operator puts on it, and how much of the package around the boost is restricted by a wagering rule. The welcome offer is included because the boost is rarely a free-standing product; it almost always sits inside the same small print as the sign-up deal, and that small print is where the cost lives.

The fundamentals: what a price boost actually does to a market

A bookmaker’s margin sits inside every price. On a football match with three outcomes (home, draw, away) the true odds sum to more than 100% once each outcome’s probability is converted to a price; the gap between that sum and 100% is the overround, the slice the bookmaker keeps. A price boost trims that slice. If a bookmaker’s home-draw-away prices imply a 6% margin and the boost trims the home price from 2.10 to 2.40, the overround on that market moves down — the bettor pays a smaller cut to the house on this particular selection. The catch is that the boost is a one-off, applied to one market for a window. It is not the operator’s standing offer across the board.

The second thing a boost usually does is shrink the maximum stake. Coral, Midnite, Hollywoodbets, BetVictor and most of the brands on this page limit the boost to a few pounds or to a single bet per customer, and several exclude the boost from each-way bets, from cash-out and from combinations. Read the stake ceiling before valuing the boost: a 50% price enhancement on a £5 maximum stake is a smaller number than the headline suggests.

The third thing is the type of payout. A boosted odds token that returns the stake with a win is worth more than a free bet of the same face value whose stake is not returned. Across the British market the latter is the rule, not the exception; the difference is material (a free bet whose stake is not returned is worth roughly the face value times (odds − 1) divided by odds, scaled by the market’s payout share). The arithmetic is mechanical and lives in the offers section below; the point to hold here is that a “boosted price” and a “free bet” can be the same headline in two different uniforms.

What “best odds guaranteed” adds on top

Several bookmakers layer a Best Odds Guaranteed (BOG) concession on top of the boost: if you take the early price on a horse race and the starting price (SP) is bigger, the bet is paid at SP. Coral, Kalooki Sportsbook, Unibet, William Hill and BetVictor publish this for UK and Irish racing. It is not a price boost in the marketing sense — there is no 5/1 becoming 6/1 overnight — but it changes the comparison. A bookmaker with BOG and a thin boost can pay better on a horse race than a competitor with a fat boost and no BOG, depending on the day. The boost is the headline; BOG is the floor.

Where the legality sits, and what the 19 January 2026 rules actually cap

The Gambling Commission is the regulator. It is a non-departmental public body, sponsored by the Department for Culture, Media and Sport, and it licenses the whole commercial market in Great Britain under the Gambling Act 2005. Northern Ireland runs on different law and is outside the Act. Since the Gambling (Licensing and Advertising) Act 2014 any operator whose remote facilities are used in Great Britain needs a Commission licence wherever it is based, so a Curaçao or Maltese licence is not a substitute inside the British market. The Commission’s public register is searchable by business name, trading name, domain or account number and is the test of whether a brand holds a licence. A domain ending in .com rather than .co.uk proves nothing about whether the operator is licensed.

The promotion rules that came into force on 19 January 2026 do two things relevant to this page. First, wagering requirements on bonuses are capped at 10x: a £10 bonus at 50x wagering, which would need £500 of qualifying bets, is now blocked; under the cap the largest stake figure required is £100. Second, mixed-product promotions are banned. An offer that requires the customer to gamble on two or more product types — betting and casino, betting and bingo, betting and lottery — is no longer permitted. A “bet on football to get free spins” deal is out. Two open questions are flagged in the Commission’s own materials: whether the 10x cap applies to free bets that carry no wagering condition at all, and whether there is a cap on the money value of a bonus. Neither is settled, and the page does not pretend otherwise.

What the rules do not cap is the price boost itself. A boost is not a bonus in the technical sense — it is a one-off enhancement of a market price — and the cap on wagering applies to bonuses, not to single market enhancements. What does apply to a boost is the small print: a maximum stake, a minimum number of legs on an accumulator boost, a restriction on cash-out, and the fact that the bet is usually a real-money bet, not a free bet. The boost itself is uncapped; the package around it can be tightly constrained.

What the licence line in the table really tells the reader

The licence numbers in the table are the public-register identifiers. None of these brands is the only licensed operator in Britain, and the list of licensed bookmakers on the register runs into the hundreds. What the licence proves is narrower and more useful: the brand has accepted the Commission’s licence conditions and codes of practice, the brand participates in GAMSTOP, and the brand’s customer service is reachable through the Commission’s complaints route. A brand that holds a Commission licence is bound by the 10x bonus cap, the £150 financial vulnerability check, the credit-card ban, and the LCCP social responsibility code. An unlicensed brand — outside this page’s scope — is bound by none of those.

Safer gambling: where the reader’s real budget ceiling lives

There is no state-set deposit or loss ceiling for betting in Great Britain. Operators offer deposit limits as a routine customer-protection feature, and a remote technical standard has been rolled out in two phases to make those limits easier to set: the first phase applied from 31 October 2025, the second phase was postponed to 30 September 2026. The page does not assume the second phase is live. The safer-gambling tools worth naming are the ones the reader can reach today: deposit limits, loss limits, wagering limits, time-outs, and self-exclusion through GAMSTOP. GAMSTOP is mandatory for licensed online operators and runs for six months, one year, five years, or five years with auto-renewal; after the minimum period the exclusion stays in place for a further seven years unless the customer asks GAMSTOP to remove it. Help is through GamCare, the National Gambling Helpline, GambleAware, the NHS gambling clinics network, and Gamblers Anonymous.

Identity verification happens before the first deposit at a Commission-licensed brand. The Account, address and date of birth are checked; the check applies whether the first transaction is a real-money bet or a free bet. Once deposits minus withdrawals exceed £150 in a rolling 30 days a financial vulnerability check runs (in force from 28 February 2025): it is a public-record check, not an income check and not a credit-reference check. The wider affordability regime — the financial risk assessments reported in the press — has been announced in stages with no start date. The page describes it as announced, staged, no start date, and not as law.

The reason this sits above the operator reviews is that a price boost changes the way a bettor’s bankroll behaves. A boost usually comes with a maximum stake cap, which limits the loss on a bad day; it also tends to pull the bettor toward higher-margin markets and toward accumulators, which means the variance on the bankroll rises. A bettor who has set a deposit limit and a loss limit should expect to use them more often on a boost-heavy bookmaker than on a flat-margin one.

What a price-boost welcome offer actually costs the bettor

Three examples from the featured set, walked through end to end. Each offer is described as the operator’s own terms state it; the arithmetic is the page’s, and is presented as an estimate.

Coral’s sports welcome offer is “Get £40 in Free Bets when you bet £20”. The customer deposits and places a sports bet of £20 or more at minimum odds of 2.0 (1/1); £40 in free bets is credited within 7 days, expires 7 days after issue, and is open to new GB customers who opt in. The qualifying payment is a debit card or an instant bank transfer. The £40 is split across multiple free bet tokens. None of these tokens return the stake with a win.

Take £20 at odds of 2.0. Return on a win is £40; net profit is £20. The £40 in free bets, used at the same 2.0 odds, returns £80 if every leg wins — but the £40 stake is gone. The expected value of a free bet is its face value times (decimal odds − 1) divided by decimal odds, scaled by the market’s payout share. At 2.0 odds on a market with a 95% payout share, a £40 free bet is worth roughly £40 × (2.0 − 1) ÷ 2.0 × 0.95 = £19. Less than half the face value. Add the £20 net profit from the qualifying bet and the headline “£40 free” reads as £39 in expected value across the qualifying bet and the free bets, before any margin on the boosted market is considered.

Sky Bet’s welcome offer is £30 in free bets after a deposit of at least £5 and a first single or each-way bet of at least 5p at odds of 1/1 (2.0) or greater, credited as three £10 tokens. The arithmetic is the same shape: a 5p qualifying bet at 2.0 returns 10p on a win, net profit 5p; the £30 in free bets is worth roughly £30 × (2.0 − 1) ÷ 2.0 × 0.95 ≈ £14.25 of free-bet value, against a £30 headline. The £30 is the smaller number for a reason: the qualifying bet is 5p, not £5, so the operator’s exposure on the betting slip is tiny.

Hollywoodbets’ sports welcome offer pays the stake back as a free bet up to £30 on a first qualifying losing accumulator. The acca needs three or more legs, each at odds of 4/1 (5.0) or greater, settled within 7 days, stake £10 or more; one free bet per customer. The free bet, on a 5.0 multiple, is worth roughly £30 × (5.0 − 1) ÷ 5.0 × 0.95 ≈ £22.80, but only if the qualifying acca loses. The expected value of the package is harder to read because the trigger is a loss. The wider lesson is that a “stake back as a free bet” is not a refund in money; it is a second-chance bet, and it carries the same stake-not-returned terms as any other free bet.

The 10x cap does not bind these offers directly — none of them carries a wagering condition. What it binds is the bonus machines behind the offers that do. A 100% matched bonus up to £50 at 10x wagering is £500 of qualifying bets at the minimum price; at a market with a 6% margin that is an expected cost of around £30, paid as lost margin on those bets, before any winning selection is considered. The cost is in the price, not the bet.

How the 10x cap shows up at 10bet

10bet’s UK sign-up offer is a 100% matched bonus up to £50 plus daily free bets. The 10x cap on wagering, in force since 19 January 2026, is the line that decides how much of that headline is recoverable. At the maximum bonus of £50, the qualifying turnover is £500; at a 5% market margin and a £5 average stake, that is around 100 bets, with an expected cost of about £25, which is half the bonus before any winning selection is considered. The cap does not stop the offer; it forces the offer into a shape where the expected cost is bounded by a known percentage of the bonus.

The wider point is that the cap is a ceiling, not a floor. Operators have room to set their wagering multiple anywhere below 10x, and the more competitive brands sit closer to 1x, where the expected cost approaches the market’s natural margin. The page reads a brand by where on that ladder its terms sit.

The operators, one by one

bet365 — the broadest boost catalogue

bet365 is the largest single brand on the Commission’s register by turnover and the broadest on the boost side. Daily Bet Boosts run across the major football leagues, Super Boosts headline selected matches, Winnings Boosts apply to Bet Builder+ bets and selected singles. Bet Builder+ combines markets from one event into a single bet pre-match and in-play, and a winnings boost on a builder bet is the closest the brand comes to offering a free-standing winnings multiplier on a single bet. Maximum stakes vary by market; the small print sits on the betslip, not the homepage.

bet365 is the bettor’s choice when the brand matters more than the welcome bonus. The welcome offer is competitive rather than outstanding, and the everyday boost catalogue is the reason a long-term account lives there. The reader who wants a single platform with the deepest in-play menu, a working Cash Out, and a daily boost rotation is the reader bet365 is built for.

William Hill — the acca boost, made explicit

William Hill publishes the Football Acca Boost ladder in plain English: 2 or more legs at 1/5 (1.20) or bigger, 3% on a double rising to 200% on 20 or more legs, capped at £10,000 per online bet, running until 30 May 2027. A £10 acca at 3/1 (4.0) becomes £40; with a 5-leg bonus it becomes £60; with a 20-leg bonus on the same selections the cap is the binding number. The minimum-leg rule is 1/5, which is short, so an acca of five Premier League favourites qualifies. The boost is on the winnings, not the stake, and the £10,000 cap is the ceiling a successful bettor will hit before they reach the brand’s overall stake limit.

William Hill is the reader’s pick when accas are the bet of choice. The brand is a legacy British bookmaker, the Football Acca Boost ladder is unusually explicit for the industry, and the cap is published. A bettor who runs many small accas will see the boost add up faster here than on a brand that boosts only selected matches.

Coral — the Reward Shaker, and a marketing layer

Coral’s welcome offer is “Get £40 in Free Bets when you bet £20” with a debit-card or instant-bank-transfer qualifying bet of £20 or more at minimum odds of 2.0 (1/1), the £40 credited within 7 days and expiring 7 days later. The boost catalogue is the daily Reward Shaker, an Odds Booster on hundreds of markets, and free-to-play games including Football Super Series with a £10,000 jackpot. Payment options include Visa, Mastercard, Apple Pay, Google Pay, Revolut Pay, Trustly, Earthport and TrueLayer.

The Coral package is the one a casual punter picks up without thinking. The Reward Shaker is a randomised token drop, which is the closest the British high street comes to a casino-style bonus mechanic inside a sportsbook. The expected value of the Shaker is below the face value of the tokens, because the highest-value tokens are rare; the marketing value is the daily habit. Coral is the brand for the reader who wants a free bet on the accumulator they were going to place anyway, and who does not run enough volume to read the difference between a 3% acca boost and a 5% one.

Unibet — the Uniboost rotation, with Best Odds Guaranteed

Unibet has operated since 1999 and its UK site is run by Platinum Gaming Limited in Gibraltar under Commission account 45322. The sports welcome offer mirrors Coral’s headline structure: “Get £40 in Free Bets when you bet £20” with a debit-card or instant-bank-transfer qualifying bet of £20 or more at minimum odds of 2.0 (1/1), free bets expiring within 7 days. The boost catalogue is daily Uniboosts across pre-match and in-play, plus Bet Builder, Unibet TV live streaming, Best Odds Guaranteed on horse racing and Cash Out on thousands of markets.

Unibet is the brand for the reader who wants the boost catalogue and the racing concession under one roof. Best Odds Guaranteed is the floor; Uniboosts are the ceiling; live streaming covers the gap. A racing-led punter who also bets on football gets more from Unibet than from Coral. A football-only punter gets more from Coral.

BetVictor — the long-tail boost catalogue

BetVictor publishes regular price boosts and acca offers on selected events, with the welcome offer inside the app and governed by the customer terms. The boost catalogue is longer than Coral’s, the volume lower; the brand’s pull is on the long tail of sports and leagues, where a price boost is rarer and the edge on a competitive price is bigger.

BetVictor is the bettor’s pick when the bet is on a league the bigger brands have thinned out. The brand does not publish a ladder of the same scale as William Hill’s, and the welcome offer is unremarkable; the everyday boost rotation on the smaller sports is the reason to keep the account open.

BoyleSports — acca insurance, and the loyalty ladder

BoyleSports’ UK sports welcome offer is £20 in free bets for a £10 qualifying bet. Acca Insurance needs opt-in, a £5 minimum stake, minimum odds of 1/2 (1.50) and pays a maximum refund of £20 as a free bet that expires in 7 days; bets must be placed and settled on the same day. Acca Loyalty sits on top: opt-in, £5 minimum stake, minimum combined odds of 3/1 and 5 or more settled legs, with the free bet expiring after 7 days.

BoyleSports is the brand for the reader who runs regular small accas. Acca Insurance is not a free bet; it is a refund on a losing acca, paid as a free bet whose stake is not returned. Acca Loyalty is a free bet on a winning acca, conditional on five or more settled legs. The expected value of the package is closer to the headline than Coral’s Shaker, because the trigger conditions are stated in plain numbers rather than a randomised drop.

Spreadex — the fixed-odds and spread-betting hybrid

Spreadex is regulated by the FCA for spread betting and by the Gambling Commission for fixed-odds betting. Spread betting losses can exceed the deposit; the FCA regime is separate from the Commission’s, and the two product types run under different rules. 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, and the qualifying bet must be placed within 28 days of opening the account. The minimum odds on the qualifying bet are 1/2 (1.50). Acca Boosts run from 5% to 100% on football accumulators of three or more selections.

Spreadex is the brand for the reader who already trades on spreads. A new customer looking only for a sportsbook will find a thinner catalogue than bet365’s and a £10 qualifying bet at 1.50 that costs less than the £20 at 2.0 the bigger brands require, but a smaller fixed-odds bonus architecture. The boost is real on football accas; the spread side is a separate product with a separate regulator and a separate loss profile.

Kwiff — the Supercharge feature, and what “any odds” actually means

Kwiff’s Supercharge feature boosts a bet’s odds, the published example being a 2/1 (3.0) bet lifted to 20/1 (21.0). The feature applies to singles and multis on any sport. Kwiff also runs Bet Builder and Bet Builder+, the latter combining Bet Builder bets from different games, and a guaranteed weekend acca boost.

Kwiff is the brand for the reader who has read the small print and decided that a randomly boosted price is worth more than a flat one. Supercharge is not a guaranteed boost — the operator’s algorithm decides which bets are Supercharged — and the headline example is the upper edge of the distribution. A punter placing small singles will see occasional Supercharges; a punter placing large multis will not see them as often, because the maximum stake on a Supercharged bet is usually low.

Hollywoodbets — the second-chance acca

Hollywoodbets’ UK sports welcome offer refunds the stake as a free bet up to £30 on a first qualifying losing accumulator. The acca needs three or more legs at 4/1 (5.0) or greater, stake £10 or more, settled within 7 days; one free bet per customer.

Hollywoodbets is the brand for the reader whose welcome offer is a second chance rather than a first. The trigger is a loss; the payout is a free bet, stake not returned, with a 7-day expiry. The expected value of the offer is conditional on the acca losing, and a punter whose first acca wins has taken nothing from the welcome. The package rewards the bettor who plans to run an aggressive first-week acca and treats the welcome offer as a safety net.

10bet — the matched bonus, with the cap behind it

10bet advertises a 100% bonus up to £50 plus daily free bets and free spins. The matched bonus is the kind of offer the 10x cap binds directly: at 10x the qualifying turnover on a £50 bonus is £500, with an expected cost of around £25 at a 5% market margin. The brand’s edge is the bet-and-bonus structure; the punter’s edge is the smaller bookmaker with a thinner catalogue and a bigger headline.

10bet is the brand for the reader who is comparing matched bonuses across the market and reading the 10x cap as a ceiling. The £50 cap is the upper edge of the offer; the £25 expected cost is the realistic recovery; the daily free bets are the everyday reason to keep the account open. A punter who already has bet365 and Coral will find 10bet’s catalogue thin, but the welcome offer is more rewarding on the headline number.

The three to mention for context, and why they do not lead the ranking

Three brands on the Commission’s register carry price boosts but do not make the top of this ranking. Each has a reason, and the reason is specific.

Matchbook is a betting exchange, not a traditional bookmaker, and runs under a betting intermediary licence (Commission account 39504, holder Triplebet Limited). The new-customer offer is 110 days of commission-free betting after registration with a deposit; standard commission applies afterwards. A betting exchange does not run a bookmaker’s margin in the same way — the bettor backs or lays against other customers — and a price boost on an exchange is usually a lay-side liquidity event, not a market enhancement. The 10x bonus cap does not bind a commission-free period in the same way it binds a matched bonus, because there is no wagering condition.

NetBet offers Daily Boosts, Profit Boosts and free bet offers, a Bet Builder with instant dynamic odds and sports stats for major leagues (Commission account 39170, holder Netbet Enterprises Limited). The boost catalogue is broad; the welcome offer is not as competitive as the top of the table, and the brand sits below Coral on the welcome side.

Kalooki Sportsbook is operated by Kalooki Sports Book Ltd (company number 12938274) under Commission account 57730 and is a GAMSTOP member. The site advertises instant withdrawals by bank transfer within minutes, Best Odds Guaranteed on UK and Irish racing, in-play betting, daily boosts and extra-place races. The catalogue is small but the racing proposition is competitive.

How the ranking was assembled, and what the reader should check before claiming

Three numbers decided the order. First, the everyday boost catalogue — how many markets are boosted, on how many sports, at what maximum stake. Second, the welcome offer’s expected value, calculated as the headline value minus the cost of clearing any wagering condition and minus the stake-not-returned concession on any free bet. Third, the standing features around the boost — Best Odds Guaranteed on racing, live streaming, Cash Out, Bet Builder — that change whether a boost is the headline or the floor. None of these numbers is the brand’s only number, and a reader who weights one of them more heavily than the others will reorder the ranking. The point of the table is to make the reorder possible.

What to check before claiming any offer, on any brand. The Commission’s public register by business name, trading name, domain or account number, to confirm the licence is live. The operator’s own customer terms and conditions, to read the wagering multiple, the minimum odds, the expiry, the stake-not-returned concession on free bets, and the maximum stake on any boost. The deposit method, because a debit card or an instant bank transfer is the usual qualifier and an e-wallet or a prepaid card is often excluded. The currency. The expiry clock starts when the free bet is credited, not when it is used, and a 7-day clock is short. The maximum boost on a payout-cap promotion — for example William Hill’s £10,000 acca boost ceiling — because a winning selection can be re-priced lower than the headline. The self-exclusion status through GAMSTOP, which applies regardless of the brand.

The single calculation that frames every bonus

The Commission’s promotion rules cap wagering requirements at 10x. Worked against a typical matched bonus, the qualifying turnover is the bonus amount multiplied by 10: a £50 bonus needs £500 of qualifying bets at the minimum price. At an average stake of £5, that is 100 bets. At a market margin of 5% — a representative figure for a competitive Premier League match — the expected cost of those bets, as lost margin, is around £25. The cost is paid regardless of whether the bonus is converted; it is the price of the wagering requirement itself. The 10x cap does not stop the cost; it stops the cost from being higher. The reader who claims a 10x bonus should expect to lose around half the bonus’s money to the margin on the qualifying bets before any winning selection is considered. The reader who claims a 1x bonus at the same brand and the same market loses closer to 5%. The cap is a ceiling, not a floor, and the most generous brands sit closer to the floor than the ceiling.

The role of the brand’s marketing language

Every brand on this list calls its offer something. “Risk-free” is the most misleading. A bet labelled risk-free is usually a free bet on the second chance, stake not returned; the first bet is a real-money bet that loses if it loses. “Free bet” sounds like a gift and reads as one until the small print notes the stake is not returned; the arithmetic is roughly half the headline value at evens. “Best odds guaranteed” is the rare honest phrase, because it describes the rule rather than the gift. “100% bonus” is half the picture; the cap on wagering and the minimum price are the other half. “Boosted odds” is the phrase that varies most — a one-off market enhancement with a maximum stake is a different product from a token worth a percentage of winnings on an accumulator, and both can sit under the same word. Read the small print. The brand has not.

Conclusion

A price boost is a marketing word wrapped around a number. The number is real — the operator does trim the overround on the boosted market — but the wrap is what costs the bettor. A boost with a £2 stake maximum is worth £2 of additional edge; a boost whose stake returns with a win is worth more than one whose stake does not; a boost that sits inside a free bet is worth roughly half the headline at evens. The ranking on this page is the ranking of brands by what the boost pays once you have read the wrap. The top of the ranking is the brand with the deepest everyday catalogue and the cleanest small print; the middle is the brand with a competitive welcome and a competitive racing or acca proposition; the bottom is the brand whose welcome is generous and whose everyday proposition is thin.

The reader who wants one brand for everything is a bet365 reader. The reader who runs small accas is a William Hill or BoyleSports reader. The reader who wants a daily free-bet habit is a Coral or Kwiff reader. The reader who wants a second-chance welcome is a Hollywoodbets reader. The reader who reads the wagering cap and wants the floor is a 10bet reader. The reader who already trades spreads is a Spreadex reader. The reader who wants Best Odds Guaranteed on every UK and Irish race and a daily boost rotation is a Unibet or Kalooki Sportsbook reader. None of these readers is wrong, and none of them is the only reader; the brand is just a fit.

Frequently asked questions

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

The Gambling Commission’s promotion rules, in force since 19 January 2026, cap wagering requirements on bonuses at 10x. A £10 bonus at 50x wagering, which would need £500 of qualifying bets, is now blocked; under the cap the largest stake figure required is £100. The cap does not stop a bonus; it bounds the qualifying turnover that the customer has to run before the bonus pays out.

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

The wagering requirement is how many times the bonus (or sometimes the bonus plus deposit) must be turned over in qualifying bets before the bonus is paid out; the minimum odds are the lowest price the qualifying bets can be placed at. Coral’s welcome offer, for example, requires a £20 qualifying bet at minimum odds of 2.0 (1/1) and issues £40 in free bets; the wagering requirement on the £40 is zero, but the free bets themselves carry the usual stake-not-returned terms.

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

A free bet is a token, not a cash credit; the bookmaker pays the winnings at the boosted price but keeps the stake. The expected value of a £10 free bet at 2.0 on a market with a 95% payout share is roughly £10 × (2.0 − 1) ÷ 2.0 × 0.95 = £4.75, which is less than half the face value. Some bookmakers occasionally run stake-returned free bets as a promotion; they are rarer than the non-returned kind and the small print states the difference.

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

No. Since 19 January 2026 mixed-product promotions are banned; an offer that requires the customer to gamble on two or more product types, such as betting and casino or betting and lottery, is no longer permitted. A free-bet-for-free-spins deal is out, and an operator running one is breaking the licence conditions.

How can it be checked that a bookmaker holds a Gambling Commission licence?

The Commission’s public register, on the Commission’s website, is searchable by business name, trading name, domain or account number. Every brand on this page carries its account number in the operator’s own terms and on the licence line in the table above. A live licence record on the Commission’s register is the test of whether a brand holds a licence; the domain ending in .com rather than .co.uk proves nothing.

Are betting winnings taxed in Great Britain, and who pays General Betting Duty?

The player pays no tax on betting winnings in Great Britain. General Betting Duty is the operator’s tax on gross profits, currently 15%, and from 1 April 2027 a new remote betting rate of 25% applies within it; remote bets on UK horse racing, pool betting and in-person betting stay at 15%. The duty is the operator’s liability, and whether it is passed on through odds is not established.

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