I’ve been making some great matched betting profits with Unibet over the last year or so, they offer excellent reload offers in general and for this post, I’m going to focus on the “15 to Go” offer which is available on selected races broadcast on ITV on Saturday’s (sometimes other days too).
What is it?
It’s a “Bet X get X if” type of offer, and in this case, we have to place a bet on selected races within the 15 minutes before the scheduled start time and if we back the winner, Unibet will match our stake with a free bet, up to £20. (minimum £5 to qualify)
Terms:
My Strategy in a nutshell
Back and Lay the favourites 10-15 mins before the start for a small loss. Whenever they win convert the freebet into profit by “underlaying”.
Step Guide – Step 1 – Prep!
Log into your Unibet account and click: Racing>Rewards to see the races the offer is going to be active on.
I tend to note down the prices of the favourites in these races to gauge if the offer is going to be worthwhile.
In the case of the races above 3 of the 4 races have favourites priced under 2/1. Which means that the qualifier will probably not cost too much and also that I stand a decent chance of making a profit as one or more of these short-priced runners could easily win. The sweet spot for this is runners with odds just above 2.0, since below that and they won’t be eligible for the offer (you won’t see the option on the bet slip if odds are too short).
If like me you’re not watching the racing and doing something else, it’s a good idea to set alarms for 15 mins before the off so you can get in and place your qualifying bets.
Step 2 – Action qualifiers
15 mins before the scheduled off time check the market on Unibet and note down the price of the fav.
Then go to your Smarkets (or Betfair) account and note the lay price of the same.
Open up your preferred matched betting calculator and enter your stake (I do the max £20), the back odds with Unibet and Lay Odds from the exchange.
Typically you will end up with something like this…
Before placing the bets we must be sure that we are getting value.
To do this we work out our overall position.
If the selection wins we will gain a £20 FB which will be worth £16 to us.
Bookie P/L | Exchange P/L | FreeBet Value | Overall | |
Selection Wins | £40 | -£42.07 | £16 | £13.93 |
Selection Loses | -£20 | £17.92 | -£2.08 |
In the above instance, we can see that our position is -£2.08 vs +£13.93
so we get our calculator out and do 13.93/2.08 and we get 6.69 or 6.7/1 (7.79 decimal odds)
We can quickly see that we are getting very good value as we are getting nearly 7/1 about a bet with true odds somewhere about 2/1 to 5/2.
Having checked that the qualifying loss is acceptable we now place the back bet with Unibet making sure to check the “15 to go” button on the bet slip (otherwise you will not be credited with a FB if it wins) and our lay bet on Smarkets.
Step 3 Make Money!
If you’ve done the above steps correctly you WILL be in a position to make money from this offer.
You may need to be patient however as not every favourite wins so you may go a number of races before bagging a Free Bet.
When you do land a £20 FB to ensure you make a profit from it you can “underlay” your bet on Smarkets (or Betfair).
To do this you want to find a horse racing bet between 5.0 – 8.0 which you can lay off on the exchange at similar odds.
To do this you can use oddsmatching software offered on a paid matched betting site like ProfitAccumulator, or even a free site Profitrush. To be honest though, it will not take you more than a couple of minutes if you are actioning this on a Saturday afternoon to find a close match manually.
Just look at the odds on a race that’s due off in the next couple of hours (not within 10 mins of off), and compare the Unibet prices to the lay prices on the Exchange so selections around 5.0 – 8.0
You should fairly quickly be able to find a match like 7.5 / 8.4. Using the calculator again, this time with the Free Bet (SNR) option selected we can effectively “cash out” the FB:
Be sure to note the liability you will require in your exchange account before using the FB with Unibet!
Place the bet with Unibet by selecting the FB option on the bet slip and then lay as per your calculations on the Exchange. Double-checking the liability is what it should be.
Free Bet "Cash Out" | |||
Bookie P/L | Exchange P/L | Overall | |
Selection Wins | £130 | -£114.77 | £15.23 |
Selection Loses | £0 (as its a Freebet!) | £15.20 | £15.20 |
Lastly, always record all of your bets.
You can keep tabs just by jotting these down in a diary which I use for a lot of my “mug betting and side bets” but to be professional you might want to start a spreadsheet. Here’s a snapshot of my recorded results from this offer:
Results will vary. But its perfectly feasible to expect to make a profit of around £40 – £60 a month from this offer.
Given we only need to be at our computer for a few minutes, on a few occasions one day a week, I think its a nice addition to your matched betting repertoire.
Questions?
Please post your question or comments below 🙂
