There are very few true loopholes in this world when it comes to money. Just about any scheme promising you money for nothing (or almost nothing) is a scam or a myth, but sometimes the lure of easy money is so strong we can’t resist (hence the $10 billion we collectively lost to fraud last year).
So it’s understandable if your first reaction to the concept of “matched betting”—a supposedly 100% foolproof way to make a profit placing bets with online gambling sites—is skepticism. Anyone who tells you that you can guarantee a profit from gambling has to be scamming you in some way, right?
Believe it or not, matched betting isn’t a scam. The math checks out—it actually works. You can in fact get free money by making repeated matched bets by leveraging the bonus money gambling sites use to lure you in. But just because it works doesn’t mean it’s a good idea.
How matched betting works
Here’s how matched betting works: You find a betting site that’s offering a free signup bet—say $100 (you usually have to deposit an equivalent amount and make at least one bet using your own money before you get this bonus, but we’ll get to that later). You bet that free $100 on something win/loss like a baseball game (an event with no tie or other possible outcome), and note the odds—let’s say the odds are +100 that Team A beats Team B, so make a backing bet that Team A will win.
Now you go to a second, entirely different gambling site and you lay off that bet—you bet the opposite way, that Team B will beat Team A. You look for a site offering similar odds, so the odds of Team B winning are about -100. If the odds are different, you can use an odds calculator to figure out how much you need to lay off in order to get the same payout.
Now the magic happens: If Team A wins, you lose the hedge bet, so you’re out $100 there. But you win the original bet with the free $100, so your account there is now $200. If Team B wins, you lose the free $100, but you win $100 from the second gambling site, so you’re still up $100. You might not always get exactly the same amount back, but if you crunch some numbers each time, you can always guarantee a profit.
Why matched betting is a bad idea
So, matched betting works, and is totally legal. What’s not to love?
While you can indeed make a profit by doing matched betting, there are a lot of potential downsides associated with the practice, especially if you try to turn it into a side hustle or even a primary way to make a living:
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Slight risk. Matched betting is often described as a zero-risk scheme, but that’s not entirely true—you usually have to deposit actual money into both betting platforms to make your bets, and many sites require you to make at least one bet using your own money before you get your bonus. That means you actually carry the risk of losing money your first time out. You can mitigate this to a large extent by being very careful with the odds—in this example, a matched bettor limited his “acceptable loss” to 38 pence (about 48 U.S. cents)—but it’s still a risk.
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The grind. Trying to actually make money using matched betting is a grind. There’s a lot of research, comparing odds, math, and seeking out new betting sites (to get more free bets). And every new site may require you to deposit money and make that first bet, so you may accumulate small losses along the way—and you’ll find yourself tracking a lot of deposits, as well as needing to put up a lot of money in order to keep the system going.
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Mistakes. Without a doubt, the biggest drawback with matched betting is how easy it is to make a mistake. If you mis-read the odds or click the wrong button and place the wrong kind of bet, your winnings can melt away, erasing weeks or months of steady, careful profit.
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Slow withdrawals. Many online betting apps and sites take their sweet time giving up your money—sometimes weeks. That means you will have to keep track of those delayed transfers and come up with more money to open new accounts while you wait.
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Varying bonus policies. All of these betting sites have their own policies when it comes to how to earn your free bet, how you can use it, and how to collect winnings from it. You’ll need to read and understand all of those policies to ensure that your bet strategy will work.
Doing a matched bet when you get a free signup bonus can work, if you’re careful, and it could be a fun way to turn that free bet—which the gambling site obviously assumes you will lose eventually if you keep betting, because the house always wins—into actual cash. But trying to make real money using matched betting is difficult, tedious, and easy to screw up. It’s just not worth it.
