This article is all about my matched betting journey. I’m not a gambler, and a few years ago if you’d told me one day I would belong to every betting site in the UK market I would have laughed in your face. But I discovered a world of free cash available through your laptop, and here’s how it happened.
But before I delve into it, those that are unfamiliar with the world of matched betting, understand that everything I talk about in this article is legal, risk-free, and tax-free. Right, let’s get into it!
Have You Heard About Matched Betting?
I remember the night very vividly. It was 2017 and Hannah and I were getting ready to sleep when she asked me if I’d heard about matched betting. She’d read about it in a blog claiming there were buckets of free cash to be made through doing it. Nope, I had never heard of it.
Although I had placed the occasional bet using an online bookie or two, I’d never really been into sports betting. Like all gambling, it seems to me that the house always wins. Having an easy-to-access app or website feels like a surefire way to make your bank balance diminish quickly.
But Hannah’s interest in it peaked my own and being someone who always likes a side hustle I cleared a few hours the next morning to do a deep dive into the world of matched betting.
If it Sounds too Good to Be True…
I approach any scheme, investment, or business opportunity with the same mentality – if it’s too good to be true then it probably is. With my pre-mentioned dislike of betting sites, I took extra precautions when doing my initial research. I was fairly sure it was a ploy by the bookies to lure me in!
I quickly learned that there is a growing community who have done matched betting for years – making unbelievable profits. My interest went from being peaked to being on high alert. Putting my initial skepticism behind I soon started to see this for the cash cow it is.
Joining Profit Accumulator (Outplayed)
I discovered a website that at the time was known as Profit Accumulator. It’s now been rebranded as Outplayed but forever in my mind, any matched betting is known as profit accumulator! Offering a free trial, including all the tutorials, guidance, and support needed to make £35 for free, I signed up.
The tutorials were great, all of the videos were backed up by supporting images, links, and step-by-step instructions for exactly how to do everything. I was heading on holiday that week and made myself £35. I did the same process for Hannah and banked her some free cash to top up the holiday beer fund.
After spending two weeks away, on my return I felt like I was starting a new job. I’d spent some of my holiday time reading and reviewing how the whole system works, including positives and some negatives (which I will discuss later). I had decided to dive in with both feet.
Wait! What is Matched Betting?
Oh, I should probably explain what it is I’m talking about. Matched betting is essentially when you bet on a sporting event to both happen and not happen with two separate bookies. You lose minimal money but in the process are awarded a free bet for having gambled with a betting site.
You are then able to repeat the same process with the free bet and pull cash out of thin air. Read my previous article – Matched Betting and How to Save Thousands for Your Travel Pot, for all the details.
First Full Day as a Matched Bettor
At the time I was a full-time musician, working from home 3-5 days a week, and out gigging on the days that I wasn’t at my desk. This allowed me to designate a good amount of time to Outplayed. I signed up for the full membership, then costing around £20/month, and started working through the sign-up offers.
There are hundreds of offers, and it’s easy to get carried away by signing up for ten in one day. Outplayed recommends patience, but having seen the cash potential with the free trial, and as is my nature, I wanted to run before I could crawl.
Thankfully, it’s also in my nature to be careful and very thorough, especially when it comes to matters of finance. So I triple-checked checked I was doing everything right with each sign-up offer. I always referred to the Outplayed tutorials and the forum if I wasn’t sure.
Scaling Up
Having hit the ground running, a few weeks in I found myself not only doing sign-up offers for me, but signing Hannah up for separate accounts too. The starter offers are great but once you belong to a betting site they also send you reload bets, which are sometimes weekly occurrences and are very lucrative.
The first months all produced more than £800 in pure profit. After initially doing a few hours a day, I found I could now operate through the matched betting world without having to repeatedly refer to the Outplayed tutorials. It was like a new skill I had learned, one I still use to this day.
With Hannah’s accounts now adding to the pot, the free cash was rolling in. I couldn’t believe I had spent years not knowing about this thing that was now producing so much money. Every penny we earned went towards trips, travels, and our long-term travel fund.
Learning Lessons the Hard Way
At the bottom of this article, you will find a few of my top tips for anyone getting started as a matched bettor. I didn’t follow all of them, but looking back I really should have and I strongly advise you to.
Matched betting is risk-free, but only when done correctly. If you rush ahead without being sure or get yourself into a pickle, you can lose some money. So be patient, do the tutorials, don’t get too greedy, and follow all the advice and guidance of Outplayed and my tips in this article.
Losing Money for the First Time
I got greedy! Some websites don’t like multiple people from the same household signing up for betting accounts. It often says it in their terms and conditions but having also successfully signed Hannah up for many sites I just figured none of them ever enforced that rule.
It turns out a couple of them do! When a great offer came along I signed us both up at the same time. This betting site required you to make numerous bets before funds would be released, and I was accumulating a fair chunk of money with both accounts I was handling.
With the cash growing at the bookies I decided to withdraw from the accounts, a big mistake! Withdrawals are often reviewed, and as I stupidly did them both at the same time it was obvious we had two accounts working from one address betting on the same events. They took all the money – about £140.
Can Bookies Just Take Your Money?
I argued with them and tried to get the money back but I had quite clearly broken their terms and conditions and I was not entitled to the money I had earned through the promotion. Thankfully by this point, I was thousands of pounds ahead in matched betting profit. This lesson sucked, but it didn’t hurt too bad.
The lesson here is don’t be a greedy goose! Slow and steady wins the race. I never made the same mistake and have not lost money again through matched betting.
Steady Cash But Getting Gubbed
As I burned through the sign-up offers for every bookie in the country, the monthly profits hit all-time highs, easily eclipsing £800 most months. But as the starter bonuses began to dry up, these figures dropped to around £500/month. But I was completely happy with the returns.
Getting Gubbed for the First Time
When a bookie realizes you are probably a matched bettor they inform you that you are no longer entitled to receive free bets. This is known as getting gubbed and it’s super annoying and for sure can eat into your profits. Hence why after your initial phase, the figures will drop to lower levels.
There’s nothing you can do about getting gubbed. You will still be able to bet with the site, but you won’t receive any free bets, bonuses, or credits for having done so. Sadly, you have to move on to the next bookie. I’ve found after years away some will delete your account and you can start again, but not all though.
Thankfully, new bookies come online all the time and the reload bets were enough to keep me busy, especially around big football fixtures and horse race meetings like the Cheltenham Festival. But I found my biggest months were during the first year doing the sign-ups before I started getting gubbed.
Casino Offers
Every betting site you visit has a casino section with an array of slot machines and table games like blackjack and roulette. Believing these to be cash-vacuums I predominantly stayed away from this section, which is detailed as ‘Advanced’ on the Outplayed website.
I had received a few free spins over my time just doing the sports betting, and although a couple of these had been fruitful, for the most part, they were a waste of time, or so I thought.
COVID Lockdowns and Time on My Hands
As COVID hit in early 2020 my business ground to a halt. As I mentioned I was a full-time musician and not only was nobody booking gigs but they were canceling them at a rate of knots. I lost 100 bookings in the first quarter of 2020 alone.
With football being canceled and no sport to speak of to do any matched betting, I turned to the casino section of Outplayed and decided to see if I could produce some cash. Having never really ventured near it, I proceeded with severe caution and watched every tutorial multiple times.
I managed to make money from the casino aspect of matched betting. It works in a very different way though and every sign-up offer for the casinos is different. But there is cash to be made if you take the time to learn how to do it right. It was a lifeline to me during a very difficult time in 2020.
How Do Casino Offers Work?
The casino offers are all a little different and need more explanation than I can write in a short paragraph. Outplayed does a fantastic job of walking you through every one of them though, far better than I can.
However, some of my biggest wins came through signing up and receiving free spins. There are few guaranteed wins with casino offers like there are with sports betting but a couple of times I hit it big with a free spin and banked £40-£50 on the press of a button – risk-free.
8 Years Later and Still Earning From Matched Betting
Hannah and I left the UK in 2022 and have been traveling the world since. Matched betting gets a little trickier in different countries and time zones, primarily because you are not supposed to be betting outside of the UK’s jurisdiction. Even with a decent VPN, getting on some betting sites is tricky.
Therefore, I pretty much stopped matched betting full-time in 2022 and now pick it up again when I am back home. In the early part of 2025, we found ourselves home for 3 months and I was delighted to find dozens of new bookies waiting for me to turn their free bets into withdrawable cash.
I made just under £300 in 2 weeks, however, this was during the Cheltenham Horse Racing Festival which helped bolster my profits. I was also delighted to find that some of the big bookies had forgotten all about me, and I was able to sign up for their big offers as a newbie with a clean slate once again!
My Final Thoughts on Matched Betting
Matched betting is a free cash machine. Once you learn how to do it, which doesn’t take long, you can make money appear out of thin air. Done right, there is no risk, no end game, and no tax to pay on gambling profits in the UK.
Click here to do the free trial with Outplayed today and start making some serious cash.
Top Tips For Matched Bettors Starting Off
As promised here are my top tips for beginners looking to get started in the matched betting world;
- Join a reputable site like Outplayed and follow their tutorials and guidance fully.
- Open a separate bank account for all of your matched betting activity. This makes it easier to keep track of your ins and outs.
- Keep a ledger of everything you do, from opening accounts and deposits to bets you make and withdrawals.
- Have a secure file or handwritten note of all of your login passwords and usernames for the betting sites. These can number in the hundreds!
- Be patient and work slowly through the sign-up offers.
- Verify your accounts with an active UK number and a UK address.
- Have an up-to-date PDF of a utility bill to hand should you need to provide proof of address to validate your betting accounts.
- Keep a spreadsheet of your financial progress.
- Enjoy your free cash!
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