Betfred Offer – Barcelona v Man City

Barcelona host Manchester City tonight and Betfred are getting in on the action! Place a single bet of at least £10.00 on any pre-match market for Barcelona v Manchester City and Betfred will give us a £5.00 free bet to be used in play on the same match. Translated into matched betting terms, this gives us a guaranteed profit of £3.49 and here’s how…

Qualifying Bet:

If you’re unfamiliar with qualifying bets, please see my Qualifying Bet Strategy page for a walk-through guide on how it should be done.

Qualifying bets must be placed between 09:00 and 19:45 today (Wednesday 19th October 2016), at odds of 1.50 (1/2) or greater, to be eligible.

Having looked at the odds available, I’ve opted to place my qualifying bet on Barcelona in the Match Result market.

I like to place my exchange lay bets with Smarkets as they have great liquidity, the site is really easy to use and they only charge 2% commission in comparison to the 5% charged by other betting exchanges.

We can calculate our lay stakes using my matched betting calculator…

Back Bet (Bookie)

%

Lay Bet (Betting Exchange)

%

Min £
Max £
Lay stake required: £
Bookie
Exchange
Cashback
Total
If back (bookie) bet wins
£
£
£
= £
If lay (exchange) bet wins
£
£
£
= £
Total profit: £

Optimal Underlay

Lay stake required: £
Exchange liability: £

If back (bookie) bet wins: £
If lay (exchange) bet wins: £

Optimal Overlay

Lay stake required: £
Exchange liability: £

If back (bookie) bet wins: £
If lay (exchange) bet wins: £

As you can see, the calculator tells us that our lay stake should be £9.94…

Betfred Logo

Place £10.00 on Barcelona @ 1.571 = Potential profit of £5.71

smarkets white

Lay £9.94 on Barcelona @ 1.60 = Potential liability of £5.97

Let’s have a look at our potential profit/loss for the possible outcomes…

Barcelona win + £5.71 – £5.97 = £0.26 loss
Barcelona don’t win – £10.00 + £9.74 (£9.94 minus 2% commission) = £0.26 loss

So, regardless of the result of the match, we will lose £0.26 in qualifying for our £5.00 free in play bet.

Free Bet:

Our £5.00 free bet will be credited within 15 minutes of kick-off (19:45 on Wednesday 19th October 2016) and will be valid until 09:00 on Thursday 20th October 2016.

It’s impossible to know what odds will be available until the match has kicked off but by using straightforward matched betting, we should be able to extract 75% out of the £5.00 free bet as cash, so £3.75. If we take into account our qualifying loss of £0.26, this gives us a guaranteed profit of £3.49!

Extracting profit from our free bet can be a little tricky when betting in play. My advice is to wait until half-time to place your free bet and then lay them at Smarkets. This is simply because the odds don’t fluctuate as much as when the game is live. There’s nothing worse than placing a free bet on a market and then something happens in the game that changes the odds before you have chance to get your lay bet on! I tend to look at the correct score markets first and then if I can’t find anything suitable I move onto goal scorer markets.

If you can’t wait until half-time, you might want to look at placing it on 1-1, 2-1 or 3-1 whilst the score is at 0-0. By selecting a scoreline where both teams score, it reduces the risk of the odds fluctuating unfavourably.

Got a question?
Leave me a comment below

I usually respond within 24 hours.

Matt Kirman - Matched Betting Blogger

Matt KirmanMatched Betting Blogger

Since 2014, I’ve blogged over £70,000 worth of profit, and made it my mission to make matched betting accessible to everyone.