Sky Bet Offer – Middlesbrough v Hull City

To celebrate their sponsorship of the Football League, Sky Bet are offering free in play bets on some of the big televised football league matches. Simply place a single bet of £20.00 or more pre-match on Middlesbrough v Hull City tonight and Sky Bet will give us a £5.00 free bet to be used in play. Translated into matched betting terms, this gives us a guaranteed profit of £2.90 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 they should be done.

We must opt-in on the promotion page to be eligible for this offer. It’s entirely up to you what you place your qualifying bets on, as long as you place them at the minimum odds of 1.50 (1/2) or above. Having looked at the odds available, I’ve opted to place my qualifying bet on a Hull City win.

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 stake 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 £19.54…

skybet

Place £20.00 on Hull City @ 3.40 = Potential profit of £48.00

smarkets white

Lay £19.54 on Hull City @ 3.50 = Potential liability of £48.85

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

Hull City win + £48.00 – £48.85 = £0.85 loss
Hull City don’t win – £20.00 + £19.15 = £0.85 loss

So, regardless of the result of the match, we will lose £0.85 in qualifying for our £5.00 free in play bet.

Free Bet:

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 £0.85, this gives us a guaranteed profit of £2.90!

Extracting profit from our free bets 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 it at the betting exchange. 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.

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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.