Cheltenham Festival 2018 Offer – Sky Bet

The Cheltenham Festival 2018 gets underway on Tuesday and you don’t want to miss this Sky Bet Money Back Special! Simply place a bet on the first race at Cheltenham each day and if it loses, Sky Bet will refund our stake as a free bet, up to a maximum of £20.00. Translated into matched betting terms, this gives us a guaranteed overall profit of £48.00 and here’s how…

Qualifying Bets:

Losing stakes are refunded as a free bet, so this is effectively a risk-free bet offer.

Qualifying bets must be placed after 08:00 on Friday 23rd February 2018, to be eligible.

The following table shows a list of the eligible races…

Race Time Date
Supreme Novices’ Hurdle 13:30 Tuesday 13th March 2018
Ballymore Novices’ Hurdle 13:30 Wednesday 14th March 2018
JLT Novices’ Chase 13:30 Thursday 15th March 2018
Triumph Hurdle 13:30 Friday 16th March 2018

We need to select a horse with long odds in order to maximise our profit. The back and lay odds should tighten up on the day of each race. In the meantime, I’ll use fictional odds for the Supreme Novices’ Hurdle in the following example to illustrate how this offer should be done each day. I’ll update the table at the bottom of the post with some actual selections after each race.

I like to place my exchange lay bets with Betfair as they have great liquidity in the run up to races and the site is really easy to use.

We can work out our lay stake by using the ‘Risk-Free Bet’ setting on my matched betting calculator. We can enter £15.00 as our ‘Cashback’ figure as this is the amount we can expect to extract (75%) from our £20.00 free bet refund, should our horse lose…

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 £17.90…

Sky Bet logo

Place £20.00 on Summerville Boy @ 11.00 = Potential profit of £200.00

Betfair logo

Lay £17.90 on Summerville Boy @ 11.50 = Potential liability of £187.95

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

Summerville Boy wins + £200.00 – £187.95 = £12.05 profit
Summerville Boy doesn’t win – £20.00 + £17.00 + £15.00 (extract 75% from our £20.00 free bet) = £12.00 profit

So, regardless of the outcome and with some good odds, we should make a guaranteed profit of around £12.00 each day. With four days of racing to look forward to, this gives us an overall guaranteed profit of £48.00 on this Sky Bet Money Back Special!

If eligible, free bets will be credited within 24 hours of the race finishing. Free bets can be used on any sport and will be valid for 3 days.

I’ll update the following table with some actual selections after each race…

Race Selection Back Odds Lay Odds Profit
Supreme Novices’ Hurdle Summerville Boy 9.00 9.80 £31.11 *
Ballymore Novices’ Hurdle Next Destination 5.00 5.40 £10.09
JLT Novices’ Chase Kemboy 10.00 10.50 £11.81
Triumph Hurdle Mr Adjudicator 9.00 9.40 £11.76

* Summerville Boy won at SP odds of 10.00 (9/1), resulting in a profit of £31.11 courtesy of Sky Bet’s Best Odds Guaranteed promotion. *

* Overall profit of £64.77 on this Sky Bet offer. *

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Matt Kirman - Matched Betting Blogger

Matt KirmanMatched Betting Blogger

Since 2014, I’ve blogged over £85,000 worth of profit, and made it my mission to make matched betting accessible to everyone.