Price boosts, odds boosts, enhanced odds or whatever the bookies choose to call them are well worth keeping an eye out for.
The profits are usually small, but there are so many flying around each day, they soon add up.
In this guide, I’ll explain what a price boost is, how to find them and most importantly, how to lay them and bag those profits.
What are price boosts?
In a nutshell, bookmakers offer price boosts to attract new customers and keep existing customers betting. By increasing their odds on selected markets, they can attract bets from regular punters ahead of rival brands.
Think of them as the bookmaker equivalent of a ‘3 for 2’ offer in your local supermarket. It’s just their way of giving you more for your money.
Unlike regular bookmaker offers where you might have a few days to get involved, price boosts don’t hang around for long. Once a certain amount of bets have been placed, the boost ends, and the odds revert to normal.
How do price boosts work?
Price boosts work exactly like arbs in that you’re looking for higher back odds than the lay odds. They’re straight back and lay bets and a great way of picking up some quick and easy profits.
The difference between price boosts and arbs is that bookmakers offer price boosts as an incentive. The bookmakers want you to take their boosts. The odds aren’t supposed to be that high with standard arbs, so it’s best to avoid them as you don’t want to attract attention to your accounts.
How to find price boosts
Price boosts tend to be in prominent places so that everyone sees them. You’ll often find them featured on a bookmaker’s homepage or under a ‘Specials’ or ‘Boosts’ tab on the main menu.
You’ll see them offered on many sports, but football and horse racing are by far the most popular.
For example, William Hill offered the following horse racing price boosts for a ‘Happy Hour’ promotion. They featured a different boost every 15 minutes for a selected hour of the day.
There are usually plenty of price boosts flying around in the build-up to big televised football matches too. Bookmakers are looking to target customers that will be watching the action. If you’re active on social media, keep an eye out for posts on their accounts.
If you haven’t already, you should also opt in to receive promotional offers from all bookmakers. They send out some tasty price boosts from time to time to try and entice you back in.
Which bookies are best for price boosts?
Most bookmakers run price boosts to some extent, but the bigger named bookies offer the most profitable and more frequently.
William Hill are a standout example; offering selected price boosts most days. At the time of writing, you can get three William Hill Odds Boosts every day to use on horse racing and greyhounds. Not only are these great for bagging some easy profits, but you can use them to qualify for regular offers with little to no qualifying losses.
Paddy Power are another bookmaker offering some great price boosts. They often hand out ‘Power Ups’ too as a reward for participating in their promotions. You can use Paddy Power Power Ups to boost the odds of selected markets once added to your bet slip.
Other bookmakers that deserve a special mention are BetVictor, Betway, Ladbrokes, Sky Bet and Unibet.
How to profit from a price boost
Step 1: Find a profitable price boost
A price boost needs to have higher back odds than the lay odds for it to be profitable. Once you’ve found an opportunity, it’s just a case of placing your bets and waiting for the profit to roll in.
Let’s say you’ve seen that William Hill are boosting the odds on Happy Romance to win the 13:15 Newmarket as part of their ‘Happy Hour’ promotion (above). They’re boosting the odds from 3.50 (5/2) to a very nice 5.00 (4/1).
You check the lay odds at Betfair, and you find that you can lay Happy Romance at odds of 4.30.
Step 2: Place your price boost bet
Placing a price boost bet is as straightforward as placing a regular bet. You select the price boost to add it to your bet slip, enter your stake and place the bet.
It’s worth noting that price boosts usually have a maximum stake. The maximum stake is generally specified, but if not, you’ll soon find out what it is when you try to place your bet.
The maximum stake for your Happy Romance price boost is £10.
Place £10.00 on Happy Romance @ 5.00 = Potential profit of £40.00
Step 3: Lay your price boost
Laying a price boost is pretty straightforward. You need to find the matching selection at the exchange and then calculate your lay stake using my Matched Betting Calculator. You have a couple of different options depending on how you want to play it.
Your first option is to place a standard lay bet which gives you the same amount of profit whatever happens. Your second option is to underlay, which provides you with a larger profit if the price boost wins, and you’ll break even if it doesn’t.
Standard lay method
When using the calculator for price boosts, you need to use the ‘Qualifying Bet‘ setting. Once you’ve entered your stake and odds, your calculator should look something like this.
As you can see, the calculator tells you to lay £11.76 against Happy Romance.
Lay £11.76 against Happy Romance @ 4.30 = Potential liability of £38.80
The outcomes at the bottom of the calculator above confirm that you’ll make a fixed profit of £1.17 whatever happens!
The profit may seem small, but that’s a return of 11.7% on your £10 stake, which is pretty good!
Underlay method
If you feel the profit via the standard lay is too small, you can underlay to give yourself a free shot at a larger potential profit.
To calculate your underlay stake, you need to select the ‘Advanced‘ toggle at the top of the calculator and click the ‘Underlay‘ tab.
As you can see, the calculator tells you to lay £10.53 against Happy Romance.
Lay £10.53 against Happy Romance @ 4.30 = Potential liability of £34.74
The outcomes at the bottom of the calculator above show you that by laying the smaller amount of £10.53, you’ll now make a profit of £5.26 if Happy Romance wins. If Happy Romance doesn’t win, you’ll break even, and there’s no harm done.
It’s entirely up to you which method you choose to adopt for price boosts. It depends on whether you want the consistent smaller profits or the less frequent larger returns.
Do all price boosts have value?
It’s worth noting that a boosted price doesn’t always mean it’s profitable.
Once boosted, if the back odds aren’t higher than the lay odds, there’s no fixed profit available. In this instance, the odds were likely poor to start with, or the boost was only small.
If you see a price boost that covers more than one football match, these are known as enhanced multiples. You can lay multiples using the ‘Multiples’ feature from Smarkets, the pre-built accumulator markets at Betfair or the ‘Enhanced Specials’ markets at Matchbook.
You’ll also see plenty of price boosts that you cannot lay at the exchanges. Like the following examples, bookmakers design them to target regular punters, often including multiple markets or obscure events.
2/1 – Liverpool to win & over 10.5 corners
4/1 – Chelsea to score in the first 20 minutes
10/1 – Rashford to score from outside the box
Just because you can’t lay them, though, it doesn’t necessarily mean they’re not profitable. If you believe the boosted odds are a fair bit higher than the actual odds of the outcome happening, then there’s value in placing the bet.
It’s important to stress that such an approach is advantage play rather than matched betting. Managing your bankroll is key to being profitable in the long term.
Matchbook Enhanced Specials
It’s always worth keeping an eye on the ‘Enhanced Specials’ markets at Matchbook. These are unique markets where Matchbook mirror the best bookmaker price boosts, giving you the chance to lay them off.
So, suppose you see an obscure selection like the boosts listed above. In that case, it usually means one of the big bookmakers is offering it as a price boost.
In this instance, Sky Bet offered odds of evens on Fernandes to have 1+ shots on target for Man Utd against Leeds. As you can see, this ‘Enhanced Specials – Shots On Target’ market at Matchbook allowed us to lay it off at odds of 1.69 and lock in a small profit.
Final words
Price boosts should be a big part of your daily matched betting activity. The profits are relatively small compared to regular offers, but you should be able to find plenty of them.
Any boost that gives a profit above 5% of your stake is worth considering. Just be careful not to take too much value from the same bookmaker in a short period, as doing so may draw unwanted attention.
With no qualifying losses involved, price boosts are some of the most straightforward profits you’ll make as a matched bettor, so don’t miss out!
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Matt Kirman – Matched Betting Blogger
Since 2014, I’ve blogged over £60,000 worth of profit, and made it my mission to make matched betting accessible to everyone.