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, price boosts are incentives offered by bookmakers 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 back 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 just straightforward back and lay bets and a great way of picking up some quick and easy profits.
The key difference between price boosts and arbs though is that price boosts are offered by bookmakers as an incentive. The bookmakers want you to take their boosts. With standard arbs, the odds aren’t supposed to be that high 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 fairly obvious 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 a number of sports, but football and horse racing are by far the most popular.
For example, the following price boosts were on offer as part of William Hill’s Happy Hour, where they feature 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 it’s the bigger named bookies that offer the most profitable ones and most frequently.
William Hill are a standout example with selected price boosts being offered most days. At the time of writing, you can get three William Hill Odds Boosts every day, which can be used on horse racing and greyhounds. Not only are these great for bagging some easy profits, but they can also be used to qualify for regular offers with little to no qualifying losses.
Paddy Power are another bookmaker who offer some great price boosts. They also regularly hand out ‘Power Ups’ as a reward for participating in their promotions. Paddy Power Power Ups can be used to boost the odds of selected markets once added to your betslip.
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
You need to find a price boost with back odds higher than the lay odds. This will allow you to lock in a guaranteed profit. 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). William Hill are 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 just as easy as placing a regular bet. You simply select the price boost to add it to your betslip, enter your stake and place the bet.
It’s worth noting that price boosts usually have a maximum stake. The maximum stake is usually 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 couldn’t be easier. You just need to find the right selection at the exchange and calculate your lay stake.
You can calculate your lay stake using my Matched Betting Calculator and 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 gives you a greater 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 that you should 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 guaranteed 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 risk-free shot at a bigger profit.
To calculate your underlay stake, you just 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 that you should 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 really depends on whether you want the consistent smaller profits or the less frequent bigger returns.
Do all price boosts have value?
It’s worth noting that just because a price is boosted, it doesn’t mean it’s profitable.
Once boosted, if the back odds aren’t higher than the lay odds, there’s no guaranteed profit to be had. In this instance, it’s likely that the odds were 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. They’re designed to target regular punters, so they often include multiple markets or obscure events such as…
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 though that such an approach is advantage play rather than matched betting and 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 special markets where Matchbook mirror the best bookmaker price boosts, giving you the chance to lay them off.
So, if you see an obscure selection like the boosts listed above, it usually means one of the big bookmakers is offering it as a price boost.
In this instance, Sky Bet were offering 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 gave us the opportunity 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 bookie in a short period of time as doing so may draw unwanted attention.
Laying off price boosts are some of the easiest profits you’ll make as a matched bettor and they’re completely risk-free!
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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.