Best odds guaranteed at UK bookmakers — how the starting price clause pays, who offers it, and what it costs

Updated October 2026

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Best odds guaranteed turns a small phrase in a horse racing market into a promise the bookmaker keeps paying out on. The phrase sits next to almost every UK racing price, and very few readers who click it know exactly what it costs the firm and when it does or does not apply. This page works through what the rule is, who runs it, and what changes when a winning bet is settled at the bigger of the two prices a backer had the choice of.

• *Current as of 27 October 2026 · licence claims verified against the Gambling Commission’s public register.*

UK statute: who is allowed to take a BOG bet in the first place

A best odds guaranteed offer is only worth what the licence behind it can enforce. In Great Britain that licence comes from the Gambling Commission under the Gambling Act 2005, and since the Gambling (Licensing and Advertising) Act 2014 any operator whose remote facilities are used here must hold one regardless of where the operator is incorporated. A Curaçao, Malta or Gibraltar licence is not a substitute — that point matters for any backer comparing BOG offers across brands, because the strongest-sounding promotion on the loudest ad is hollow if the site is not on the Commission’s register.

The register itself is the whole test. It is searchable by business name, trading name, domain or account number, and the entry will tell the reader whether the licence is in force, what categories it covers, and which trading names it sits behind. Two trading names can run under a single licence — Ladbrokes and Coral both sit under the Entain group, Paddy Power and Betfair both sit under Flutter — so what looks like ten competitors in a comparison may be five licences and five sibling brands. The corollary matters as well: a brand the reader cannot find on the register is not holding a GB licence.

Betting on this side of the Irish Sea is one regime, and Northern Ireland sits under different rules. The 2005 Act covers England, Scotland and Wales, and a “GB-licensed” label means exactly that. A Northern Irish customer betting on a GB-licensed site is using that site under the GB framework, not a separate one.

Financial spread betting is the single exception. Where a product is a contract for differences or a spread bet on a financial market, regulation passes to the Financial Conduct Authority — Spreadex, for instance, holds Gambling Commission cover for fixed-odds betting and FCA cover for its spread side. The two permissions are not interchangeable, and a BOG-style promise on the spread book is a different proposition from the one on the racing market, because spread losses can exceed the deposit. That detail is the single sharpest edge on the page: spread products can take more than the customer paid in.

The Commission does not draw up a list of “permitted bets”. An operator holds a category of licence and offers markets under its own rules and the Licence Conditions and Codes of Practice. Best odds guaranteed lives inside that operator-level space, which is why the rule is stated differently across brands — what counts as a qualifying bet, whether it applies to singles only or extends to multiples, whether ante-post bets are included, and what cap applies to the uplift each winning selection can carry.

Betting exchanges sit under a separate licence category — remote betting intermediary — and they are not what this page is about. Back and lay pricing is a different mechanic, and the BOG promise belongs to the traditional bookmaker pricing model.

The offshore question in one paragraph

A GB licence is the price of admission, not the price of safety. An unlicensed site has no GAMSTOP membership, no Commission complaints route, no approved alternative dispute resolution, and no obligation under the bonus cap or the financial-vulnerability check, and an enforcement action against the operator does not put the customer’s balance right. No offence aimed at a backer who simply bets on such a site was found; what is lost is every protection a UK bettor takes for granted, and that is the honest framing.

Player safeguards: where the rules touch BOG bettors directly

Three regimes shape the everyday experience of a BOG customer, and each one is enforced through the licence rather than the betting market itself.

Identity comes first. Since 7 May 2019 the Commission has required name, address and date of birth to be verified before any deposit or any bet — including with a free bet or bonus. Anonymous play at a licensed site ended on that date, and a backer who has not been asked for proof at a GB-licensed operator is either dealing with a brand new account that has not hit the trigger or with a brand that is not where it claims to be.

Self-exclusion runs through GAMSTOP. Every GB-licensed remote operator is a member under a licence condition that has been mandatory since 31 March 2020. The minimum exclusion period is six months; one year and five years are the other lengths, and there is a five-year option with auto-renewal. After the minimum period the exclusion stays in place for a further seven years unless the customer asks GAMSTOP to lift it. The service runs online and on app; betting shops run a separate scheme and are not covered by GAMSTOP.

The financial vulnerability check is the next layer above identity. Since 28 February 2025 a licensed remote operator has to run a public-record check on any customer whose deposits minus withdrawals clear £150 across a rolling 30 days. That is a bankruptcy register, a county court judgment register or a similar trace — it is not a credit reference check and it is not an income check. The financial risk assessment, sometimes called the “affordability check” in the press, was announced in a staged plan published on 7 July 2026, and no start date is on the page. Until a date is set, write that the assessment is announced, staged, with no live start.

Deposit limits live in the Remote Technical Standards. The first changes have applied since 31 October 2025, a second phase was postponed to 30 September 2026, and whether the second phase is live today is not established. The principle is older: a gross deposit limit on a fixed time frame and a customer’s right to set their own ceiling. There is no state-set deposit or loss cap on betting; limits are the operator’s choice and the customer’s, and a self-set limit at a BOG site works the same way as anywhere else.

Advertising rules shape the welcome offer that sits near a BOG bet. Promotion rules in force since 19 January 2026 cap wagering requirements at 10x — under the cap no more than £100 of playthrough on a £10 bonus — and mixed-product promotions that require gambling on two or more product types, such as “bet on football to get free spins”, are banned. Whether the cap reaches free bets that carry no wagering condition, and any cap on the monetary value of a bonus, are points the rule does not settle.

There is a smaller but real point on payment methods. Credit cards have been banned for gambling in Great Britain since 14 April 2020 — that includes credit-card-funded payments through an e-wallet — and debit cards and bank-based payments sit outside the ban. No state list of permitted payment methods, no rule for or against cryptocurrency deposits, and no named-account rule were established; describe payment options qualitatively and from each operator’s own terms page.

Help lines exist for the backer who finds the rules closing in. GamCare runs the National Gambling Helpline; GambleAware funds treatment and education; NHS gambling clinics operate in several regions; Gamblers Anonymous runs local groups. None of these lines is a substitute for the licence-level protection, but each one exists because the protection cannot cover everything.

Bonuses, free bets and the BOG offer: how an incentive lands on a racing selection

The welcome package is the first thing a BOG bettors meets, and most of the welcome packages on the UK market look generous until their conditions are read. A £60 free-bet bundle for a £10 qualifying fixed-odds bet, a £10 fixed-odds bet unlocking three £10 free bets plus three spread bets and three further spread bets and a £1 race-index spread bet — both of these are current examples, the second on the spread side, the first on the fixed-odds side — and each one carries a clock the customer must beat.

Two clocks tend to run at once. The first is the qualifying window: the bet that unlocks the free bets must itself be placed and settled within a stated period after account opening. The second is the free-bet life itself: once credited, the free bet expires. Most packages quote seven days, some quote less. The arithmetic works either way: a £10 free bet at 1/2 minimum price does not move the needle the way £60 of stake-unreturned free bets at a 5.00 selection can, but the £60 package also requires the £10 qualifying bet to land and to be settled, and the customer pays for that exposure with whatever the £10 costs them.

Wagering requirements are the third rail. A package that hands back a free bet with no wagering condition is more transparent than one that requires the customer to roll the bonus value over ten times. The 10x cap that took effect on 19 January 2026 puts a ceiling on that, not a floor — meaning the worst of the market is now constrained, while the best can keep cleaner terms and offer stake-unreturned free bets with no playthrough.

A free bet whose stake is not paid back with a win has a value that depends on the price. At decimal odds p, a free bet of F pays F × (p − 1) on a winner; the “free” part of the name is in the stake, not in the winnings. Most operators refuse to settle free bets at odds shorter than 1/2 (1.50 decimal), and several refuse system bets and combinations on free-bet stake outright. QuinnBet, for instance, runs a seven-day clock, a 1/2 minimum and a 50/1 ceiling, and lets straight accumulators through but not the multi-leg systems.

The acca insurance bucket is its own territory. BoyleSports acca insurance — opt-in, minimum stake £5, minimum odds 1/2, maximum refund £20 as a free bet that expires after seven days, settle on the day — pays a free bet back when one leg of an accumulator lets the customer down, and the £20 ceiling keeps the upside modest. The win condition reads tightly: one losing leg, and the refund applies; multiple losers do not stack the refund higher. A reader who treats acca insurance as a BOG product on multiples misses the qualifier — it is a safety net on a defined event, not a guarantee on a defined price.

Best odds guaranteed itself is not a bonus. It is a settlement rule, not an incentive. That distinction gets lost when the welcome offer and the BOG tag sit on the same market. The one binds a customer to a wagering flow; the other binds the bookmaker to a payout at the higher of two prices on a winning bet. They do different work and they should not be confused.

How BOG works, what counts, and where it stops

The starting price is the second number that matters

Every runner in a British horse race carries an early price taken before the off, and the starting price — the SP — sits beside it. The SP is the price on an entry in the on-course fixed-odds market when the race begins, and it settles every bet where no fixed price was taken. For British horse races the SP is the median of a sample of bookmakers’ on-course prices — the shortest price in the longer-priced half, so at least half of the sample offered that price or longer. That detail is not a curiosity. The SP is not a single bookmaker’s price, it is the middle of a market, and a BOG settlement at the SP uses the median rather than the best on-course book.

The “guarantee” sits on top of that. If a backer takes a fixed price on a horse and the SP turns out higher, the bookmaker pays at the SP. The fixed price is the floor; the SP is the ceiling when SP is the larger of the two. The bookmaker’s exposure on the difference is paid on every winning BOG bet where SP exceeds the taken price, and on a horse that drifts through the market that exposure can be sharp — particularly on a long-priced outsider that firms at the off.

Where the rule takes a beating

Ante-post bets — the prices on a race run days or weeks ahead — are not BOG bets. The book has had time to manage the position and the rule does not apply. William Hill, for instance, pays BOG on UK and Irish horse racing from 8 AM on the day of the race, on both single and multiple bets; ante-post, tote and pari-mutuel bets are excluded. Other operators draw the line at different times. The 8 AM start is the convention, not the law.

Each-way bets are a quieter corner. Each-way doubles the stake — a unit stake becomes a win stake and an equal place stake — and on a horse that drifts the customer is paid the SP uplift on the win part and the place terms on the place part. The place terms vary by race type and by operator, and a backer who treats an each-way BOG bet as a doubled return at SP is reading the rule halfway.

Rule 4 deductions are where BOG does its most counter-intuitive work. When a horse is withdrawn from a race and the bookmakers reduce the odds on the remaining runners, the book applies a Rule 4 deduction to the winnings of any earlier price-taker. Most operators follow the convention. A few — Sky Bet is one — apply the deduction even when the SP ends up higher than the taken price, unless the horse returns at a bigger SP than the price taken, in which case the bet is paid at SP with no deduction. The punter who took 5/1 on a horse that is cut to 4/1 in the running and then drifts back to 6/1 SP faces an effective ceiling on the uplift in some houses; the punter in another house gets the full SP. Reading the small print before the race costs less than finding out after.

Multiples and accumulators carry their own shape. The rule can extend to both single and multiple bets — William Hill’s terms do — and the SP uplift is taken on each leg of the multiple, not on the combined price. A four-fold accumulator pays the SP on each winner individually, which is the only honest way to read a multiple BOG settlement. A reader expecting the SP on the multiplied product is reading the rule wrong.

Sky Bet caps the best odds guaranteed uplift at £50,000 per bet or per race for horse racing. That ceiling is the size of the backer’s loss on a horse at 500/1 that wins, and on the racing market only — football and other sports carry their own settlement rules and their own caps where they apply. Bookmakers publish the caps and the qualifying windows in their own terms, and the cap on the uplift is one of the two or three numbers that actually moves the page for a high-staking customer.

The margin behind every BOG price

The book’s margin is the second-order cost that nobody prints on the bet slip. A bookmaker does not have to set SP-favourable odds on a horse to win the day; it only has to set them right on average across the race card. The payout share of a market is the figure that falls out of the prices: for a two-way market priced 1.90 and 1.90, the payout share is 1 ÷ (1/1.90 + 1/1.90), which gives 0.95, and the margin is 1 − 0.95, or 5%. The margin is the share of every pound staked that the book keeps across the whole market, and the price the customer accepts already includes it. BOG and its SP uplift do not change the margin — they sit on top of it.

Two prices on the same two-way market tell different stories. 1.90 / 1.90 prices in a market with a 5% margin; 1.85 / 1.95 prices a market with a margin closer to 5.4% across two ways; 1.80 / 2.05 prices one with a margin closer to 6.4%. The prices the backer sees move with the margin, and the BOG promise gives the backer the larger of two already-margined prices when the SP is the larger. The book does not lose its margin in the BOG settlement; it pays the SP on top of it.

A reader who watches only the price of the chosen horse misses the margin on the rest of the market. A reader who watches prices across a market and over time will see when the book is tight and when it is loose, and the days the book is loose are the days a BOG bet on an early-drifter looks better. None of this changes the legal frame the rest of the page walks through — that is the Gambling Commission’s register, not the day’s price — but it explains why the price the customer takes on a Tuesday differs from the price on the Saturday.

Ten UK bookmakers with Best Odds Guaranteed reviewed

Ten licensed operators offer best odds guaranteed on horse racing in Great Britain, and a comparison across them turns on three matters: the licence under which the brand operates, how the BOG offer is settled on a winning bet, and where the brand sits best with the reader’s existing habits. The table that follows is a snapshot of the licence and the BOG terms as each operator publishes them. Where a brand does not publish a BOG term in a public place, the cell carries the no-data marker.

The table is built on three columns because those are the three matters a comparison needs and a reader can act on. The licence column is the proof that the brand is on the Commission’s register under the listed licensee; the BOG column is what each operator states in its own terms; and the gaps in that second column are honest gaps. A brand that has not published BOG terms in a place the comparison can read is not in this comparison better or worse than one that has — it is simply not yet measured on this question, and a backer who values the BOG promise reads it as a flag to ask the firm in question before staking on the day.

BoyleSports — for the customer who already bets multiples

The BOG term in the public BoyleSports material is acca insurance, and it is built around the multiple rather than the single. Opt in, stake £5 or more, hit minimum odds of 1/2 on each leg, and a losing one-leg accumulator lands up to £20 back as a free bet that expires in seven days. That is a clean small-stake refund for a customer already buying accumulators on the racing card. A backer who bets singles and the occasional each-way is paying for protection they would not normally claim; a backer who stacks four-folds and five-folds on a Saturday afternoon is reading the right page. The licence is the standard Commission cover at 039469-R-319383-025.

The acca insurance sits on the same licence that lets the firm offer Best Odds Guaranteed on singles under its racing product. BoyleSports does not publish the SP timing or the qualifying-window detail in the place the comparison could read, which is why the table cell carries the no-data marker for the BOG line. The acca insurance line is the published shape, and a backer making the choice based on settled rules rather than marketing terms reads this brand as a multiple-bettor’s BOG play, with the standard cover.

BetUK — for the LeoVegas customer in the parent group’s stable

BetUK is one of several brands LeoVegas Gaming PLC operates under the same Commission account at 039198-R-319450-029, and the LeoVegas group has a known shape: deep casino product, a sports book bolted on, a tighter welcome offer than the racing-focused independents. The published shape on this side reads the same — free bets that exclude virtual sports, esports and non-UK/IE horse racing, with a minimum odds floor applied. A backer whose card is mostly Premier League singles and a flutter on the Irish racing will sit comfortably; a backer whose card is graded stakes on the all-weather in January will read the exclusions twice before staking.

The BOG term is not published by the operator. The brand is licensed, the welcome offer is constrained in the way LeoVegas brands are, and the comparison turns on the welcome shape rather than on the racing settlement. That is the trade: a backer taking BetUK is buying into a sports book with a casino product behind it, not the racing-led operator most of this comparison is built around.

London Bet — for the customer who values a UK publisher line on the licence

London Bet is published by Thistle Bet Limited and lists the standard Commission cover on its 17+ App Store listing. The brand does not publish a BOG term in the place the comparison could read, and the comparison reflects that honestly. The licence is the line a backer checks first, and on that line the brand reads cleanly.

The verdict on a brand that has not published the settlement detail is straightforward: it is licensed, it offers racing, and the backer who wants the SP uplift in writing should ask the firm before staking on the day. A backer who treats the absence of a public BOG term as the absence of a BOG offer is over-reading.

DragonBet — for the Welsh-shop reader who wants a BOG product on a smaller scale

DragonBet’s licence sits at 064908-R-339041-003 under DragonBet Ltd, and its published shape emphasises Welsh football and rugby alongside racing, American football, in-play and bet builder markets. The product range is wider than the smaller racing-led brands and narrower than the multi-product groups, and the BOG term itself is not in the public sources the comparison could read. The bet builder presence is the point a backer reads first if their card is midweek Premier League and the Saturday rugby.

For the customer whose shop is Welsh football or whose Saturday build is around the rugby card in Wales, DragonBet carries the markets a national bookie would carry, plus the local product a national bookie would not. The BOG term, where it exists, lives inside that card; the comparison lists the brand as licensed and lets the BOG cell carry the no-data marker.

Bet600 — for the racing-first customer who reads the BOG rule in plain English

Bet600 is the cleanest BOG offer in the comparison, and the cleanest BOG offer is usually the shortest. The brand states the rule directly: if the starting price is bigger than the early or show price taken, the bet is paid at the SP. That is the rule, in three clauses, in the form a backer would want to read at 7:55 AM on a Saturday. The licence at 044731-R-323941-016 is held by Tyche Tech Limited, and the brand carries its cover on every other product it sells.

The trade-off sits in the rest of the product. A racing-first brand with one or two prices per race card is not the book for a customer whose weekend is the Premier League, a Champions League midweek and a build on the rugby league. It is the book for a customer whose card is the racing — and on that card the BOG rule is in the form that pays.

Matchbook — for the customer who wants a different mechanic entirely

Matchbook is a betting exchange under a remote betting intermediary licence at 039504-R-319407-024 (Triplebet Limited), and the BOG rule does not transfer to an exchange. The product is back and lay, with customers pricing the market rather than the book, and the firm’s bet builder, multiples, in-play and live streaming of horse racing and greyhounds sit on that exchange layer. A backer comparing exchange prices to bookmaker prices with the BOG uplift is comparing two different mechanics, not two equivalent offers.

A backer whose instinct is to lay a horse off for a trade, or to take a price on a long-priced runner before the market forms, is on the right page. A backer whose instinct is to take a price and let the BOG rule settle the difference is on the wrong page. The exchange is licensed — that is the test this comparison runs — but it is licensed under a different licence category for a different product, and the comparison reads it as a side-channel rather than a peer.

Sporting Index — for the spread customer who accepts that losses can exceed the deposit

Sporting Index is a sports spread product, and the BOG rule is not the natural fit for a spread book. The new-customer offer sits on the fixed-odds side: a £10 fixed-odds bet at 1/2 minimum unlocks three £10 fixed-odds free bets, three £5 Total Goals spread bets, three £5 Winning Favourites spread bets and a £1 Race Index spread bet, and the qualifying bet cannot be placed in play or cashed out early. The full suite is spread-bet-led, with the fixed-odds side framed as the on-ramp.

The shape is not a BOG offer, and the brand is honest about that. The trade-off is the spread product’s exposure profile: a customer whose instincts are spread-shaped accepts that spread losses can exceed the deposit, and that is the different game that sits under the licence at 027343-R-308898-011.

Spreadex — for the customer who reads the dual licence before placing either side

Spreadex holds both Gambling Commission cover at 008835-R-104580-022 (fixed odds and casino) and FCA cover for the financial spread side. The two permissions are not interchangeable. The fixed-odds welcome is £60 in free bets for a £10 qualifying fixed-odds bet, with the free bets usable across fixed odds and spread betting, and the qualifying bet must be placed within 28 days of opening the account. The 28-day window is the longest qualifying window in the comparison by some margin, and it changes the timing of the offer for a customer whose account opens in midweek and whose racing card does not fall until the Saturday.

The dual-licence shape carries an edge that the rest of the comparison does not. A backer who understands that financial spread betting is FCA-regulated and that losses on that side can exceed the deposit is reading the product correctly. A backer who treats the spread legs as a casino bonus is reading the wrong page. The brand is licensed, the welcome is large, and the comparison reads Spreadex as a fixed-odds-first customer with a spread shoulder.

William Hill — for the racing customer who wants the timing written into the terms

William Hill is the brand that has published the timing of its BOG offer on both singles and multiples, and the timing is the part most racing customers want written down before they place the bet. The published line: best odds guaranteed on UK and Irish horse racing from 8 AM on the day of the race, on both single and multiple bets, with ante-post, tote and pari-mutuel bets excluded. The 8 AM start is the convention across most large bookmakers, and the ante-post exclusion is the convention too, but the William Hill terms are unusually clear on the multiple side — multiple bets at the SP uplift on each leg, the rule held in writing rather than inferred.

The licence at 039225-R-319373-015 sits under WHG (International) Limited, and the parent group includes a deep casino product the racing customer rarely needs. For a backer whose card is the daily racing and whose concern is the SP timing on multiples, William Hill carries the cleanest published BOG line on a national brand. The trade-off is a familiar one on the national bookmakers: a smaller product edge on weekly promotions than the racing-led independents, balanced by the standard of the published terms.

QuinnBet — for the customer who values a published free-bet clock and a published price ceiling

QuinnBet’s published free-bet terms are the cleanest in the comparison on the combinability question, and the combinability question is the one a backer hits when reading the small print on a Monday morning. Free bets are valid for seven days from credit, usable on any market at 1/2 (1.5) minimum and 50/1 maximum odds; straight accumulators are allowed, but Trixies, Patents and Yankees are not. That is the rule, in writing, on combinability. The BOG term itself is not in the public sources the comparison could read, and the cell reflects that honestly.

The brand sits on the standard Commission cover at 061011-R-335683-004 under QuinnBet (Gibraltar) Limited. The verdict on a brand whose published terms are clearer than its competitors’ on combinability is that a backer whose card is the seven-day free-bet clock and the multi-leg question has the right page in front of them.

How the rest of the rules shape a BOG bettor’s week

The legal frame and the marketing rules sit underneath everything else on this page, and two of them are worth pulling forward because they shape the experience of betting on a Saturday morning in a way most readers do not connect to the licence.

The credit-card ban matters for funding. A backer who wants to fund an account with a credit card, including via an e-wallet that holds a credit card underneath, cannot. The ban has been in force since 14 April 2020, applies at every GB-licensed operator, and a £20 deposit on a credit card across a £5 accumulator is a cancelled transaction. Debit cards and bank-based payments sit outside the ban, and a backer whose only funding line is a bank transfer or a debit card never notices the rule.

The bonus cap is the marketing line that determines how the welcome package reads. The 10x cap, in force since 19 January 2026, makes the worst-case playthrough on a £10 bonus no more than £100 of qualifying bets, and the mixed-product ban — the rule that requires a wagering condition across betting and casino together to be banned outright — closes off the worst of the cross-product offers. A BOG customer’s free-bet package is not the target of either rule, because a free bet with no wagering condition is outside both, and the cleanest BOG-aligned offers sit outside both. The welcome shape is not the BOG shape, and a backer who conflates the two carries the marketing line into the racing judgement.

Fundamentals: what a BOG market is and is not

The fundamentals of a BOG market turn on three ideas a reader can carry forward. The first is that the SP is the median of a market, not the best on-course book. The second is that BOG is a settlement rule, not an incentive. The third is that the uplift is capped and excluded from a defined set of bets — ante-post, tote, sometimes the first hour of the morning market — and the cap moves the size of the backer’s loss on a horse at 500/1 that wins.

A market with prices set at 1.90 and 1.90 has a margin of 5%, which is the share of every pound staked across the market that the book keeps on average. That figure is not printed on the bet slip, and it does not need to be — the prices carry it, and the BOG settlement at the larger of two already-margined prices sits on top of it. A BOG bettor who watches prices across a market sees the margin; one who watches only their own runner sees the price they took. Both readers are right about what they are watching, and one of them is reading the market more fully.

The starting price itself is settled when the race begins, and the bookmaker’s settlement runs from there. A late non-runner can change a settled price in the minutes before the off, which is why Rule 4 deductions sit in the small print and why Sky Bet’s rule on Rule 4 is the exception the reader should be aware of. None of this is unique to one brand — every GB-licensed bookmaker offers some version of it, and the comparison here turns on the published version rather than the inferred one.

FAQ

How does a backer confirm a UK bookmaker is licensed?

The Commission’s public register at the back of the UKGC website is searchable by business name, trading name, domain or account number. A backer who enters the brand’s domain and finds a current licence in the listed categories — remote general betting standard (real events), remote betting intermediary for the exchanges, and so on — has the proof. The register is the whole test, and a brand that is not on it should not be staked at.

Which bookmakers do best odds guaranteed in the UK today?

Every large national bookmaker offers BOG on UK and Irish horse racing by convention, with the timing and the qualifying product written into each firm’s terms. The comparison above lists ten licensed brands whose BOG position is published or, where unpublished, recorded as a gap the backer should close by asking the firm directly.

Which bookmakers offer best odds guaranteed and pay at the starting price?

William Hill, Sky Bet and Bet600 are the brands the comparison could read most directly on the SP settlement. Each pays at the bigger of the price taken and the SP, with the SP timing and the qualifying product written into the firm’s terms, and each carries its own cap on the size of the uplift.

How is the return on a bet worked out from the stake and the odds?

The return on a winning single is the stake multiplied by the decimal odds; the profit is the stake multiplied by the odds minus one. A £10 single at 5.00 returns £50 and profits £40. A combination bet multiplies the odds of each leg into one price and applies the same rule, so a four-fold at four legs of 2.00 each — a 16.00 combined price — returns £160 on a £10 stake.

What is the bookmaker’s margin, and how is it seen in the odds?

The margin is the share of every pound staked on a market that the bookmaker keeps on average, after all winning bets have been paid. It is the inverse of the market’s payout share: a payout share of 95% is a margin of 5%. On a two-way market priced 1.90 and 1.90, the payout share is 1 ÷ (1/1.90 + 1/1.90) ≈ 0.95, giving a margin near 5%; on a market priced 1.85 and 1.95, the margin sits closer to 5.4%. The margin is the second-order cost in every price the backer accepts.

Content created by the «UK betting» team