Bet Get – Sign Up Offers From UK Betting Sites

More and more betting sites are offering “bet and get” style sign up offers rather than traditional matched bets or deposit bonuses, and we’ve made a site about them. Bet and get offers tend to be for fixed amounts but can be very generous, meaning that an initial deposit of £5 could see you being awarded £30 in free bets, or more!

Best Bet & Get Free Bets For April, 2024

Bet £10

Min odds are evens

Get £50

Mix of free bets and free spins

Claim Offer

New customers only. Register (excl. 13/04/24) with WELCOME50. First bet £10+ at Evens (2.0)+ on Sports within 7 days to get Free Bets: £20 In-Play, £20 Acca & 50 x £0.20 (£10) Free Spins on Fishin’ Frenzy within 10 hours of settlement. 7-day expiry. Eligibility & payment exclusions apply. Full T&Cs apply. #ad

We regularly update this list and are always on the look out for new offers – so if you find something that you think is worth listing, let us know! Terms and conditions will apply to all offers so make sure you read the significant terms before claiming. And always bet responsibly.

What Kind of Betting Offers Are There?

When it comes to bet and get deals there tend to be two camps depending on how much you want to deposit, with the value of the free bets varying roughly proportional to the qualifying deposit:

Bet £5 Get £20 or £30

A fiver is often the minimum amount you can deposit at a betting site, so it makes sense than the smallest bet and get offers are triggered by £5. These kinds of offers dish out somewhere between £20 and £30 in free bets, normally split into multiple smaller bets such as four £5 free bets or three £10 free bets. Sometimes these offers will contain a casino portion, such as £20 in free bets and £10 in slot spins.

Bet £10 Get £40, £50 or £60

For larger deposits there are often larger bonuses up for grabs. For £10 there tend to be offers that sit in the £40 to £60 range, although these are much more likely to be made up of non-free bet components. This isn’t always the case, but there definitely seems to be a trend for more casino and lottery bets to be included in the larger bonuses.

Note: For both deposit amounts we offer lists of the relevant offers, just click the relevant link above.

Learn the Lingo

If you’re new to these kinds of betting offer then you might not be too familiar with some of the terms. Here’s a quick run down:

• Qualifying Bet – This is the “Bet” part of a bet and get offer. So if you are claiming a Bet £5 Get £20 offer then the qualifying bet is the “Bet £5” bit. The qualifying bet is how much you need to wager of your own money in order to trigger the offer. Most of the offers we see tend to be either £5 or £10.
• Minimum Odds – Most bet related offers incorporate minimum odds into their qualifying bets, and also sometimes to the free bets (but not always). These are the odds that your bet must be placed at in order to be eligible for the welcome bonus. So if an offer has minimum odds of evens, you’ll need to place your bet at 2.0 or more or you won’t receive the free bets.
• Free Bet – A free bet is the cornerstone of any decent sports related bet get offer. Whilst the qualifying bet is the bet you need to place in order to qualify for the promotion, the free bet is the part that you’ll receive as a bonus. Free bets often come as tokens for set amounts and can be used in place of money for a bet that you want to place.
• Stake Not Returned – A common term that you’ll see within the terms of an offer that involves free bets is “free bet stake not returned”. This means that if you place a £5 bet using free bet and it wins, you’ll only receive the winnings from the free bet and not the free bet itself. The opposite of this is “stake returned” but that is much less common these days.
• Cash Out – To cash out doesn’t mean to withdraw, at least in this instance. Cash out refers to the ability to close out a bet early based on the current odds. Because this ends your bet you normally can’t use cash out in conjunction with any bet and get offer – including both the qualifying and free bet portions.
• Wager Requirement – Wagering requirements don’t normally apply to free bets for sports, but you normally will have them for anything casino related. So if your offer comes with free spins or a slots bonus, you’ll have to wager the bonus a set number of times before the bonus and winnings are converted to cash. This means that if you have a £10 slots bonus with a 10x wagering requirement, you need to bet £100 on slots before withdrawing.

About the Sites

Whilst all of the offers listed in the previous section come from reputable and trustworthy betting sites we are aware that some of you might want to know a bit more about the brands themselves and the companies that operate them. In the next section you’ll find a table that tells you who ultimately operates the site, what license they run under and what safer gambling tools they offer.

Site	Operator	UKGC License	Deposit Protection	IBAS	Gamstop
	Blue Star Planet Limited	43173	Medium	Yes	Yes
	888 UK Limited	39028	Medium	No	Yes
	Petfre (Gibraltar) Limited	39544	None	Yes	Yes
	LC International Limited	54743	High	Yes	Yes
	LC International Limited	54743	Medium	Yes	Yes

As you can see many sites belong to a larger group with some operators being represented by multiple brands in the table. For example, Coral and Ladbrokes are both run by the same company – something that is becoming increasingly common given the rate at which betting companies are merging and being bought out.

Key Terms

• Operator: This is the legal entity that runs the site and that is responsible for the license. This will also be who holds your money and is responsible for your bets. Some companies are also part of larger groups. For example, Coral are operated in the UK by LC International Limited who are owned by the GVC group – a massive online gambling company who also run numerous other brands.
• License: This is the reference number of the UK Gambling Commission license. We’ve also linked directly to the license page on the UKGC site so that you can check the details for yourself.
• Deposit Protection: By law all betting sites have to tell you how they protect your money in the unlikely scenario where they go bust. Currently there is no law to say that the funds have to be segregated but they at least have to tell you if they are or not. There are three levels: Not Protected – where the money is not segregated and so at risk if anything were to happen to the bookie, Medium Protection – where procedures and/or insurance is in place to ensure player funds are returned to them if the company stops trading and High Protection – where the customer funds are held in a legally separate account and controlled by an independent party or auditor. See here for more details.
• IBAS: Many sites, but not all, are signed up to the IBAS dispute mediation service. IBAS will act as an adjudicator for any complaints you may have with the site.
• Gamstop: The Gamstop register is now a legal requirement of UK licensed sites and allows players to self exclude from all licensed betting sites in one go. Exclusion is non reversible and can be set for a period of 6 months, 1 year or 5 years.

Is Online Betting Safe?

As the online betting industry continues to grow, the impact of players safety becomes more of a priority. The UK government has put incredible pressure on the betting industry, in particular, to make sure that players are safe, and any financial transactions are completed without hitch.

The short answer to the question is yes, online betting is safe. But there are caveats and safe sites only fall into the bracket of fully licensed sites. If there was no license, then we would assume that the site is not safe.

Transparency is one of the biggest innovations within the online betting sector over the last decade or so. It’s now easier to research information about betting companies than it ever has been.

The UKGC has also opened up their website to the public to allow them to perform their own research. You’re now able to simply type in the name of the betting site you need the info on and it will ping back any licensing information it has. What’s great about this is that not only can you see if the site is licensed, but also what type of license they hold.

For example, they will include information on what products it’s licensed to use (sports, casino, poker, bingo etc.) when the licenses were issued, the reference number, address and other helpful details.

On top of this, there are several independent companies that betting sites can register with. Many of these are now mandatory and linked into the license that the UKGC will issue.

KYC & Customer Verification

The gambling industry has seen some huge changes over the last couple of years, with one of the biggest being that of KYC (Know Your Customer). This has been introduced to make sure that betting sites and the like know exactly who is signing up and playing on their site.

It’s all come on the back of an increased number of fake and fraudulent accounts that could get access to gambling sites. Some included underage players and others including those that might have previously been banned or excluded from the site.

Even though this has made registering on new betting sites a little more time consuming, please be aware that this is without a doubt for the greater good of the industry. It allows gambling sites to keep those who shouldn’t be playing off and provides a much safer platform for those who can get access.

Also, it’s worth noting that this is now the law, as outlined by the UK Gambling Commission. So, if a betting site were not to ask you about all this information then alarm bells should start to ring.

Different procedures are in place for this and each betting site will differ on what line they decide to take. Here are a few common processes that are used.

The first, and most popular is that of proof of ID. For this, you will likely need to send two forms of information in, which will be proof of address and photo ID. Some sites will accept things like a driving license for both of these, but other documents can include bank statements, utility bills, passports and ID cards.

You don’t need to send in the original documents for the most part, and simply taking a photo on your smartphone, as long as it’s clear, will suffice.

If a betting site needs a little more information, then they may request to do a soft credit check on your account. This will allow them to get a little more information about you including things like the amount of debt you have and if you are a homeowner.

Finally, they may even ask you to complete a proof of wealth check. This will mean that you need to outline how much money you earn and then provide proof of this, usually via payslips.

This is part of their affordability checks and some betting sites will limit the amount you can deposit and then wager, based on this. Even though this is still fairly new in the industry, it’s one of the best ways for a bookmaker to learn what is a safe sum of money for a player to wager and then limit accounts from that.

There are no hard and fast rules as to which of these KYC processes you will have to complete. They are all based on a case by case process, meaning that each player and each betting site will differ.

We highly recommend that you take the time to factor all these processes into setting up your account and have them to hand when registering. This is not something that is optional and if you are unwilling to provide this sort of information, then you won’t get access to the betting site.

When you get asked for this info will differ as well. Some betting sites ask as soon as you sign up, some before you’ve even logged in and some before you make your first withdrawal. You can do this voluntarily if you’ve not been asked right away, which we recommend saving time.

Do You Have to Pay Taxes on Winnings?

In the UK there are no taxes to be paid on any winnings that come from gambling. This includes anything from the lottery to sports betting and everything in between.

You don’t even need to declare any winnings. So, even though you’ve won money, you won’t need to declare this to HMRC.

The same rules apply to professional gamblers as well as recreational ones. Whilst they would technically need to register as self-employed, any direct winnings will not be taxed. However, this means that no contribution has been made to any National Insurance, which means that money is not paid into your state pension. Some players choose to voluntarily pay this.

What is the Best Payment Method to Use Online?

One of the biggest innovations within the online gambling sector over the last 10 years has been the range of payment methods that are now accessible online. This has given a huge number of players more options when it comes to banking, making it easier to both get money in and out of a betting site.

Safety is one of the main issues when it comes to new players and they rightly want to know that their details are going to be safe. Part of the licensing from the UKGC includes exactly this and they make sure that the payment methods and betting site is offering are both safe and prompt for players banking with that site.

When you choose a process like debit cards then the payments will show up on your statement just like it would when you shop at your local supermarket. However, what you need to note is that the company who you are betting with might not always be the company who process the payments.

It’s very common for smaller sites to be owned and run by bigger sites these days. They are often referred to as “White Labels” which means a company brand a betting site with their logo, but things like markets and banking are processed by another site.

Whilst this can seem a little strange, as we said, it’s very common. You can also see who these white labels are attached to via the UKGC search function on their site. It’s all very transparent, but it can lead to confusion at first when it comes to things like brands on a bank statement.

It’s possible to set up separate accounts for betting, which work alongside your main account. This could be in the form of an additional card or even a separate account. This ties in with some of the banking options that we include below.

Most betting sites will have several different payment methods to choose from. We can’t say which is best for each player, as some work better than others, but we’ve included a number of banking “groups” below that you can work within.

Do the Bookies Play Fair?

The integratory of online betting is a conversation that will likely keep cropping up until the end of time. There are flaws when it comes to anything and everything online, so it’s only right that questions are asked.

What we can tell you is that the industry is as heavily regulated now as it’s ever been. The UK Gambling Commission has cracked the whip over the last decade or so to make sure that players are safe when it comes to money and that they are safe when it comes to the reliability of the games they are playing.

The short answer to the question of if they play fair is simply, yes. The reason that we can so confidently state this is that they wouldn’t be able to gain a license if they were not. Also, if the news ever got out of any wrongdoing, their reputation would be gone in a matter of minutes and legal investigations would take place to get to the bottom of things.

There are simply no margins of error for bookmakers these days. They either play by the rules and keep their customers safe or they get put on the scrap heap and likely have several lawsuits thrown at them whilst in the process.

Below we have included several reasons why a bookmaker has to play fair and also ways that they can try to manipulate the rules.

How Do Bookies Make Money?

Bookmaking is very much an art and the ability to get markets that are priced in a way that the bookmaker gets a return on any result can be tricky. But this is essentially the goal with every market that they offer.

To do this they apply what is often referred to as a margin. You may also see this called vig, vigorish, overround or similar.

The margin is the money that they make from each bet. They will have a margin for a market and then regardless of the result, they will make money from that margin.

Margins are adjusted depending on what the market is and what sport it is. They also need a certain amount of money to filter through to be able to successfully make any market adjustments that will give an equal net win on all bets. Sometimes this is not always the case so there may be times where one result will yield a higher net win than another. Horse racing is a good example of this, often with the favourites having smaller margins than the rest of the field.

To create a margin the bookmaker must move away from the “true odds” of an outcome. An easy example to use here is a simple coin flip where the chances of landing heads or tails are the same. True odds would be 2.00 or even money. If the bookmaker took the same number of bets for each at that price, they would break even.

A margin needs to be applied and this amount can range. Let’s assume that it’s 5% for this example, making the odds 1.90 for each outcome.

If £100 worth of bets were placed on each this means that they would take £200 (total bets) and payout £190 (£100 x 1.90) for the winning flip. This would leave a net win of £10 for the bookmaker, regardless of the result.

Moving it to sporting events is much tougher as there is no set percentage for each market. They need to use their best ability to calculate odds fairly and then balance books depending on how much money comes in for each result.

This is the main reason why odds shorten and drift, coming down to how much money coming in for that result. The more money the price will shorten, and the other prices will lengthen to keep the total margin for the market within the 5% or whatever percentage they are using.

Do Betting Sites Have to Pay Out?

Stories of bookmakers not paying out over certain bets (usually larger ones) seem to be pretty common within the industry given the amount of press they get. But the reality is that the vast majority of bets are paid out without question.

In years gone by it was a lot easier for betting sites to simply not payout on certain bets, citing terms that had been violated which the player was likely unaware of. Whilst not common, they kicked up enough of a stink to give the industry a bad name.

However, things are much more transparent within the online gambling sector these days and there are plenty of sites and companies that are willing to fight for the player over payouts with a bookmaker.

IBAS (Independent Betting Adjudication Service) is one of these services that will work with the player to settle disputes, which include payouts. Given their ties with the UK Gambling Commission, who are the governing body for licenses in the UK, it means that should the player have a fair case then they often have a good chance of getting their payout.

Non-payouts also generate a lot of bad press for betting companies. The likes of social media and online platforms mean that words travel fast and a single piece of bad press can be devastating, especially for medium/smaller brands.

All of this has now created a much more transparent platform for both players and betting sites. Welcome bonuses, free bets and other offers come with clear requirements to clear these offers, with the bookmaker outlining what is expected of the player to get any free cash.

They have also restricted a lot of bonuses to prevent bonus abuse. This often came in the form of a player registering several accounts to claim a bonus or free bet. However, the change in KYC laws now means that it’s almost impossible for a player to open multiple accounts.

To surmise, non-payouts are extremely rare. Do they have to pay out? Well, in most cases they will avoid a storm when it comes to the press backlash. But they will have terms that state that if they feel any wrongdoing has occurred, they won’t payout. If this happens, you need to get someone like IBAS on board to fight your corner.

Are Bookies Allowed to Limit Winners?

It can be quite common to see bookmakers limit people who win big or win often. The argument of them being happy when you lose but not when you win is valid but at the end of the day, they are a business and they are in it to make money.

Bookmakers can choose which players they allow to use their platform and they can also choose what limits they have in place for each account. It’s their business at the end of the day and they have a right to do this.

If an account gets limited it’s almost always down to the fact, they have consistently won big over a large period of time and costs the bookmaker money as a result. The reality is that the bookmaker will allow you to win and often win big, but they won’t want to see this daily and will move players on as a result.

The argument of is this is a fair process is one that will continue for likely many years. Many people suggest that all players should be treated equally, regardless of how much money they wager. The reality is that this is not going to be the case.

What we will add is that bookmakers aren’t just going to limit or close accounts and lock your winnings away. They will do it discreetly and will, of course, allow you to withdraw funds or even close an account if you wish. You can also argue your case with bookmaker to try and get limits lifted. However, history proves that this is sometimes an uphill battle and might not reinstate an account fully.