Existing Customer Betting Offers: What the Operators Actually Pay

Updated October 2026

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A £20 bet unlocks £40 in free bets at Coral. A £30 free-bet bundle sits in a Sky Bet account after a 5p wager. Betway writes £40 in tokens for a £10 opening stake. Almost every licensed bookmaker in Britain runs an offer of this shape, and almost every punter reads the figure at the top of the page and stops there. The amount of the free bet is the headline number, but the wagering cap, the minimum odds, the expiry and whether the stake returns are the numbers that decide whether any of it ends up in a withdrawable balance.

This page is about that gap. It covers what existing customer offers at UK-licensed bookmakers really pay in 2026, how the Commission’s promotion rules in force since 19 January 2026 reshape the maths, and which of the ten bookmakers in the comparison match the reader that the marketing copy aims the offer at. No promo code is printed. Every figure is what the operator’s own terms state on the day the page was last verified against the Commission’s public register.

Verified against the Gambling Commission’s public register on 27 October 2026: data current as of the access date shown beside each licence line. Odds and margins age faster than anything else on this page; a specific price sits beside a snapshot date, not as a free-floating figure.

The Landscape Existing Customer Offers Sit In

A betting offer at a GB-licensed bookmaker comes in four shapes, and most readers only meet one of them. The first is the welcome offer: a deposit-gated package for new customers only, normally a matched amount in free bets after a qualifying wager at a stated minimum price. The second is the ongoing free bet or bet credit for existing customers, occasionally seasonal, occasionally weekly, sometimes tied to a particular fixture or accumulator. The third is the recurring incentive: acca boosts, odds boosts, acca insurance, daily profit boosts, free-to-play games. The fourth is the loyalty mechanic — points, levels, prize draws — that sits behind the rest.

The first shape gets the marketing spend; the second and third shapes are what a bettor who has signed up actually receives. The four are not the same product and they do not carry the same cost. A welcome offer is a once-per-customer deal; an existing-customer free bet or boost is something the operator can turn on, turn off or change the parameters of without notice. That distinction matters more than the headline figure, because the reader comparing offers is usually weighing the operator’s recurring schedule, not its single-shot welcome.

The wider landscape has tightened in the past twelve months. These new rules cap the wagering requirement on a bonus at 10x, and they ban mixed-product promotions where a customer has to gamble on two or more product types — betting plus casino, betting plus bingo — to qualify for the offer. An existing customer free bet without a wagering condition sits in a grey zone: whether the 10x cap applies to it is not established, and the reader should treat the operator’s own stated terms as the rule until a Commission view is published.

What the Commission’s Promotion Rules Actually Changed

Before 19 January 2026, a bonus could carry a 50x wagering multiple, a £10 bonus turning into £500 of qualifying bets. The cap lowers that ceiling to 10x for all gambling bonus offers at GB-licensed operators. A £10 bonus under the new rule clears when the customer has wagered £100; a £50 bonus takes £500 of qualifying bets. Free bets whose stake is not returned are unaffected by an upper turnover number, because there is no turnover to enforce.

Mixed-product promotions are out. A casino welcome offer that asked the customer to place a sports bet to unlock free spins does not work; a sportsbook welcome offer that conditioned its free bets on a hand of blackjack does not work either. A qualifying bet at the same operator across two sports counts as a single product type (betting) and stays compliant; an offer spanning sports and casino does not.

The reader comparing bookmakers is not usually comparing wagering multiples, because the cap has flattened most of them. What still moves the calculation is the minimum odds, the expiry, the minimum stake, the qualifying payment method and the markets on which the free bet can be used. Those are operator-level terms and they vary widely across the ten bookmakers below.

What an Offer Actually Costs the Bettor

A free bet is not a refund. It is a token, credited after the qualifying bet settles, usable on markets at or above a stated minimum price, expiring after a stated window, and almost never returning the stake if it wins. The headline figure is the token’s face value, not what lands in the bank account at the end of a winning run.

The maths behind that gap is straightforward. A £10 free bet on a market priced at 3.00 returns £30 — £20 of winnings plus a stake that does not come back. A £10 free bet on a market priced at 6.00 returns £60, with the same missing £10. As the price lengthens, the percentage return improves; on a heavy outsider, the free bet’s value approaches the full face value. On a short-priced favourite, the free bet costs the operator much less than it advertises.

The calculation here works through a specific example to put a number on what a typical free-bet bundle ends up worth on average at realistic odds. The underlying formula, which is what the page’s conclusion turns on, is this: a free bet whose stake is not returned is worth free-bet amount multiplied by the difference between the odds and one, divided by the odds, then multiplied by the market’s payout share at those odds. The result is an expected value, an average over many placements, not a guaranteed return on any single bet.

Across the ten bookmakers in this comparison, a sensible working assumption is a free bet used at decimal odds between 4.00 and 6.00 on a market with a margin in the region of 5 to 8 per cent — the band that football and tennis markets sit in at most GB-licensed bookmakers. In that range, a £10 free bet returns, on average, around £6 to £7 of withdrawable profit. A £40 bundle of free bets is worth between £24 and £28 at settlement, not £40. That is the gap the marketing headline does not print.

How the Wagering Cap Reaches an Existing Customer

The wagering cap is the rule that governs how much qualifying betting a bonus must generate before its winnings become withdrawable. A deposit bonus (the deposit itself plus a matched amount, for example) carries a turnover, and the bonus is cleared when the cumulative qualifying stake equals turnover. A free bet that has no wagering condition carries no turnover, because there is no bonus to clear.

The change matters more on welcome offers than on existing-customer free bets, because most welcome packages used to stretch the multiple well past 10x. At a 10x cap, a £50 deposit bonus needs £500 of qualifying bets. A reader who would have placed that £500 anyway gets a near-pure gift; a reader who lays it down simply to clear the bonus is paying the bookmaker’s margin on every qualifying stake, and the bonus is the difference between the margin collected and the bonus paid out.

Bonus Turnover: How Much Betting a Specimen Offer Takes

This calculation illustrates how existing-customer offers work in practice. The arithmetic below estimates the realistic return on a standard free-bet bundle, helping the reader see past the headline figure.

Taking Coral’s sports welcome offer as the worked example, the bonus base is £40 in free bets credited after a £20 qualifying bet at minimum odds of 2.00 (1/1), with the free bets expiring seven days after issue. For a customer who clears the bonus by placing the free bets themselves, the working assumption is that only the free bet value is being wagered. The free bet amount is £40, distributed as tokens whose stake is not returned. The relevant rate is the expected return on those tokens at realistic prices, which gives a useful net figure in the £24 to £28 band on average, not the £40 the headline prints. Where the customer has to wager the bonus plus their own qualifying deposit before withdrawal, the turnover is the bonus base multiplied by the wagering multiple, capped at 10x by the Commission’s January 2026 rule, giving £400 of qualifying stake to clear on a £40 bonus at the maximum.

The honest framing here is that the band is wide because the inputs are wide. Readers who place their qualifying bet and their free bet in markets where they have an edge see one number; readers chasing the bonus without that edge see a much smaller one. What the calculation shows is that the headline figure of any offer is the upper bound of what the offer pays, not its typical return, and that the Commission’s cap has flattened the wagering multiple without flattening the gap between face value and what actually lands.

Reading the Comparison Table

The table covers ten bookmakers. Each row is an operator with a Gambling Commission remote licence for real-event betting. The columns are:

• Brand: the operator’s name as it appears on the Commission’s public register.
• Licence holder and Commission account: who holds the licence and the account number a reader can quote to the Commission’s register search.
• Existing customer offer language: what the operator’s own terms state about ongoing offers for existing customers, in the operator’s own terminology.

The purpose of this table is not to rank bookmakers — it is to map the recurring incentive on each licence. Several of the ten are governed by groups that run a wider portfolio (LC International covers Ladbrokes and others; LeoVegas Gaming runs BetUK). Where the licence holder runs multiple brands, the existing-customer offer stacks separately on each domain, because the customer account is brand-specific.

BetUK

BetUK operates under LeoVegas Gaming PLC’s remote licence and targets existing customers with the same four-token free bet structure that runs through welcome accounts in transition. Once a customer has cleared the welcome package, the operator’s promo calendar populates with acca boosts, weekly free-bet clubs and event-specific offers. The four-token split between football accumulators of 4+ selections and multiples of 2+ legs is the structural fingerprint of the offer; tokens expire in seven days and cannot be reused.

The brand suits a customer who bets mostly on football and who is comfortable with accumulator-style risk in exchange for higher-stake token value. The £10 minimum odds for free bets are ordinary for the market; the main constraint is that the four tokens expire quickly, which compresses the qualifying stakes a customer has to find into a single weekend.

Verdict: a competent mainstream choice for an existing customer who bets football accumulators regularly; the rigidity of the four-token structure is the trade-off against the £40 face value.

Copybet

Copybet sits in a niche of its own — the platform’s recurring offer is the Acca Booster, a cash bonus on accumulators of three or more selections that scales up to 100 per cent. The Daily Profit Boost tops out at 15 per cent and runs across most markets. Cash bonuses, unlike free bets, return the stake on a winning leg, which makes the headline a closer match to what a customer takes home.

The offer suits an acca customer who places frequent multiples rather than singles. The downside is that the smaller Daily Profit Boost is the everyday incentive; the headline figure is the upper bound that the few biggest-leg accas reach.

Verdict: a useful ongoing offer for an existing customer whose natural betting pattern is the accumulator; cash bonuses hit the wallet faster than free bet tokens and that is the structural advantage here.

Ladbrokes

Ladbrokes’ standing offer set is the broadest of the ten: Best Odds Guaranteed on UK and Irish horse racing (where the operator pays the SP if the price drifts), Acca Boosts on multiples, in-play markets and odds boosts on horse and greyhound bets. The welcome offer comes and goes, but the existing-customer incentives are the operator’s identity.

The brand fits a customer who bets horse racing weekly and who values the certainty that a price drift does not cost them. The Best Odds Guaranteed mechanic is real money across the year — on a £20 bet at SP after a drift from 5.00 to 6.00, the customer is £20 better off than they would have been at the original price. Across a season of weekly bets that adds up.

Verdict: the right standing offer for an existing customer who bets racing; the in-play and acca offers are competitive rather than category-leading, but BOG and the racing schedule are.

Bet600

Bet600’s welcome offer is gated on five qualifying single bets of £10 or more at Evens (2.0) inside seven days, after which the customer receives a single £10 free bet. The single-token payout is unusual — most competitors credit bundles of three or four tokens after the qualifying phase. The lighter welcome sits on top of an operator that runs selectively and recycles the offer’s headline figure on a more aggressive basis than it looks.

The offer suits a customer who places frequent smaller singles and would generate the qualifying turnover anyway, because each of those five bets would be laid regardless of the bonus. It is the wrong shape for a customer who bets occasional accas.

Verdict: a sharp existing-customer fit if the customer’s natural pattern is five-or-more weekly singles at short-to-mid prices; the £10 face value is the floor of what the bundle style usually pays.

Bet Ahoy

Bet Ahoy’s welcome bundle is a £5 sports and a £5 acca free bet, the smallest headline figure in the comparison. The operator’s edge is not the welcome but the recurring offers, which include sport-specific free-bet drops around big fixtures.

The brand fits a customer who values timing over token value. The bundle is small enough that the headline does not carry the calculation; what matters is what the operator runs on the days a customer wants to bet.

Verdict: a smaller headline that points the customer towards the operator’s promo calendar; the verdict is the calendar, not the £10 face value.

Betway

Betway’s welcome bundle of four £10 free-bet tokens at minimum odds of 2.00 and a seven-day expiry is the standard shape for the segment. Existing customers see price boosts, acca offers and event-tied promotions in the betslip. The minimum odds of 2.00 for the qualifying bet line up with the segment, but the seven-day expiry is on the short side and the debit-card restriction on deposits is a constraint that e-wallet users will need to check.

The brand suits a customer comfortable with debit-card funding who places qualifying bets at the segment’s standard minimum and wants the four-token structure to give them multiple placements. The token expiry is the trade-off.

Verdict: a competent mainstream offer with the standard shape; the £40 face value is matched by the segment rather than exceeded, and the seven-day expiry compresses the qualifying schedule.

Fitzwilliam Sports

Fitzwilliam Sports is the outlier in the comparison. The Dublin-based operator runs with capped membership, and its welcome offer is a “High Stakes Welcome” subject to compliance criteria rather than a published token bundle. The brand’s existing-customer offer runs by invitation and varies per member.

The shape fits a high-turnover customer who wants a relationship with a bookmaker rather than a discount. For most existing customers comparing offers, Fitzwilliam is the wrong comparator because its terms are not publicly visible at the level of token value, expiry and minimum odds.

Verdict: a fit for a small segment of high-stake customers whose relationship with the operator is the offer; outside that segment, the operator’s shape is not directly comparable to the other nine.

BetGoodwin

BetGoodwin’s welcome bundle of three £5 free bets split between a sports bet, an acca and a Sub-Cover bet is the racing-focused competitor in the comparison. Goodwin Racing’s identity is horse racing, and the existing-customer offer extends that — Best Odds Guaranteed and extra-place races are prominent in the promo calendar.

The brand suits a customer who bets horse racing and wants the Sub-Cover token structure as a small recurring edge. The £15 face value is light against the segment’s £40 standard, but the racing-specific schedule is where the offer’s value lives.

Verdict: a fit for an existing customer whose pattern is racing-led; the smaller headline is offset by the racing offer catalogue.

LiveScore Bet

LiveScore Bet’s existing-customer offer set lives in-app and varies by fixture. The operator’s strengths are the betslip interface and the live-data overlay; the free bets and odds boosts sit alongside that. Welcome offers are heavier than the recurring schedule, which fits an operator built on traffic from the live scores product.

The brand suits a customer who already uses a live scores product and who treats the sportsbook as an extension of that experience. The lack of a public, named recurring headline means the value is fixture-by-fixture rather than predictable, and the reader comparing offers will need to open the app on a given matchday to know what is on.

Verdict: a fit for an existing customer who follows fixtures through the LiveScore product; the offer is contextual rather than scheduled, which is the structural difference against the other nine.

Kalooki Sportsbook

Kalooki is the smallest operator in the comparison by licence age. The brand’s standing offer is Best Odds Guaranteed on UK and Irish horse racing, daily boosts, extra-place races and in-play markets; the operator’s claims on instant withdrawals by bank transfer within minutes are stated on the homepage.

The shape fits a customer who values a smaller-scale operator with a UK-licensed, GAMSTOP-registered footprint and an offer schedule built around racing. The trade-off is range — Kalooki’s market depth across the major sports is narrower than the bigger names.

Verdict: a fit for an existing customer who wants the smaller-operator footprint with the racing offer schedule; less of a fit for a customer whose pattern is across many sports.

The Mechanics of an Offer in Practice

Reading the offer from the marketing page to the bank account runs through a fixed sequence. First, the qualifying bet: the customer places a wager at or above the minimum odds, on the qualifying markets, inside the qualifying window, with a qualifying payment method. Second, settlement: the qualifying bet settles as a win, a loss, or a void, and the operator credits the free bet or bonus. Third, the wagering phase (where applicable): the customer bets through the bonus base at the wagering multiple, restricted to markets at or above the minimum price. Fourth, expiry: the bonus or free bet lapses if it is not used in time, and the customer recovers nothing of the face value.

The order matters because step one is the only point at which the customer has full choice. After the qualifying bet is placed, the customer is inside the operator’s terms, and the shape of the bet — minimum stake, minimum odds, qualifying market, qualifying payment method, expiry — controls what comes next. A £20 bet on the Premier League at odds of 2.00 is not the same product as a £20 bet on the same match at odds of 1.95, because the second one fails the minimum price test and there is no bonus to chase.

The second point is the payment-method constraint. Coral and Unibet restrict the welcome offer to a debit card or instant bank transfer; an e-wallet deposit disqualifies the offer. Betway lists debit-card deposits as the qualifying route on its welcome. A reader funding the account from a digital wallet will need to check before they deposit, because the offer is forfeit on the wrong rail.

Free Bets, Cash Bonuses and the Stake Question

A free bet and a cash bonus are not the same product. A cash bonus is a credit that returns the stake on a winning leg; a free bet is a token that usually does not. The headline figure is the face value of the token; what the customer takes home is the winnings only. The maths gap is the stake that does not return, and that gap is the recurring explanation for why the offer’s face value is not the offer’s worth.

The clearest comparator is the Copybet Acca Booster. The platform credits cash bonuses of up to 100 per cent on qualifying accumulators; a winning acca returns the boosted cash, and the stake returns with it. The structure is the opposite of free bet tokens, and a customer who clears a Copybet cash bonus walks away with the headline figure minus the margin, while a customer who clears a Coral free bet walks away with the headline figure minus the stake on every placement.

The Reader’s Pattern

A reader’s existing-customer offer is shaped by the markets they bet. A racing-led bettor wants Best Odds Guaranteed; an acca-led bettor wants acca insurance or a cash acca boost; a single-bet bettor wants odds boosts or profit boosts that work one leg at a time. The ten operators in this comparison split roughly into those three flavours, and the operator that fits the reader’s pattern is the one whose offer calendar makes sense to them without forcing them to bet differently.

The other pattern is the qualifying structure. Coral and Unibet’s qualifying payment-method list is a constraint on the reader who funds an account through digital wallets. Betway’s seven-day expiry is a constraint on the reader who places a single weekly bet. Bet600’s five-qualifying-bets structure is a constraint on the reader who places occasional singles. Each constraint narrows the existing-customer base that the offer actually fits, and that narrowing is part of the offer’s cost.

What a Verified Licence Means

A licence on the Commission’s public register is the start of the check, not the end. The register lists the licence category (remote general betting standard real events is the relevant one for this page), the licence holder, the trading name and the account number. The Gambling Commission’s register search is by business name, trading name, domain or account number and is the definitive source; checking the brand listed in the table against the register is the test that matters. Every brand in this comparison holds a remote general betting standard (real events) licence; several also hold adjacent categories, for example the remote betting intermediary (the exchange licence) that Ladbrokes’ licence holder carries for adjacent products.

Identity verification before the first deposit is mandatory at GB-licensed online operators. The customer passes name, address and date of birth before they can deposit or gamble, including with a free bet or bonus. The verification is part of the licence, not a marketing choice; a brand that does not run verification is not GB-licensed.

GAMSTOP is the national online self-exclusion register and every GB-licensed remote operator participates. Periods range from six months to five years with auto-renewal, and the exclusion stays in place for a further seven years after the minimum period unless the customer asks GAMSTOP to remove it. The scheme covers online sites and apps; betting shops run a separate service.

Responsible Gambling Tools at GB-Licensed Operators

The 2026 framework around safer gambling is layered. The first layer is GAMSTOP, the multi-operator self-exclusion. The second is the financial vulnerability check that has been in force since 30 August 2024, applied to remote betting when a customer’s deposits minus withdrawals exceed £150 in a rolling 30 days. The check is a public-record check (bankruptcy registers, county court judgments), not an income check. Financial risk assessments — referred to in the press as “affordability checks” — have been announced in a staged plan, with no start date at the time of the last Commission statement, and they are not in force.

Deposit limits are in the operator’s tools: a fixed gross deposit limit over a fixed time frame is a Remote Technical Standards requirement, with first changes applied since 31 October 2025 and a second phase postponed to 30 September 2026. Whether the second phase is live is not established. There is no state-set deposit or loss ceiling for betting; any figure that looks like one in the marketing copy is the operator’s own cap or the customer’s own choice.

Help lines and clinics exist outside the operator. GamCare runs the National Gambling Helpline; GambleAware funds treatment and education; the NHS runs gambling clinics; Gamblers Anonymous runs peer-support meetings. The bookmaker’s safer-gambling page routes to these services; the registered GAMSTOP exclusion sits alongside them. None of these is an alternative to the others, and the customer who wants time out can use GAMSTOP and the operator’s local tools at the same time.

What Offshore Operators Lose

A GB licence is compulsory at the point of consumption. An operator whose remote facilities are used in Great Britain needs a Commission licence wherever it is based, under sections 33 and 36 of the Gambling Act 2005 as amended by the Gambling (Licensing and Advertising) Act 2014. A Curaçao, Maltese or Gibraltar licence is not a substitute. A GB customer betting with an unlicensed brand is not committing an offence — but the protections disappear: no GAMSTOP coverage, no Commission complaints route, no approved dispute resolution body, no British consumer redress if funds are withheld, no 10x bonus cap, no financial vulnerability check.

Enforcement is disruption, not blocking. The Commission issues cease-and-desist notices, refers unlicensed brands to search engines, works with registrars, hosts and payment providers, and is being given DNS blocking powers by court order. Writing that ISP blocking is in operation is not accurate; the powers are court-ordered and the mechanism is per-brand.

The honest framing for a reader weighing an offshore brand is that licensed means checks, limits, GAMSTOP coverage and the bonus cap, plus verification before the first bet; unlicensed means none of those and a real risk of losing funds to a brand with no British regulatory accountability. Neither is “the safe choice” by default; the choice is which set of constraints a reader prefers.

Tax, the Player’s Side and the Operator’s Side

A GB punter pays no tax on betting winnings. General Betting Duty is the operator’s tax, applied to its gross profits from betting. The current rate is 15 per cent; from 1 April 2027 a new remote betting rate of 25 per cent applies within it, while remote bets on UK horse racing, bets on self-service betting terminals in licensed premises, pool betting and in-person betting stay at 15 per cent. Until 1 April 2027 the remote rate stays at 15 per cent. The Commission’s statutory levy is a separate charge to the operator, not a tax to the player. Whether operators pass duty on through the odds has not been established and is not something the customer is charged.

Spread betting has its own regime. Spreadex runs both fixed-odds and spread betting; the spread side is regulated by the Financial Conduct Authority, the fixed-odds side by the Gambling Commission. Spread betting losses can exceed the deposit, and that warning is the headline on the operator’s own homepage.

Frequently Asked Questions

What is the maximum wagering requirement on a betting bonus in Great Britain?

These rules also cap wagering requirements on bonuses at 10x. A £10 bonus at the cap needs £100 of qualifying bets before its winnings become withdrawable; a £50 bonus takes £500. Free bets with no wagering condition sit in a separate category, and whether the cap applies to them is not established. Mixed-product promotions that require gambling on two or more product types, such as betting plus casino, are banned entirely.

What do minimum odds and the wagering requirement mean in a sign-up offer?

A minimum odds figure is the threshold price the qualifying bet has to meet for the offer to credit; odds of 2.00 (1/1) are the segment standard. A wagering requirement is the multiplier applied to the bonus base that determines how much qualifying stake the customer must generate before the bonus is cleared. The two are independent, but together they shape the realistic path from qualifying bet to withdrawable winnings, and the reader comparing offers is comparing those two numbers more than the headline face value of the bonus.

Why is the stake of a free bet not paid back with the winnings?

A free bet is a token, not a cash credit, and the operator’s terms typically exclude the stake from the return so that the customer receives only the winnings at the agreed price. A £10 free bet on a winner at decimal odds of 3.00 returns £30 of which £20 is profit, because the £10 stake is the operator’s cost. Cash bonuses do return the stake on a winning leg, which is why an offer advertised as cash is worth more on a single placement than the same face value advertised as a free bet.

Can a bet on sport be tied to a casino bonus under the Commission’s promotion rules?

No. These rules also ban mixed-product promotions that require gambling on two or more product types, and an example of the prohibited structure is “bet on football to get free spins”. A qualifying bet across two sports counts as a single product type (betting) and stays compliant. A sports bonus tied to a casino hand does not work, and any offer advertised in that shape at a GB-licensed operator is non-compliant.

How can it be checked that a bookmaker holds a Gambling Commission licence?

The Commission’s public register can be searched by business name, trading name, domain or account number, and the licence categories on the register must include remote general betting standard (real events) for an online sportsbook. Every brand in this comparison has been checked against the register; the licence holder and account number in the table above is the field a reader takes to the register to confirm. The domain alone is not a check — licensed operators use .com and .co.uk interchangeably — and a single licence holder can run multiple brands, which is why the licence holder is the key field, not the trading name.

Are betting winnings taxed in Great Britain, and who pays General Betting Duty?

No. A GB punter pays no tax on betting winnings. General Betting Duty is the operator’s tax on its gross profits from betting, currently 15 per cent and rising to 25 per cent on the remote betting element from 1 April 2027, while in-person betting, pool betting and remote bets on UK horse racing stay at 15 per cent. The Commission’s statutory levy is a separate charge to the operator. Whether operators pass duty on through the odds has not been established, and customers are not charged duty on a winning bet.

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