Best Odds Guaranteed Bookmakers: How It Works and Who Offers It

Updated October 2026

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The “best odds guaranteed” pitch is short, and the way it works is shorter. Take a price on a horse, the horse runs, the starting price comes back bigger than the price you took, and you get paid at the starting price rather than at the price you held. The bookmaker makes good the difference. Nothing about the promise turns on the horse, the course or the going: it sits on top of the ordinary bet, the same way a Rule 4 deduction sits on top, except in the punter’s favour.

The data below is current as of 27 October 2026 and was checked against the Gambling Commission’s public register, the operator sites themselves and the App Store listings the Commission account is cross-referenced against.

The starting price and the promise that rides on it

The starting price is the price an entry shows on the on-course fixed-odds board at the moment the race begins. For British racing it is set by the industry’s own sampling: the median of on-course bookmaker prices, the shortest price in the longer-priced half, which is the same as saying at least half the sample offered that price or bigger. A punter who has not taken a price in the morning and has not used the betting exchange settles at the starting price, full stop.

Best odds guaranteed is the move on top. A bookmaker offering the concession guarantees that the price the punter took is the floor: if the starting price returns higher, the punter is paid out at the higher of the two. The price the punter took stays on the bet. The starting price replaces it only when the starting price is bigger.

That is the engine, and three of its consequences are worth naming before anything else:

• A horse whose price drifts between morning and the off has done the punter no favours — the price they took was already the better one, and the bet is paid at that price, not at the bigger drifting one.
• A horse whose price shortens — the market wakes up to it, more money comes for it — is the case the promise is built for. The punter’s price stays, and the gap between the price they took and the higher starting price is the value the bookmaker pays.
• The promise is paid on the winning half. A loser pays nothing, and BOG does not resurrect a non-runner. Ante-post bets are usually outside the concession, and each operator states its own scope.

The starting price is therefore the spine of the concession, and the concession is the difference between a punt and a price guarantee.

What a bet at BOG terms actually costs and pays

The numbers behind a bet sit in three places, and a punter reading a price without reading them is reading the figure the bookmaker wanted them to read.

A stake of £10 at 5/1 (decimal 6.00) returns £60 on a win. The same stake at 11/4 (decimal 3.75) returns £37.50. The decimal form is what every UK site shows by default, and the conversion is a ÷ b + 1, so 5/1 is 5 ÷ 1 + 1 = 6.00, 11/4 is 11 ÷ 4 + 1 = 3.75, evens is 1/1, 2.00. The return is the stake plus the profit, and the profit is the stake multiplied by (odds minus one). At decimal 6.00 a stake of £10 returns £60, of which £50 is profit; at 1.50 the same stake returns £15, of which £5 is profit.

The bookmaker’s margin is what sits on the other side. Take an illustrative two-way market at decimal odds 1.90 against 1.90 — the kind of line a bookmaker might post on a tennis match or a basketball handicap. The payout share from those two prices is 1 ÷ (1/1.90 + 1/1.90), which works out to about 0.95 — 95 pence returned for every pound wagered across the two outcomes, taken together, in the long run. The margin is the remainder: roughly 5% of turnover, give or take a tenth of a point, before any concession is layered on top. The bookmaker’s edge on a single market is therefore the gap between a perfect 100% payout share and the actual one, and on a 1.90/1.90 line the gap is about five points.

A BOG concession pays the difference between the price taken and the higher starting price when the SP wins. It does not flatten the margin. The edge the bookmaker held at the time of the bet still sits inside the prices, and the concession is paid out of that edge, not on top of it. The punt to a punter is the upside when a market shortens; the cost to the bookmaker is the upside it has just given away. A punter who routinely takes prices early on horses that shorten into the off is the punter the concession is paid to, and the rest of the field is paying for it through the margin on every other bet they place.

Where the cap and the Rule 4 sit

Two named conditions sit on top of the headline promise, and both belong to Sky Bet’s terms rather than to the market in general, but they are the clearest written instance of how each operator draws the line.

The first is a cap. Sky Bet limits the best odds guaranteed uplift to £50,000 per bet, or per race for horse racing, whichever is the smaller of the two. A punter with a £10 bet on a 50/1 shot that returns at 100/1 SP gets paid at 100/1, capped at £50,000 of profit on that bet. A punter with a £5,000 bet on a 10/1 shot that returns at 14/1 SP gets paid at 14/1, also capped at £50,000 of profit. The cap is on the uplift — the difference between the price taken and the SP — not on the whole return, and a winning bet pays up to the cap regardless of the price taken.

The second is a Rule 4 interaction. A Rule 4 deduction is a bookmaker rule applied when a horse is withdrawn from a race after bets are taken: the bookmaker keeps a small percentage of stake to cover the cost of replacing the withdrawn horse in the market. At Sky Bet, a price that takes a Rule 4 deduction still has the deduction applied, unless the horse returns at a bigger starting price, in which case the bet is paid at SP with no deduction. The deduction and the BOG are two rules, and the more generous of the two is the one that ends up paying the bet.

These two clauses are the kind of detail a punter reads once and forgets, and the kind of detail a punter remembers on the day the bet wins and the payout is smaller than expected.

Who holds a Great Britain licence and who does not

The licensing test is one question with one answer. The Gambling Commission, a non-departmental public body sponsored by the Department for Culture, Media and Sport, licenses the whole commercial market under the Gambling Act 2005. Since the Gambling (Licensing and Advertising) Act 2014 an operator whose remote facilities are used in Great Britain needs a Commission licence wherever it is based. A Curaçao, Maltese or Gibraltar licence is not a substitute; the licence has to be a Commission licence, the holder has to be on the register, and the register can be searched by business name, trading name, domain or account number.

The register is the whole test of who holds one. A bookmaker whose name is on the register holds a GB licence; a bookmaker whose name is not on it does not, and an account at one of those brands forfeits the protections that go with the licence: no GAMSTOP coverage, no Commission complaints route, no approved dispute-resolution body, no British consumer redress if funds are withheld, and not bound by the 10x bonus cap or the £150 vulnerability check. None of this is a comment on whether an offshore bookmaker pays out, and it is not a comment on whether using one is an offence aimed at the customer: the law under section 33 of the Gambling Act 2005 is aimed at the operator. It is a comment on what the punter gives up.

The minimum age is 18, and the bookmaker verifies name, address and date of birth before the customer can deposit or gamble, including with a free bet or bonus. Identity verification has applied since 7 May 2019, and no licensed site offers anonymous play. A credit card has been banned for gambling in Great Britain since 14 April 2020, and that ban covers credit-card-funded payments through an e-wallet, so a punter who tops up Neteller or Skrill with a credit card is funding a gambling account through a card the ban was written to catch. A debit card or a bank transfer is not covered by the ban and is the standard route.

The safer-gambling frame around the bet

The licence conditions and codes of practice sit on top of the licence itself, and they are the reason a GB-licensed bookmaker is not just a brand with a website.

GAMSTOP is the national multi-operator self-exclusion scheme, a mandatory licence condition for online operators since 31 March 2020. The exclusion periods are six months, one year, five years, or five years with auto-renewal, and after the minimum period the exclusion stays in place for a further seven years unless the customer asks GAMSTOP to remove it. GAMSTOP covers online sites and apps; betting shops use a separate service. A punter who has signed up to GAMSTOP cannot open a new account at any GB-licensed online operator for the period they have chosen, and an existing account is closed.

A financial vulnerability check applies to licensed remote betting when a customer’s deposits minus withdrawals exceed £150 in a rolling 30 days. The check is a public-record check — bankruptcy, county court judgments, the kind of record that is on the public file — and not an income check, and not a credit reference check. It came into force in stages: the trigger on 30 August 2024, the check on 28 February 2025. Financial risk assessments, the “affordability checks” of the press, are announced in a staged plan, with no start date. Deposit limits are part of the same frame: a gross deposit limit on a fixed time frame is a licence condition, with the first changes applying since 31 October 2025 and a second phase postponed to 30 September 2026.

The help lines are GamCare, which runs the National Gambling Helpline, GambleAware, the NHS gambling clinics and Gamblers Anonymous. The Commission’s complaints route is a route the punter has, and approved dispute-resolution bodies are routes the punter has, and neither exists for a punter holding an account at a brand that is not on the register.

What a BOG offer sits inside

The BOG concession is its own promise, and it is not the same thing as a welcome bonus or a free bet, even when a bookmaker offers both.

A welcome bonus is paid in free bets, bet credits or matched deposit, with a wagering requirement that the bonus has to be turned over before any winnings come out as cash. The cap on wagering requirements is 10x the bonus amount under a Commission rule in force since 19 January 2026, and a £10 bonus at 50x wagering would, on the same rule, require £500 of bets; under the cap no more than £100 is required. Mixed-product promotions — an offer that requires gambling on two or more product types such as betting, casino, bingo and lottery, for example “bet on football to get free spins” — are banned under the same rule.

A free bet is a one-shot stake the bookmaker credits to a punter’s account, paid out of the bookmaker’s pocket, settled as a single bet and not as a series of stakes. The stake is usually not paid back with the winnings: a £10 free bet at 5/1 returns £50, of which £50 is profit and the £10 stake is gone. That is the structure of a free bet, and that is what the word “free” hides in the marketing.

BOG is neither of these. The punter has put a stake down, the bookmaker has taken the stake, the bet has been struck at the price the punter took, and the concession is the difference between that price and the starting price, paid only when the SP is bigger. There is no wagering requirement, no turnover, no expiry of the bet credit, and the bet is paid out as cash, not as a free bet. The marketing word on it is “guaranteed”, and the arithmetic on it is the gap between two prices.

A punter reading a BOG offer beside a welcome offer is comparing two different things. The welcome offer costs the bookmaker a free bet, costs the punter a qualifying bet, and pays out in free bets that the punter then has to use inside their expiry window. The BOG offer costs the bookmaker a fraction of every winning bet the punter has already placed, costs the punter nothing, and pays out as cash on the same bet. They are not the same kind of promise, and the punter who treats them as the same kind of promise reads the wrong one.

Settling and staking: what a BOG bet looks like in practice

The mechanics of a BOG bet are short and worth reading once.

A punter opens a betting account with a GB-licensed bookmaker that offers BOG on UK and Irish horse racing. The punter places a bet on a horse at a fixed price the morning of the race, at the price the bookmaker is showing. The bet is struck at that price and the stake is taken. As the race approaches, the on-course market forms, the starting price is set, and the price the punter took is compared to the SP.

If the SP is shorter than the price taken, the bet is settled at the price taken. The punter’s price is the better one, the bookmaker pays the price taken, and the BOG concession does nothing. The punter has still had a price guarantee — the price they took has held — but the SP has not been bigger, so the guarantee has not paid out.

If the SP is the same as the price taken, the bet is settled at the SP. The price is the same either way, and the concession is, again, a no-op.

If the SP is bigger than the price taken, the bet is settled at the SP. The punter gets paid the SP, and the BOG concession has done the work. The bet is paid out as cash, in full, and the stake is returned with the winnings.

Three things sit on top. The Rule 4 deduction is applied where it is due, except when the SP is bigger and the deduction is waived. The cap, where it is named, sits on the uplift. And the bet has to be struck within the concession’s stated scope: ante-post bets are usually outside it, each-way bets are usually inside it with a separate treatment for the place half, and bets struck after a certain time on the day of the race are usually inside it on the same terms as a morning bet. The detail of the scope is the detail the punter checks before the bet is struck, not after.

The landscape at a glance

The landscape is a list of ten GB-licensed bookmakers, each on the Commission’s public register, each with a remote general betting standard (real events) licence unless the licence is a betting intermediary licence for an exchange, and each written up in the ranking below in the order research sets. The licence line is the line that matters, and the table that follows is the table that lays it out.

The table is a single line per brand, and the brands the table omits are the brands that are not on the register. A bookmaker not in the table is a bookmaker not on the register, and that is the whole of the licensing test.

Midnite: the new licence, the £25 free bets, the price boosts

Midnite runs under Gambling Commission account 101839, held by Midnite Limited, and the licence is the standard remote general betting (real events) one. The brand arrived on the Commission’s register after a number of the operators above it, and the site shows in-play events, an acca builder, popular accas and price boosts with maximum-stake limits attached. The site is published through the App Store and the welcome offer the App Store listing records is the one in the table: a £5+ qualifying bet at EVS or greater inside 14 days of sign-up, for £25 of free bets and 50 free spins, with the free bets valid for 7 days. The licence line is the licence line of a brand the rest of the market has known for less time than the rest of the table, and the welcome offer is a smaller number than most of its neighbours on the same page. The price boosts are the feature the brand leads with, and the maximum-stake limits are the condition the punter reads on the boost before claiming it.

Midnite suits a punter who wants a fresh site with a price-boost feature, and who reads the maximum-stake limit on each boost before placing the qualifying bet. The licence is the licence, and the welcome offer is a small one, with a short window on the free bets.

Coral: the £40 free bets, the LC International licence

Coral runs under Gambling Commission account 54743, held by LC International Limited. The licence covers remote general betting standard (real events) and remote betting intermediary, and LC International is the same holder that runs Ladbrokes. The welcome offer the operator’s site records is £40 in free bets after a £20+ qualifying bet at minimum odds 2.0 (1/1), with the free bets issued within 7 days and expiring 7 days after issue, and the offer applies to new GB customers who opt in. The £40 figure is a bigger welcome number than most of the table, and the £20 qualifying stake is a higher qualifying stake than the £5 most of the table uses, with the same minimum-odds threshold.

Coral suits a punter who is happy to put £20 down at evens or bigger to claim £40 of free bets, and who uses the free bets inside the 7-day window. The licence holder being LC International means Coral sits in the same group as Ladbrokes, and a punter who has held an account at either brand has, in the operator’s own terms, usually held the welcome offer at the other.

Sky Bet: the £30 free bets, the BOG with a £50,000 cap

Sky Bet runs under Gambling Commission account 67370, held by SBG Sports Limited, under a licence for remote general betting (standard, real events). Sky Bet is the operator whose BOG terms are written out in detail on the support pages, and it is the operator that confirms the BOG uplift is capped at £50,000 per bet, or per race for horse racing, with the Rule 4 interaction that waives the deduction where the SP is bigger than the price taken. The welcome offer the operator’s support pages record is £30 in free bets, credited as three £10 free bet tokens after a £5+ deposit and a first single or each-way bet of at least 5p at 1/1 or greater. The 5p minimum stake is the lowest qualifying stake in the table, and the £30 free-bet return is paid in three tokens rather than one, which is the form the free bets are used in.

Sky Bet suits a punter who wants the BOG concession in writing, with the cap and the Rule 4 interaction stated in the support pages, and who is happy to place a 5p qualifying bet to claim £30 of free bets. The £50,000 cap is the headline number, and the BOG concession is the reason the brand is on this page rather than a page on welcome offers.

Smarkets: the 2% commission, the 60-day 0% rate

Smarkets runs under Gambling Commission account 39173, held by Smarkets (Malta) Limited, and the licence is a remote betting intermediary licence, which is the licence a betting exchange holds. The brand is an exchange, and the model is the opposite of the bookmaker model: customers bet against each other, the exchange takes a commission on net winnings, and the prices are set by the customers rather than by a trader. The App Store listing records a standard commission of 2% on eligible exchange bets, and a new-customer offer of 0% commission for 60 days with a minimum first deposit of £10. The licence is the licence of an exchange, the commission is the cost of using the exchange, and the 0% rate is the cost of using the exchange for the first 60 days.

Smarkets suits a punter who wants an exchange rather than a bookmaker, who reads the commission rate on each market before placing a bet, and who is happy to lay as well as back. The BOG concession does not apply to an exchange: the prices on an exchange are the prices the customers set, and the SP is settled on the on-course market rather than at the bookmaker. Smarkets is on this page because the licence is a GB licence and the operator is on the register, not because the BOG concession applies.

Betfair: the in-play, the Bet Builder, the 90 Minute Payout

Betfair runs under Gambling Commission account 39439, held by PPB Counterparty Services Limited, with a remote general betting (standard, real events) licence. The brand runs the sportsbook alongside the exchange, and the App Store listing records in-play betting, Bet Builder, free live streaming of UK and Irish horse racing and football within the app, and a 90 Minute Payout market. The 90 Minute Payout market is the football market that pays out on a 1X2 selection at full time, before extra time, and the live streaming is the free in-app feed of UK and Irish racing. The licence is the licence of a brand with both a sportsbook and an exchange under the same holder, and the features on the App Store listing are the sportsbook features rather than the exchange ones.

Betfair suits a punter who wants in-play, the Bet Builder and the 90 Minute Payout market on the same site, and free live streaming of UK and Irish racing inside the app. The exchange sits on a different licence, and a punter who wants the exchange has to use the Betfair exchange rather than the Betfair sportsbook.

BetVictor: the BOG on UK and Irish racing, the BetFinder, the Smart Stats

BetVictor runs under Gambling Commission account 39576, held by BV Gaming Limited, on a remote general betting (standard, real events) licence. The App Store listing records Best Odds Guaranteed on UK and Irish horse racing, enhanced live race streaming, a BetFinder feature for finding racing bets, and Smart Stats. The BOG concession is named on the listing, and the scope is UK and Irish horse racing, which is the narrower of the two common BOG scopes: some operators offer BOG on UK and Irish racing only, some offer BOG on a wider set of meetings. The BetFinder is a feature that surfaces racing bets the operator has priced up, and Smart Stats is the form-and-figures module that runs alongside the price.

BetVictor suits a punter who bets on UK and Irish horse racing and wants the BOG concession in writing, with the BetFinder to surface bets and the Smart Stats module for form. The brand is on this page for the BOG concession, and the concession is the reason a punter reading this page has the brand in front of them.

Matchbook: the exchange, the multiples, the horse-racing and greyhound streams

Matchbook runs under Gambling Commission account 39504, held by Triplebet Limited, and the licence covers remote general betting standard (real events) and remote betting intermediary. The brand is an exchange, and the App Store listing records Bet Builder, multiples, in-play betting and live streaming of horse racing and greyhounds. The exchange model means the prices are set by customers, and the commission is the cost of using the exchange. The licence covering both general betting and betting intermediary is the licence of a brand that runs an exchange with a sportsbook layered on top.

Matchbook suits a punter who wants the exchange model, the Bet Builder, and the live streaming of horse racing and greyhounds in the same place. The BOG concession does not apply to an exchange, and the brand is on this page because the licence is a GB licence and the operator is on the register.

Fitzdares: the antepost, the specials, the antepost on American football

Fitzdares runs under Gambling Commission account 400, held by Fitzdares Limited, for remote general betting (standard, real events). The App Store listing records cash out, accumulators, Lucky 15s, specials and antepost markets on horse racing, football, tennis, rugby, cricket, golf and American football, with in-play live odds. The antepost markets are the markets priced up before the day of the race, the specials are the price-boosted markets the operator leads with, and the Lucky 15s are the 15-bet combination that covers 4 selections in singles, doubles, trebles and a four-fold accumulator. The licence is the lowest account number in the table, and the operator has been on the register since the early days of the Commission.

Fitzdares suits a punter who bets on antepost markets and the specials, and who wants a Lucky 15 or an accumulator in the same bet slip as a single. The antepost coverage of American football is the line the punter reads first if American football is the sport they bet on.

VBet: the Bet Builder, the live calendar, the SCGO licence

VBet runs under Gambling Commission account 44662, held by SCGO Limited, in the remote general betting (standard, real events) category. The App Store listing records Bet Builder, pre-match and in-play betting, live streaming and a live calendar with results and stats. The Bet Builder is the same-game-multi feature most sportsbooks now offer, the live calendar is the operator’s schedule of events with the results and stats module behind it, and the live streaming is the in-app feed the operator holds the rights to. The licence holder is SCGO Limited, and the brand is one of the newer ones on the register.

VBet suits a punter who wants the Bet Builder and the live calendar on the same site, with the live streaming the operator holds. The brand is on this page because the licence is a GB licence, and the Bet Builder is the feature the brand is built around.

BoyleSports: the Acca Insurance, the £20 cap, the 7-day expiry

BoyleSports runs under Gambling Commission account 39469, held by Boylesports Enterprise, and the licence covers remote general betting standard (real events). The App Store listing records Acca Insurance requiring opt-in, a minimum stake of £5, minimum odds of 1/2, and a maximum refund of £20 as a free bet that expires in 7 days, with the bets placed and settled on the same day. The Acca Insurance is a different concession from BOG: it pays out when one leg of an accumulator lets the punter down, and the refund is a free bet rather than cash. The minimum odds of 1/2 is the floor on each leg, the £20 cap is the ceiling on the refund, and the same-day settlement is the window the bet has to clear inside.

BoyleSports suits a punter who builds accumulators, opts in to the Acca Insurance, and is happy with the £20 cap and the 7-day expiry on the free bet. The Acca Insurance is a separate concession from BOG, and the punter who confuses the two reads the wrong one.

What the ten have in common and where they differ

The ten brands share a GB licence and a place on the Commission’s public register, and they differ on what sits on top of that licence.

Three of them are exchanges. Smarkets, Betfair and Matchbook all run on the betting intermediary licence, and the prices on an exchange are set by the customers rather than by a trader. The exchange model has no BOG concession: the SP is the SP, and the price the punter took is the price the punter took, settled at the exchange rather than at the bookmaker. A punter who wants the BOG concession on a horse does not find it on an exchange.

Three of them are names the punter has known for years. Coral, Sky Bet and BetVictor are the three of the table that have been on the register the longest, and the BOG concession is named on at least two of them. The welcome offers on the three are different: Coral is £40, Sky Bet is £30, BetVictor is the brand with the BOG in writing on the support pages and the BetFinder and Smart Stats features on the App Store listing.

The other four are the rest. Midnite, Fitzdares, VBet and BoyleSports are the four that are not exchanges and not the long-established names, and they differ on what they lead with. Midnite leads with the price boosts, Fitzdares with the antepost markets, VBet with the Bet Builder and the live calendar, BoyleSports with the Acca Insurance.

The licence is the floor, and the features are the differences above the floor. A punter choosing between the ten is choosing between the features, with the licence as the baseline that the choice starts from.

Tax, payments and the wider frame

The player pays no tax on betting winnings in Great Britain, and that is the general information, not tax advice. A professional gambler should ask HMRC or an adviser, and the punter who places the occasional bet is not in the frame HMRC writes to.

General Betting Duty is the operator’s tax on gross profits, currently 15%. From 1 April 2027 a new remote betting rate of 25% 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%. The duty is the operator’s, not the punter’s, and whether operators pass it on through odds is not established. Spread betting has its own rates — 3% financial, 10% other — and a financial spread bet is regulated by the Financial Conduct Authority, not the Commission. Spreadex, for example, is regulated by the FCA for spread betting and by the Commission for fixed-odds betting, and the spread-bet side of the business is a different licence under a different regulator.

The minimum age is 18, the identity check is on the first deposit, and the credit-card ban is from April 2020. The debit card and the bank transfer are the standard routes, and the credit-card-funded e-wallet is the one that gets caught. Source-of-funds questions at higher spend are normal under the money-laundering rules, and a punter who plans to deposit and withdraw large amounts is a punter who is asked the questions the rules are written to ask.

Advertising, bonuses and the words the marketing writes

The advertising rules run through the CAP Code, enforced by the ASA, alongside the Commission’s marketing conditions. CAP Code section 16: marketing must be socially responsible, must not be of strong appeal to under-18s, and no one who is or seems to be under 25 may be featured gambling or play a significant role, with an exception for marketing placed where a bet can be made directly. The rule is on who appears in the advertisement, not on who can bet, and a punter over 18 is not the subject of the rule.

The promotion rules in force since 19 January 2026: wagering requirements on bonuses are capped at 10x, and mixed-product promotions are banned. A free bet with no wagering condition is a different beast, and whether the cap applies to a free bet with no wagering condition is not established. The “whistle-to-whistle” rule is an industry code, not a law: since 1 August 2019 betting advertisements have not been shown on TV from five minutes before a live sporting event to five minutes after it, before the 9pm watershed, with horse and greyhound racing excluded. The Premier League clubs’ withdrawal of gambling sponsorship from the front of matchday shirts is voluntary, not law, and applies from 2026/27; sleeves and hoardings remain.

The marketing words to read with a sharp eye are the ones that promise more than the arithmetic delivers. “Risk-free” is a refund in a free bet, not a refund in money, and the free bet does not pay the stake back. “Boosted odds” is a price the operator has set for a market the operator has chosen, and the boost applies to the stake the punter places, not to the stake the punter would have placed at the un-boosted price. “Best odds” is the operator’s own claim, and the BOG concession is the operator’s own promise, and the two are not the same: the former is a marketing word, the latter is a settled condition in the support pages. A punter reading the marketing word the same way as the support-page condition is reading the wrong word.

Picking a bookmaker from the ten

The choice is a fit between the punter and the bookmaker, and the fit sits on three questions: which sport the punter bets on, whether the punter wants the BOG concession in writing, and whether the punter wants an exchange or a sportsbook.

A punter who bets on UK and Irish horse racing and wants BOG in writing picks from Sky Bet and BetVictor. Sky Bet’s terms state the £50,000 cap and the Rule 4 interaction, and BetVictor’s App Store listing names BOG on UK and Irish horse racing. A punter who wants a bigger welcome offer picks Coral at £40 of free bets, with the higher £20 qualifying stake as the trade-off.

A punter who wants the exchange model picks from Smarkets, Betfair and Matchbook. Smarkets offers 60 days of 0% commission on a £10 minimum deposit; Betfair runs the sportsbook and the exchange under the same holder; Matchbook runs the exchange with the Bet Builder and the live streams of horse racing and greyhounds. None of them offers BOG, and none of them is the right pick for a punter who wants the BOG concession.

A punter who wants the in-play, the Bet Builder and the live streams on the same site picks from the sportsbooks. Betfair’s sportsbook has in-play, Bet Builder, the 90 Minute Payout market and the free live streaming of UK and Irish racing and football. VBet’s sportsbook has the Bet Builder, the pre-match and in-play betting, the live streaming and the live calendar. Midnite’s sportsbook has the in-play, the acca builder, the popular accas and the price boosts. Each is a different feature set on the same kind of licence.

A punter who wants the antepost markets and the specials picks Fitzdares, with the Lucky 15s and the cash out alongside. A punter who builds accumulators and wants the Acca Insurance picks BoyleSports, with the £5 minimum stake, the 1/2 minimum odds, the £20 cap and the 7-day expiry on the free bet.

The fit is a fit, and the licence is the floor the fit sits on. None of the ten is the only licensed brand on the register, and the register lists more than ten; the ten are the ten the table has rows for, and the punter is the one who picks the row.

The data the punter checks before the bet

A punter reading the BOG offer on any of the ten reads four things before placing the bet.

The first is the scope. The scope is the set of meetings and the set of bet types the concession applies to: UK and Irish racing on BetVictor’s listing is a different scope from “all UK racing” on a different operator, and ante-post bets are usually outside the scope. The scope is the clause the punter checks first, because the rest of the concession is a no-op outside it.

The second is the cap. The cap is the ceiling on the uplift, and the cap on Sky Bet’s terms is £50,000 per bet or per race. A punter with a stake below the cap has no reason to read the cap, and a punter with a stake above it has a reason to read it carefully.

The third is the Rule 4 interaction. The Rule 4 deduction is a bookmaker rule that applies to a withdrawn horse, and the BOG concession interacts with it on the terms the operator states. Sky Bet’s terms waive the deduction where the SP is bigger than the price taken. Other operators state the interaction in their own way, and a punter with a Rule 4 scenario in front of them reads the operator’s own page.

The fourth is the price. The price is the figure the punter is taking, and the price is the figure the SP is compared to. The BOG concession does not move the price the punter took; the concession moves the price the punter is paid at, when the SP is bigger. The price is the figure the punter reads at the moment of the bet, and the price is the figure the punter does not need to read again, except to confirm it.

The BOG concession is the same kind of promise on each operator, and the four things the punter reads are the same four things on each operator. The details differ. The £50,000 cap is on Sky Bet’s terms and not on every operator’s. The Rule 4 interaction is on Sky Bet’s terms and not on every operator’s. The scope is the scope the operator states, and the price is the price the operator is showing. The punter who reads the four things is the punter who knows what the promise is and what it costs.

Frequently asked questions

Which bookmakers do best odds guaranteed?

A bookmaker offers BOG when the operator’s own terms state it, and the scope, the cap and the Rule 4 interaction are stated on the operator’s own page. The Commission’s public register is the test of whether a bookmaker holds a GB licence, and a BOG offer on an unlicensed brand is a BOG offer the punter has no British route to enforce. Among the brands the register lists, BetVictor names BOG on UK and Irish horse racing on its App Store listing, and Sky Bet’s support pages state the £50,000 cap and the Rule 4 interaction in writing. The punter who wants the BOG concession reads the support pages of the operator, not the marketing.

Which bookmakers offer best odds guaranteed?

The offer sits on the operator’s own page, and the offer varies in scope. UK and Irish racing is the common scope; some operators extend the offer to a wider set of meetings. Ante-post bets are usually outside the scope, and each-way bets are usually inside it with a separate treatment for the place half. The punter who wants the concession reads the operator’s own page, and the punter who treats the marketing as the terms reads the wrong page.

What bookmakers offer best odds guaranteed?

The same answer as the previous two, with the same caveat: the marketing word “best odds” is the operator’s own claim, and the BOG concession is the operator’s own promise in the support pages. The two are not the same word. A bookmaker that posts the best odds on a market is a bookmaker the punter checks at the moment of the bet. A bookmaker that offers BOG is a bookmaker the punter checks when the SP comes back bigger. The same brand can offer both; the two are different features.

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 register is the whole test of who holds a licence. A bookmaker whose name is on the register holds a GB licence; a bookmaker whose name is not on it does not. The licence has to be a Commission licence: a Curaçao, Maltese or Gibraltar licence is not a substitute for the GB one. A licence for casino is not a licence for betting, and a licence for pool betting is not a licence for general betting; the licence type on the register is the licence type the punter checks.

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

The return is the stake multiplied by the decimal odds. The profit is the stake multiplied by (decimal odds minus one). A £10 stake at decimal 6.00 (5/1 fractional) returns £60, of which £50 is profit and £10 is the stake returned. The decimal form is what every UK site shows by default, and the conversion from fractional a/b is a ÷ b + 1. The return is on a win; a losing bet returns nothing, and the stake is not refunded. The BOG concession pays the return at the higher of the price taken and the SP, and the return is calculated at the higher of the two.

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

The margin is the gap between a perfect 100% payout share and the actual one. The payout share on a market is 1 ÷ (1/odds of outcome 1 + 1/odds of outcome 2 + …) across all outcomes of that market. A two-way market at decimal 1.90 and 1.90 has a payout share of about 0.95, and a margin of about 5%. The margin is the bookmaker’s edge on the market, and the edge sits inside every price. The BOG concession does not flatten the margin: the concession is paid out of the edge, and the edge stays inside the prices the punter is offered.

Content created by the «Bookies Trust» team