Existing customer offers in British betting: what changes in 2026

Updated October 2026

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The bookmaker’s welcome page is a marketing surface. The text underneath — the small print on the £20 free bet, the wagering multiple on the bonus, the seven-day clock, the minimum price — is the part that decides whether the offer is worth claiming. Both pieces matter. In Great Britain they have to be read against a regulatory frame that changed on 19 January 2026, and that frame is what this page is built around. It limits how an offer can be structured, sets a ceiling on how much betting a bonus can demand, and decides which product types can be tied together. The frame is short; its consequences run through every brand and every offer reviewed below.

Verified against the Gambling Commission’s public register and the operator’s own terms, as of 27 October 2026.

Staying in control while you read and bet

The first thing to settle is the surrounding, not the offer. A reader who weighs a free bet while ignoring the limit on a deposit, the GAMSTOP opt-out they might want, or the counselling line they would call in a bad week is reading the wrong page. Several things follow from how Great Britain regulates remote betting, and most of them are quiet rather than loud.

GAMSTOP is the national self-exclusion scheme and a licence condition for every remote operator listed in this comparison. A self-exclusion runs for six months, one year, five years, or five years with auto-renewal, and the minimum period is followed by a further seven years during which the exclusion stays in place unless the customer asks to lift it. Online and app coverage is universal across GB-licensed brands; the high-street betting shop uses a separate, in-shop scheme. The point of saying it on a page about promotions is that the offer does not override the exclusion. A registered customer cannot deposit, bet or activate a bonus while the exclusion is in force, and an account opened before the exclusion is dormant until the period ends.

Identity checks are not optional. A licensed remote operator verifies name, address and date of birth before a customer can deposit or gamble, including with a free bet. Verification has been in force since 7 May 2019. The reader who sees a “register and bet” page on an unlicensed site and never gets asked for an ID at the door has not landed on a faster bookmaker; they have landed on an unlicensed one. The protection that goes with the verification is detailed in the section on the offshore market, but the verification itself belongs in the responsible-gambling frame.

Limits are the customer’s, not the state’s. There is no statutory cap on deposits or losses for sports betting in Great Britain; an operator must offer a deposit-limit tool (it is a licence condition), and a self-set limit is enforced — raising it takes twenty-four hours, lowering it takes effect immediately. The Commission’s announced, staged plan for financial risk assessments has no start date. Until then, the heavier financial-vulnerability check is a public-record check (bankruptcy and county court judgments) that runs when deposits minus withdrawals exceed £150 in a rolling 30 days, in force since 28 February 2025. None of this is a tax on the bettor; it is the architecture a GB licence requires, and the offer sits inside it.

Help exists and is free. GamCare runs the National Gambling Helpline. GambleAware funds treatment and research. NHS gambling clinics operate in several regions. Gamblers Anonymous runs peer support meetings. None of these lines is a promotion: they are there for the day an offer stops looking like value and starts looking like pressure. A reader who recognises that signal in themselves is the reader for whom the rest of this page is least useful.

What an “offer” really is in British betting

The word “offer” is doing a lot of work on a bookmaker’s landing page, and it is worth separating the kinds before talking about their cost. A welcome offer is a one-time credit at the start of an account, usually free bets paid in tokens. A free bet is a token the bettor stakes; the stake is not returned with a winning bet, only the profit. A price boost is an enhanced price on a specific selection, often an accumulator leg. A acca insurance refunds the stake (as a free bet, not cash) if one leg of a qualifying accumulator lets the bet down. A odds booster adds a percentage to the return of a winning acca, paid in cash. A risk-free bet, in marketing language, is usually a free bet credited on settlement of a qualifying wager — the stake is the bookmaker’s, the return path is the same as a free bet’s. A cashback pays a percentage of net losses over a period. Each of these is a different product with a different cost, and the same label — “free bet”, “bet £10 get £30” — can hide three of them at once.

The amount is the visible part. The cost is the invisible part, and the cost lives in the terms. A £20 free bet at minimum odds of 1/2 (1.50) that expires in seven days is worth an expected amount the bettor can estimate — the free bet’s expected value is roughly its face value times the payout share at the minimum price — but the real question is whether the bettor will use it at a price that gives the token a fighting chance, or whether the seven-day window and the price floor will send it down the drain. A £40 bonus with a 10x wagering requirement at minimum odds of 2.0 that expires in seven days asks the bettor to place £400 of qualifying bets, and the expected cost of clearing it is the turnover times the margin of the qualifying market. The amount of the bonus is a small number compared with the value of the bets it forces on the customer.

The reason it matters to read both pieces is that they trade against each other. A bigger bonus usually carries a higher wagering multiple or a tighter minimum price; a small free bet with no rollover is closer to a gift than its headline rival. The British market has been moving, in fits and starts, towards the small-and-simple end, and the Commission’s promotion rules in force since 19 January 2026 are part of that move.

The 2026 promotion rules: wagering cap and the mixed-product ban

Two changes arrived in the market on 19 January 2026 and they apply to every GB-licensed operator. They do not apply to offshore brands, and that asymmetry is the engine of the comparison later in this page.

The first is the wagering cap. No bonus offered to a GB customer may carry a wagering requirement of more than 10x. The Commission’s worked example puts it plainly: a £10 bonus at 50x wagering used to demand £500 of qualifying bets; under the cap, no more than £100 can be required. The cap is on the multiple, not the bonus amount, and the bonus amount itself is not capped in sterling. A £1,000 bonus is still allowed, so long as the betting it asks for does not exceed £10,000. What the cap does is stop a small bonus from asking for a large amount of play.

The second is the mixed-product ban. An offer that requires the customer to gamble on two or more product types — for example a football bet that unlocks free casino spins, a sportsbook bonus tied to a bingo ticket, a deposit that activates both a poker and a betting credit — is no longer permitted at all. A sports-only offer remains legal; a casino-only offer remains legal; the bridge between them does not. The Commission’s working example, the “bet on football to get free spins” construct, is the case the rule was written for, and it is now prohibited on a GB site.

A boundary sits next to the cap that the Commission’s own guidance does not fully settle. The 10x ceiling applies to a bonus with a wagering requirement. A free bet whose stake is not returned carries no wagering requirement — the bet is settled on its merits and the credit is consumed in the stake — and the cap’s application to that case has not been confirmed. The honest position is that the cap’s scope is the bonus with a rollover, and the free-bet token is a different product, and readers should not assume the cap has bent either product into the other. Where the page’s worked example runs on the bonus side, the formula and the result are solid; where it brushes the free-bet side, the conclusion stops at the value of the token.

The wagering multiple is only one of the small-print numbers. The minimum qualifying price, the qualifying market, the expiry window, the eligible payment method and the cap on free-bet winnings are the others, and each is the operator’s choice within the cap. The 10x ceiling is a ceiling, not a floor; an offer at 6x is legal and may be more useful than a competitor’s 10x if the minimum price is set generously and the qualifying market is one the customer actually bets on. A reader who treats the cap as a quality seal is reading past the rule.

What the offer costs the bettor: a worked example

The worked example below takes a representative offer and walks through what the bettor puts in and what the bettor can expect to get back. The numbers come from the offer’s own terms and from the market’s own rules; the result is a band, not a single figure, because the bettor’s choice of market and price changes the outcome.

Take a £20 bonus credit with a 6x wagering requirement at minimum odds of 1.50 (1/2), seven days to clear, on a market with an effective margin of 5%. The required turnover is £20 × 6 = £120 of qualifying bets, with each bet placed at odds of 1.50 or above. The expected cost of clearing is the turnover times the margin: £120 × 5% = £6 of expected loss in margin across the clearing bets, before any consideration of which side the bettor picks. The bonus credits £20 on completion, so the expected net value of the offer is £20 − £6 = £14 before any consideration of variance. A bettor who cannot clear the bonus in seven days forfeits both the bonus and the value of the bets that count towards it.

Hold the cap in view. Under the Commission’s 10x cap, no GB-licensed operator can ask for more than 10x turnover on a bonus. The worked example’s 6x sits inside that ceiling, and the calculation still ends in an offer that is worth roughly two-thirds of its face value at the assumed margin. A 10x offer on the same bonus is worth £20 − £120 × 10 × 5% = £20 − £60 in margin cost, so £−40, and is the case the cap was written to forbid in the first place. The 10x ceiling is, in other words, a backstop against offers that are not worth taking: the offer this calculation points at is borderline, and the cap is the difference between borderline and impossible.

The free bet is a separate product. A £20 free bet at odds of 3.0 with a market margin of 5% has an expected value of approximately £20 × (3.0 − 1) / 3.0 × 95% = £20 × 0.667 × 0.95 ≈ £12.67. The token is paid in the profit only; the £20 stake is not returned, and the formula is built around that. A reader who treats the £20 as a stake to be won back is reading the wrong line, and the marketing language that calls a token “£20 in free bets” is the kind of wording that sends a bettor in the wrong direction.

The same scenario gives the same answer twice. A bettor who reads the terms, picks a market whose margin is close to the assumption, and clears the bonus at a flat stake gives back roughly the cost the formula predicts. A bettor who plays at higher prices, who picks a thin market with a wider margin, or who chases the bonus into a sport they would not otherwise bet on, pays a higher cost and gets less of the bonus. The terms are the contract; the bettor’s choices inside them are where the cost is set.

The landscape of licensed operators in Great Britain

The ten operators ranked below hold a Gambling Commission remote licence, take part in GAMSTOP, and verify identity before the first deposit. They are not the only licensed brands; the Commission’s public register lists more. They are not in order of quality and the table that follows them is a comparison of stated terms, not a recommendation. The page’s own judgement sits in the verdict at the end of each block.

The table is a snapshot of stated terms at a single date. The licence numbers are the test of whether a brand belongs on the list: each is a Gambling Commission account number that resolves to a current licence on the public register. The right-hand column is not an exhaustive list of each operator’s promotions; it is a representative item from the brand’s offer set, the one a reader comparing two operators would want to see first.

What the rules mean for an existing customer, not a new one

The Commission’s promotion rules are written in the language of bonuses and mixed-product offers, and they apply to every customer with a GB account. The line between a “welcome” offer and an “existing customer” offer is operational, not regulatory: a free-bet token credited because the customer opened an account last week is the same product, under the same rules, as a token credited because the customer has been betting for three years. The cap and the mixed-product ban do not switch off when the welcome is over.

The practical consequence is that the existing-customer offer is, on a GB-licensed site, no less regulated than the welcome. A reload bonus — the credit a customer gets for funding the account on a particular day — sits inside the 10x cap. A price boost offered on Friday’s football does not. A free-to-play game with a cash prize, such as a Super Series jackpot, is a free product and is not a “bonus” in the rule’s sense. A loyalty scheme that pays in cash rewards and runs no rollover is on a different line from a loyalty scheme whose rewards are bonus credits, and the brand’s own terms decide which side of the line it sits on. The reader’s job is to read the credit as what it is, not as what the marketing calls it.

The other practical consequence is that the bonus is no longer the centre of the value the brand delivers. The Commission’s 2026 cap and the simultaneous rise in margin discipline among the larger operators have pushed the marketing money into product features — Bet Builder combinations, acca boosts with cash returns, price boosts, live streaming — that the cap does not cover. The promotional landscape is still a landscape; it has just moved from a few headline numbers on a welcome page to a longer list of smaller products running through the year. The reader who treats the offer as a single line item is reading the wrong column.

The legal frame: who is allowed to take a British bet

The framework that decides who is allowed to take a British bet is the Gambling Act 2005, as amended by the Gambling (Licensing and Advertising) Act 2014, and the operator that runs the betting is licensed by the Gambling Commission, a non-departmental public body sponsored by the Department for Culture, Media and Sport. The Act covers Great Britain — England, Scotland and Wales. Northern Ireland runs on its own, older law, and a GB licence does not regulate a Northern Ireland customer. The reader who is in Belfast is on a different page; the brands below are not licensed to serve them, and the marketing on the brand’s site is not aimed at them.

The 2014 Act made the licence a point-of-consumption requirement. An operator whose remote facilities are used in Great Britain needs a Commission licence wherever the operator is based. A Curaçao, Maltese or Gibraltar business registration is not a substitute. The licence categories for remote betting are general betting standard (real events), general betting standard (virtual events), general betting limited, pool betting and betting intermediary (the exchange licence). Each operator on the table holds at least the real-events category; Ladbrokes also holds the intermediary category. A licence for virtual events is a separate authorisation; a licence for pool betting is a separate authorisation; the brand’s own register entry shows the categories the operator is approved for.

Providing gambling facilities in Great Britain without the licence the Act requires is an offence under section 33 of the Gambling Act 2005. The maximum sentence on summary conviction is fifty-one weeks’ imprisonment, a fine up to level 5, or both, and in Scotland the custodial maximum is six months. The offence is aimed at the operator, not the customer, and the page does not write that a customer who bets on an unlicensed site commits an offence. What the customer gives up is the consumer protection: no GAMSTOP coverage, no Commission complaints route, no approved alternative-dispute-resolution body, no British consumer redress if funds are withheld, and no obligation on the operator to honour the 10x bonus cap or the £150 financial-vulnerability check. The licensed offer is heavier at the door, lighter when things go wrong; the unlicensed offer is the reverse, and neither is “the safe choice” by default.

Enforcement against unlicensed operators runs through cease-and-desist notices, search-engine referrals, work with registrars and hosts, and the payment chain. The Commission has been given, or is about to receive, court-order DNS blocking powers; that is a power the regulator can use, not a live filter at the reader’s ISP. The honest framing for a reader is: licensed brands verify your ID before your first deposit, run GAMSTOP, cap bonus wagering at 10x and offer a complaint route; unlicensed brands do not, and the worst case is the funds are not returned at all.

Tax: who pays what in British betting

The player pays no tax on betting winnings in Great Britain. A punter who lands a £10,000 accumulator on a Saturday does not write a cheque to HMRC the following Monday. The general information here is not tax advice, and a professional gambler — someone whose betting is a trade, not a hobby — is on a different footing and should ask HMRC or an adviser, because the line between “punter” and “professional” is a real one and is set by case law rather than by a rule in this article.

General Betting Duty is the operator’s tax, not the player’s. The current rate is 15% of gross profits, and from 1 April 2027 a new remote betting rate of 25% applies to remote bets that are not on UK horse racing, not at a self-service betting terminal in a licensed premises, not pool betting and not in-person. Remote bets on UK horse racing, self-service terminal bets, pool betting and in-person betting stay at 15%. Until 1 April 2027 the remote rate stays at 15%. Spread betting has its own rates: 3% for financial spread bets and 10% for other spread bets. The Commission’s statutory levy is a separate charge on the operator and is not a tax. Whether operators pass duty through to the customer in the form of shorter prices is not established and the page does not say one way or the other; what the page does say is that the price the bettor sees is the price the bettor pays.

The 2014 point-of-consumption change did not change the duty. The duty was already on the operator; the change moved the licence to the operator’s location, not the operator’s tax bill. A reader who is shopping for a bookmaker and finds two prices on the same horse is looking at margin, not tax, and the difference between the prices is the overround.

The operator reviews

Each review below covers one of the ten brands in the table. The reviews run in the same order as the table and follow the same shape: a licence line, a terms line on the offer, a product line on what the brand runs around the offer, and a verdict that closes the block on the picture the block above it has drawn. The verdicts are the page’s own judgements and are not the same judgement repeated.

BetUK

BetUK runs on a Gambling Commission remote licence held by LeoVegas Gaming PLC, a publicly listed Nordic operator whose UK-facing brand BetUK is one of several in the same portfolio. The brand’s sports welcome offer is four £10 free bets — two for football accumulators of four or more selections, two for multiples of two or more — credited after a deposit of £10 or more and a sports bet within seven days of registering, with opt-in required. The tokens are valid for seven days and the customer is, in effect, buying a four-token betting card for a £10 entry fee and a seven-day window.

The brand sits inside a wider product rather than standing on its own, and the consequence is that the offer is a route into the parent product rather than the whole product. The bettor who wants LeoVegas’s casino or live-dealer lobby is the bettor BetUK is for, and the bettor who wants a dedicated high-street racing book is on a different page. The seven-day expiry on the tokens, with four distinct bet types attached, is a structured bettor’s offer: a punter who already has a Friday accumulator and a Sunday multiple will use the tokens; a punter who does not will not. The verdict: a structured offer that suits a structured bettor, and a thin return for anyone who opens the account for the casino and treats the sportsbook as a side road.

Copybet

Copybet is the GB-facing site of Copybet UK Limited, a brand built around a tipster-following product that lets a customer copy the bets of named tipsters into their own account. The Commission remote licence is held directly. The product’s own existing-customer offers are the Acca Booster — up to a 100% cash bonus on accumulators of three or more selections, paid in cash — and a daily profit boost of up to 15%. The word “copy” is the brand’s pitch: the bettor who has not built their own accumulator can attach a stake to a tipster’s bet and let the brand track it into the slip.

The consequence of the tipster-tracking product is that the offer is paid in cash, not in free-bet tokens. A 100% cash bonus on a winning acca is the most generous existing-customer construct on this page, and the catch is the qualifier: the acca must have at least three legs and each leg must be on a market the brand has priced into the booster. A bettor who builds a five-leg horse-racing acca is outside the qualifier. A bettor who builds a three-leg football acca is in it. The verdict: the best existing-customer headline on the page, and a qualifier that quietly decides who can claim it.

Ladbrokes

Ladbrokes runs on a Commission remote licence held by LC International Limited, the same group that holds the licence for Coral. The two brands are not independent operators; they share a parent, and the page does not present them as rivals. The product line is the one a high-street bookmaker carries: odds boosts on horse and greyhound bets, Best Odds Guaranteed on UK and Irish racing, in-play betting and acca boosts, plus the wider Gala product portfolio on the same account. The new-customer offer on the brand’s site is on the same shape as the wider group’s, and the existing-customer offer is a daily rotation of boosts and a long-running BOG commitment on horse and greyhound races.

The consequence of the brand’s scale is that the offer is not a single line item but a calendar. A reader who bets on UK and Irish racing gets the BOG commitment on every race, every day, in addition to whatever boost is running; a reader who bets on a single football match on a Saturday gets a one-shot boost and a price. The verdict: a calendar, not an offer, and a brand whose value is the day-in-day-out commitment on racing rather than a one-time headline.

Bet600

Bet600 runs on a Commission remote licence held by Tyche Tech Limited. The new-customer offer is one £10 free bet credited after five qualifying single bets of £10 or more at minimum odds of 2.0 within seven days of registration. The structure is unusual: the bettor funds the account, places five separate qualifying bets, and only then receives the free bet. The five qualifying bets are the cost; the £10 token is the reward; the seven-day window is the constraint.

The consequence of the structure is that the offer punishes the casual customer. A punter who places one bet a week will not clear it; a punter who places one bet a day for five days will. The five-bet qualifier filters for the kind of customer the brand wants on its books. The verdict: a qualifying path that doubles as a screening test, and a free-bet token that arrives only on the right side of it.

Bet Ahoy

Bet Ahoy runs on a Commission remote licence held by Bet Ahoy Ltd, with the welcome offer “Bet £10 & Get £10 in Free Bets” split into a £5 sports bet and a £5 acca. The split is a small bet in product design: rather than two £5 sports singles, the brand hands the customer a single and an acca, and the customer has to pick the acca or forfeit half the credit. The two-token structure is a near-universal pattern on the British market in 2026; the £10-for-£10 headline is below the £30-to-£60 range the larger brands run, and the lower headline is the price of a smaller brand with a thinner product behind it.

The consequence is that the offer is a test, not a value. A reader who wants the brand’s full product will go elsewhere; a reader who wants a one-token welcome on a small balance will get one. The verdict: a small, simple offer on a small, simple product, and a reasonable entry point for a casual bettor.

Betway

Betway runs on a Commission remote licence held by Betway Limited, a long-established online bookmaker with a wider casino and esports product behind the same licence. The welcome offer is four £10 free bet tokens credited on settlement of a first bet of at least £10 at minimum odds of 2.0, with a seven-day expiry and a debit-card-only deposit. The debit-card restriction is the line that the credit-card ban, in force since 14 April 2020, leaves open: the Commission banned credit cards for gambling, and brands that ran the rule tighter on themselves exclude e-wallets from the welcome path, on the grounds that the chargeback risk is higher on a wallet-funded bet than on a card-funded one.

The consequence of the debit-card-only rule is that a customer with no debit card is excluded from the offer, and a customer with a debit card and a wallet has a choice to make. The four £10 tokens, with a seven-day expiry, are a longer clearing path than a £40 single token. The verdict: a generous, qualified welcome on a major brand, with a payment-method condition that quietly filters the customer base.

Fitzwilliam Sports

Fitzwilliam Sports describes itself as a Dublin bookmaker with capped membership, running on a Commission remote licence held by SBKI Limited. The welcome is a “High Stakes Welcome” subject to compliance criteria, and the brand’s own positioning is the high-stake, low-volume punter — a customer who bets in four-figure stakes on a small number of selections, and who wants a bookmaker that will price them and not close the account. The compliance criteria are the brand’s way of saying the offer is not for everyone; the offer is for the bettor the brand wants to keep.

The consequence of the positioning is that the existing-customer offer is a relationship rather than a token. A reader who places a £200 bet a month is the reader Fitzwilliam Sports is for; a reader who places ten £5 bets a week is on a different page. The verdict: a high-stakes bookmaker for a high-stakes customer, and a brand that says so in its own terms.

BetGoodwin

BetGoodwin runs on a Commission remote licence held by Goodwin Racing Limited, an independent British bookmaker with a horseracing-heavy product. The welcome offer is “Bet £10 & Get £15 in Free Bets” split into a £5 sports bet, a £5 acca and a £5 Sub-Cover bet. The Sub-Cover is a niche product: a bet on a horse to finish in the frame, paid if the horse is beaten on the line by a short head, a nose, or a head. It is a punters’ market rather than a brand’s market, and its presence is a marker of the brand’s racing focus.

The consequence of the three-token split is a higher value than the £10-for-£10 offers for the racing customer and a less coherent offer for the football-only customer. The £5 Sub-Cover token is the line between the two. The verdict: a three-token welcome on a racing-led brand, and a brand whose value to the racing customer runs deeper than the welcome page.

LiveScore Bet

LiveScore Bet runs on a Commission remote licence held by LiveScore Betting and Gaming (Gibraltar) Limited, a brand built on the LiveScore live-results product. The payments list is the headline: debit cards (Visa and Mastercard), Apple Pay, PayPal, Pay by Bank (Open Banking) and Revolut Pay. The brand is one of the more payment-flexible on the page, and the Open Banking option is the marker of a brand that built its deposit flow on the bank-to-account rails that the Commission’s anti-money-laundering rules have been pushing the market towards.

The consequence of the payments list is that the customer chooses how to fund, and the brand handles the rest. The welcome offer on the brand is on the lower end of the page; the value is the operational product behind it. The verdict: a payments-led brand on a payments-led offer, and a useful second account for a customer who already has a primary bookmaker and wants a different deposit rail.

Kalooki Sportsbook

Kalooki Sportsbook runs on a Commission remote licence held by Kalooki Sportsbook Limited, a small British bookmaker whose product is built around horse racing. The brand states instant withdrawals by bank transfer within minutes, BOG on UK and Irish racing, in-play betting, daily boosts and extra place races. The “within minutes” withdrawal is a distinctive claim in a market where the standard is hours-to-days, and the BOG commitment sits alongside Ladbrokes’ on the same racing calendar.

The consequence of the racing focus is that the offer is for the racing customer and the operational promise is for the racing customer who wants the funds in the bank rather than the account. The verdict: a small, focused bookmaker on racing, with a withdrawal promise that, if it holds, is a meaningful operational edge.

How to compare two offers without missing the small print

The comparison is not a single calculation. It is a sequence of decisions a reader makes, in order, and each decision narrows the choice until the right brand is the one whose offer fits the punter’s actual week.

Start with the licence. A GB-licensed brand is on the table; an unlicensed brand is not. The Commission’s public register resolves the question in a single search, by business name, trading name, domain or account number. The domain is not the test: licensed operators use .com and .co.uk interchangeably, and an unlicensed brand can register a .co.uk address. The test is the register entry.

Then look at the offer’s product type. A free bet token, a bonus with a rollover, a price boost, a cashback, an acca insurance, a profit boost and a cash loyalty reward are seven different products. The cap applies to the bonus with a rollover; the cap does not apply to the others. A reader who treats the seven as one is reading the wrong list.

Then look at the four numbers that decide whether the offer is worth claiming: the qualifying deposit, the minimum price, the wagering multiple, and the expiry. The qualifying deposit is the entry fee; the minimum price is the kind of bet the brand wants the customer to make; the wagering multiple is the amount of betting the bonus asks for; the expiry is the time the customer has to clear it. The expected cost of the offer is the multiple times the margin of the qualifying market, and the expected value of the bonus is the bonus amount minus that cost. The calculation in the earlier section is the same calculation for any bonus offer, and the band the result lives in is the band the offer lives in.

Then look at the payment method. The credit-card ban has been in force since 14 April 2020; an offer that excludes e-wallets is filtering on a chargeback-risk basis, and a reader with no debit card is excluded from the welcome path on those brands. The payments list is also the list a reader checks against their own bank: an Open Banking deposit is faster than a card deposit, and a Revolut Pay deposit is faster still for a Revolut customer.

Finally, look at the product around the offer. A bookmaker with a Bet Builder, in-play betting, live streaming, BOG on racing and a calendar of acca boosts is a different proposition from a bookmaker with a welcome and a thin product. The 10x cap has not stopped the marketing money; it has moved it from the welcome page to the product, and a reader who compares only the welcome is comparing the wrong number.

The wider market: what is not on the page

Several names appear in the wider British market and are not on the comparison. The reasons vary, and a reader who is comparing offers should know which is which.

The major high-street names — bet365, William Hill, Paddy Power, Betfair, Coral, Sky Bet, BetVictor, Smarkets/SBK, Kwiff, BoyleSports, QuinnBet, Star Sports, DAZN Bet, Spreadex — sit on a different scale, with their own welcome and existing-customer calendars that the Commission’s 10x cap applies to in the same way. A reader looking for an in-depth review of a major high-street brand is on a different page; the table above is a representative cross-section rather than an exhaustive list. The Commission’s public register lists every licence holder, and the register is the place to check a brand that does not appear here.

The financial spread-betting brands are a separate market. Spreadex, regulated by the FCA for spread betting and by the Commission for fixed-odds betting, is the example on this page. The losses on a spread bet can exceed the deposit, and the regulator for the financial product is the FCA rather than the Commission. A reader who is looking at spread betting is on a different page from the comparison of free bets and bonuses.

The offshore brands are not licensed for the British customer and are not on the comparison. The protection a GB licence provides is detailed in the section on the legal frame, and the loss of that protection is the cost of betting on an offshore site. The reader who lands on an unlicensed site is being offered a faster door and a thinner product, and the choice is theirs; the comparison on this page is for the licensed market.

A note on the calculation and the dates

The worked example earlier on this page uses a 5% market margin, a 6x wagering requirement, a £20 bonus and a minimum price of 1.50. The numbers are the page’s chosen example; the formula does not change, and the result is a band that depends on the bettor’s actual market choice. A reader who runs the same calculation on a 4% margin market, on a 10x bonus, or on a 1.20 minimum price gets a different result, and the formula is the constant.

The current date is the date on the register snapshot, and the licence numbers on this page are taken from that snapshot. A brand’s licence can change: a remote licence can lapse, an account can be suspended, a new account can be opened at the same domain. The register is updated by the Commission, and the entry a reader sees today may differ from the entry on this page. The check is a free one, and the page recommends the reader run it.

The promotion rules in force since 19 January 2026 are the current rules. The cap is the current cap. A change to the cap is a Commission policy decision that would be published on the Commission’s website, and a reader who is following a brand through a regulatory change should follow the Commission’s news page rather than this one. The financial risk assessments are announced, staged, and have no start date; the page does not say they are in force.

The tax rates on this page are the rates in force, with the change to a 25% remote betting rate from 1 April 2027 noted as a future change rather than a current rate. The 25% rate is set out in the policy paper cited on this page, and the page does not anticipate further changes.

What the page will not tell the reader

A page of this kind has limits, and the limits are part of its value. The page does not say which horse wins, which football match finishes 2-1, which tennis player holds serve in the third set. Nobody knows. The page does not say which offer is “best”, because the answer depends on the punter’s week and the offer changes from week to week. The page does not print a promo code, because the offer is described in the brand’s own terms and a code is a marketing token, not a piece of the contract. The page does not endorse a brand, because the comparison is the reader’s to make.

The page does say, in plain language, what an offer costs the bettor and what the bettor can expect to get back, and it does so using a formula the market itself uses. The reader who knows the formula, knows the cap, and knows the offer’s small print is a reader who can read an offer the way the brand reads it. That is the position the page argues for, and the position the next offer the reader meets will reward.

Frequently asked questions about existing-customer betting offers in Great Britain

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

Since 19 January 2026, no Gambling Commission-licensed operator can attach a wagering requirement of more than 10x to a bonus. A £10 bonus at the cap asks for no more than £100 of qualifying bets. The cap applies to bonuses, not to free-bet tokens whose stake is not returned and which have no rollover, and the Commission’s own guidance has not settled whether the cap covers that case. The Commission’s public register is the place to check that a brand is licensed.

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

The minimum odds are the floor on the qualifying bet: a £10 bet at minimum odds of 1.50 means the bet must price at 1.50 or above for the bonus to credit. The wagering requirement is the multiple of the bonus that must be staked on qualifying bets before the bonus is paid. A £20 bonus with a 6x wagering requirement asks for £120 of qualifying bets at the minimum price. The expected cost of clearing is the turnover times the market margin, and the offer’s expected value is the bonus minus that cost. Read both before claiming.

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

A free bet is a token the bettor stakes; the stake is the bookmaker’s, not the bettor’s. A winning free bet at odds of 3.0 pays £20 × (3.0 − 1) = £40 of profit, not £60 of return. The token’s expected value is approximately the face value times the payout share of the market at the bet’s price, and a reader who treats the token as a stake to be won back is reading the wrong line. The marketing word “free” describes the source of the stake, not its return.

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

No. The mixed-product ban in force since 19 January 2026 prohibits offers that require the customer to gamble on two or more product types. A sportsbook bonus tied to a casino credit, a football bet that unlocks free spins, a sportsbook deposit that activates a bingo ticket and a sports credit are all on the prohibited side. A sports-only offer remains legal; a casino-only offer remains legal; the bridge between them does not.

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 entry is the test of whether a brand is licensed. A licensed brand uses .com and .co.uk interchangeably, so the domain is not the test. The search is free, and the register is updated by the Commission. A brand that does not appear on the register is not licensed for the British customer, and the consequences of that are detailed in the section on the legal frame.

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

Betting winnings are not taxed at the player level in Great Britain. General Betting Duty is the operator’s tax, currently 15% of gross profits; from 1 April 2027 a new remote betting rate of 25% applies to most remote bets, with UK horse racing, self-service betting terminal, pool betting and in-person bets staying at 15%. Until 1 April 2027 the remote rate is 15%. Spread betting has its own rates. The Commission’s statutory levy is a separate charge on the operator. The general information here is not tax advice; a professional gambler should ask HMRC.

Content created by the «Basketball betting» team