When big race meetings such as the Cheltenham Festival come around, you’ll often find bookmakers making offers such as ‘Money Back If Your Bet Loses’. The instinct might be to think that they’re a bit of a con, given that they seem a little bit too good to be true.
In reality, they are just loss-leaders by betting companies that want to entice customers onto their sites in order to take money from them in the long-run. They are aware that some people will win their bets and others will lose but get their stake back, but the hope is that they’ll just place another bet.
For bookmakers, the market is so competitive that even just getting people to open an account with them can be a winning start. Once people are on their site, they are likely to place bets other than the ones that they will get their money back on if they’re losers.
This means that the company in question will make money out of them in the long-term that far outstrips the amount that they’ll have to refund on losing bets. On top of that, there is usually a limit to the stake size of something in the region of £10, so it isn’t even a huge amount that the bookie is losing.
What Is A Money Back If You Lose Offer
Different bookmakers will have different variations of the offer, but in essence it says that you will get your money back as cash in cases when something happens that results in you not winning your bet. Sometimes it will be that you get your money back if your horse finishes second or third or even fourth.
There are often bookmakers that promise you your money back if your bet is a loser, regardless of how it is that the selection ended up not winning. Regardless, the idea behind the offer remains the same.
You place a bet on something and if your bet is a losing one, within the terms and conditions of the offer, you’ll get your money back as cash. It really is that simple. In fact, the simplicity of the offer is why so many people are convinced that it’s a con rather than a genuine promotion.
The good news is that there is nothing to worry about when it comes to this offer. You can take the bookie up on it and place your bet as you normally would. The only thing to bear in mind is whether or not there is a limitation to the size of the stake that you’re able to get refunded to you.
Sometimes bookies will say that the money back offer only applies to bets of a certain amount, usually around £10. This might mean that you can only place a £10 bet, but it could also mean that you can place whatever size bet you want but will only get a maximum of £10 returned to you should it lose.
Equally, you might find that the odds of the type of bet that will get money back if it’s a loser a limited, such as it will only count on wagers with odds of Evens or greater. It is always important to read the small print of any bet so that you know what you’re getting into.
It Is Not A Con
The most important thing to know about such offers is that they are not a con. Regardless of whether a bookmaker offers to give you your money back in cash or as a free bet, it is a totally real offer that the company in question is putting forward with the full knowledge that it will lose them some money.
More important than the money that it will lose them, though, is the fact that it will win them some new customers, reactive old customers or simply just get active customers to bet more. That, to bookies operating in a competitive industry, is worth its weight in gold. If you sign up with a bookmaker or reactivate an account then there’s a good chance that you’ll place more bets with them in the future.
That, in a nutshell, is why such offers and promotions are made. What bookies want more than anything else is to gain new customers and keep existing customers because they know that they will take money off them in the long-term.
Betting companies are setup to make a profit from punters over time, so they’re happy to take a short-term hit in order to make a long-term gain. Giving someone £10 back from a losing bet will be a drop in the ocean compared to what they’ll earn over the duration of that customer’s time with the company. With that in mind, it is a promotion worth offering.
Take Advantage Of Such Promotions
If you’re the sort of person that is able to control their betting habits, you should absolutely move to take advantage of such offers. If you’re thinking of placing a small stake bet on a race, it would be silly not to use the offer to ensure that you don’t lose your stake.
Whilst you shouldn’t place bets that you wouldn’t normally be placing, the fact that you’re guaranteed to get your stake back if you’re bet is a loser that meets the given criteria, it is perhaps a situation in which you can look to bet on an unfamiliar market if you’d like to learn more about it.
Though the promotions are there as loss-leaders from the point of view of the bookmaker, that doesn’t mean that you have to give them what they want. The best bettors are ones that research what it is that they’re betting on and have a specific bankroll that they’re willing to lose all of if their bets don’t work out as they want them to.
You can therefore look to add the stake for the money back bet into your bankroll, knowing that you’ll either win your wager or else get the stake returned to you, both of which are positives as far as you’re concerned as the bettor.