Active Existing Customer Promotions in the UK
Ladbrokes 1-2-FREE
Test your football knowledge with the 1-2-FREE promotion at Ladbrokes, which offers £100 in cash to players who correctly guess three scores!
Bet365 Early Payout
Have your selection paid out as a winner if your backed football team goes two goals up!
What Is a Promotion on UK Betting Sites?
Promotions are one of the main ways for betting sites in the UK to keep their customers happy, essentially rewarding them for placing bets on the site. These promotions can take many different shapes and unlike welcome offers, which can be claimed by new customers, promotions are available for those who have signed up and have an account.
As an example, bet365 - which we consider to be a great bookie - has a promotion called '2 Goals Ahead, Early Payout' which means a selection is marked as a winner if the backed team goes two goals up in a football game. It's one of our favourites and it certainly shows how beneficial good promotions can be for existing customers.
Free bet offers are also common, such as having to bet for a certain amount during a week to unlock free bets. These are often referred to as loyalty clubs, which can be found at BetVictor, while Coral and Ladbrokes even have their own currency to reward customers. In short, promotions are huge in the UK and if you aren't using them, then you are missing out.
How to Use a Promotion
Below, we have put together a step-by-step guide on how to use a promotion. Since we love it so much, we have used bet365's Early Payout as an example, though it should be noted that the steps could vary slightly depending on the betting sites.
Find the Promotion and Read T&Cs
The best way to discover a promotion is by reading up on it. The betting site in question will usually have it listed in the 'Promotions' or 'Offers' section, in bet365's case the latter, and here you can read the T&Cs to understand how it works.
Place a Qualifying Bet
Almost all promotions on betting sites apply automatically, which makes it so much easier for punters. Sometimes, it will be a case of ticking a box in the bet slip but that is certainly easy to do. In bet365's case, it's completely automatic so we just need to place a football bet on a qualifying league. It also has to be a pre-match bet on the classic full-time market.
Wait for the Bet to Settle
After the bet has been placed, you just need to wait for it to settle? Depending on the promotion, the effect might already have been decided. For example, an acca boost is made clear already when you place the bet, you just need to see if it becomes a winner. The Early Payout, meanwhile, only comes into play if the backed team goes two goals up.
Pros and Cons of Promotions
It's obvious that promotions can be extremely beneficial, and help boost/save winnings if used in the right way. We already mentioned bet365's Early Payout above, which means you can win even if your selection technically isn't a winner, and some bookies also offer acca boosts and general odds boosts. The upsides cannot be overstated, in other words, but punters must proceed with caution.
Indeed, placing bets for the sake of using a promotion is never a good idea. Promotions should always be used as complementary tools when placing a bet, rather than being the reason for placing the bet. In that sense, they certainly work differently than welcome offers, which of course require bets to be placed for anything to happen.
All of this is to say that one can easily get carried away and focus too much on promotions, which defeats the purpose of having them in the first place. Furthermore, it's always good to read through the T&Cs of the promotions just to make sure there are no caveats.
Isak is an experienced content writer with a background in sports journalism. Having focused mainly on football in the past, he is certainly familiar with the betting industry and what makes a good operator. On BettingGuide UK, Isak writes reviews and other content while making sure that the site is up to date.