A £30 free bet is not worth £30. It is worth somewhere around £22, and the reason is a single line in the terms that most people read past.
The stake does not come back
Place £30 of your own money at 2.00 and win, and £60 lands in your account — your £30 back plus £30 profit.
Place a £30 free bet at 2.00 and win, and £30 lands. The stake is not returned. You get the winnings only.
So a free bet at odds of X returns X minus 1 times the stake. At 2.00 you get one unit, not two. At 3.00 you get two units. At 1.50 you get half a unit, which is why placing a free bet on a heavy favourite is close to throwing it away.
What that makes it worth
The industry rule of thumb is that a free bet converts to roughly 70 to 75 pence in cash per pound of face value, and that holds up reasonably well in practice. A £30 free bet is worth about £21 to £23 in expectation.
That is not a scandal. It is simply a different product to £30 of cash, and comparing a “£30 in free bets” welcome offer against a “£20 cash bonus” on face value gets the ranking wrong.
How to squeeze more out of one
Because you keep only the profit, the maths pushes you towards longer odds than you would normally take.
At 2.00 a winning free bet returns one unit. At 5.00 it returns four. The probability drops accordingly, but the expected value of the free bet rises with the odds, right up until you are betting on outcomes with no realistic chance.
The practical range most people land on is somewhere between 3.00 and 6.00 — long enough that the stake-not-returned penalty hurts less, short enough that you win often enough for it to matter. Below 2.00 you are converting a free bet into small change.
The conditions underneath
Free bets carry their own set of restrictions that cash does not:
- Minimum odds. Very common. Often 1.50 or 2.00, sometimes higher. A bet below the threshold either voids the offer or does not qualify.
- Single use, no split. Most free bets must be staked in one go. You cannot spread a £30 token across three £10 bets.
- Expiry. Seven days is typical, and unused tokens vanish.
- Excluded markets. Cash-out is frequently disabled on free-bet stakes, and some markets are barred entirely.
- Qualifying bet first. The “bet £10 get £30” structure requires your own £10 at qualifying odds before the tokens appear — so the offer costs you a real stake up front.
That last one matters for comparison. “Bet £10 get £30 in free bets” requires £10 at risk and returns roughly £22 in expected value, and only if your qualifying bet meets the odds condition. Still decent. Just not £30.
The comparison that actually works
Convert everything to expected cash before ranking offers. Free bet face value times about 0.7. Cash bonus at face value, minus whatever the wagering costs you. Then compare.
Done that way, a modest cash bonus with light wagering frequently beats a much larger free-bet package — which is precisely the comparison the headline numbers are designed to prevent you making.
18+. Free bet terms differ by bookmaker and change without notice — check the current terms, including minimum odds, before placing a qualifying bet. Free, confidential support is available at BeGambleAware.