How much money do you need to start matched betting?

There’s no definitive answer to the question ‘how much money do you need to start matched betting?’ Instead, it’s about how much you personally can set aside in order to get started. For some people, this can be as little as £100. Whereas for others, it will be a lot more. To find out more about matched betting in general, check out our guide: ‘What is Matched Betting?’

The more money you can allocate to your matched betting ‘starting pot’, the easier and quicker it will be for you to build profits. However, if you’re starting with a relatively small amount, you can still make those profits. You just need to get a little creative in how you matched bet.

A good tip when starting out is to split your starting pot equally between your bookmaker account(s) and your betting exchange account.

Getting started

One of the hardest parts of starting matched betting is placing your first bets. Getting started can be daunting, especially if you’ve never used an online bookmaker or betting exchange before. Make sure to read and/or watch the offer guides we have on OddsMonkey. Or contact our support team for help on a specific offer if you’ve got any questions.

If you’re starting off with a low bankroll, look for bookmaker sign up offers where you only need to place a £10 maximum bet to unlock your free bets. You’ll also need to pick relatively low odds for your matched bets. Just make sure you choose odds over the minimum noted in the offer’s T&Cs. The reason for this is that the liability amount at the betting exchange will be lower.

Another tip for anyone starting with a low bankroll, would be to look at combined liability. With this technique, you can complete sign up offers at a reasonable pace. However, you may have to sacrifice some value in order to build your pot. Let’s look at an example of how combined liability works.

Combined liability

With combined liability, you can complete a number of offers at the same time. Remember that ‘liability’ is the amount of money you’d be liable to pay at the exchange if your bet lost. However, this cost is covered, thanks to matched betting. It’s a good technique to use because it means you can start matched betting with a lower amount of money.

Once you’ve chosen a bookmaker offer, it’s time to choose something to bet on. For this example, we’ll pick a high profile football match where the odds of both teams are at least 2.0 or higher. In order to combine liability, you could sign up to 3 bookmakers using this one event:

• place one back and lay bet on the Home team,
• one back and lay bet on the Away team,
• and one back and lay bet on the Draw.

When the match ends, one out of the three bookmakers you signed up to will have a winning bet. Whilst the bets you placed at the other two will have lost. However, you will have unlocked free bets from all three bookmakers. And your exchange account should have enough balance in order to lay these bets off in SNR mode. SNR stands for Stake Not Returned. You could look to target the Correct Scores market in a high profile football match as the combined liability rule will still apply.

As long as you hit the minimum odds requirements outlined in the free bet T&Cs, your bankroll will have increased by a significant amount when you add up your balances across your bookmaker and exchange accounts.

Combined liability allows you to “recycle” your bankroll when starting off with a low amount of money. This means that you can continue working through the sign up offers. Rather than having to wait for money to move between your accounts, for example. As you see your profit start to build, you’ll see how quickly your bankroll can grow. This method means you can complete more offers at once.

So, how much money do you need to start matched betting?

As you can see, you can start matched betting with as much – or as little – as you want to put in. Of course, if you do have a bigger bankroll at the beginning then you can move through the sign up offers more quickly. However, matched betting isn’t a race. And we do advise everyone to go at a pace they feel comfortable with, especially at the beginning of your matched betting journey. If you have any questions, drop us an email at [email protected]. OddsMonkey Premium members can also get advice in our thriving Community forum.