How Do Bonus Bets Work in Australia? What They Are Really Worth

Australian bookmakers hand out bonus bets constantly. Sign up offers, money back on a horse that runs second, a refund when your multi misses by one leg. Most punters treat them as free money and throw them on whatever is running next.

A bonus bet is not the same as cash, and how you use it decides how much of it you actually keep. This guide covers how they work, what one is really worth, and how to turn one into money you can withdraw.

What is a Bonus Bet?

A bonus bet is credit a bookmaker gives you to place a bet with. You cannot withdraw it, and it usually expires if you do not use it. If the bet wins, the winnings land in your account as cash. If it loses, you lose nothing of your own.

The catch is in how the winnings are paid. Bonus bets in Australia are stake not returned.

Stake Not Returned

When a normal bet wins, you get your winnings plus your stake back. When a bonus bet wins, you only get the winnings. The bonus itself is gone either way.

What is a Bonus Bet Actually Worth?

Because the stake never comes back, the odds you use it at matter far more than they do with cash. On a fairly priced bet, the expected value of a bonus works out to:

Put a bonus on a short priced favourite and you are throwing most of it away. At $1.50 you keep a third of its value on average. At longer odds you keep more, which is why experienced punters never use a bonus bet on a favourite.

Those figures are also before the bookmaker’s margin. Every real price is a little short of fair, so a bonus bet placed at random is worth a bit less again.

The problem with long odds

Long odds keep the most value on average, but most of the time they lose. A $50 bonus at 10.00 is worth $45 in theory and nothing at all nine times in ten. That is fine over hundreds of bonuses, and painful over a handful. The fix is to remove the risk entirely.

Turning a Bonus Bet Into Cash

Turning over a bonus bet means hedging it, so you get paid the same amount whatever the result. You place the bonus at one bookmaker and back the other side of the market with cash at another.

The share of the bonus you keep is called the retention rate. Anything above 70% is a good turnover. The working behind any hedge is:

The best turnovers come from a long price on one side and a short price on the other, at two bookmakers that disagree. Finding those pairs by hand across dozens of bookmakers takes hours, which is what bonus turnover software is for. It ranks every pair by retention and works out the hedge stake for you.

Other ways to turn one over

• Lay it on Betfair. Instead of a second bookmaker, lay the same selection on the exchange. Same idea, with commission taken out of the winning side.
• Use it on a calculated racing selection. No hedge, so there is variance, but the racing turnover bot picks runners where the bonus keeps the most value in the long run.

Check the Terms First

Every bookmaker writes its own rules for bonus bets, so read them before you place one. The ones that matter:

• Expiry. Most bonuses have to be used within a set number of days or they disappear.
• Minimum odds. Some bonuses can only be used above a certain price.
• Eligible markets. Some are limited to a sport, a race type or single bets only.
• One bet or split. Check whether the bonus has to go on a single bet or can be spread across several.

Common Mistakes

• Using it on a favourite. Short odds throw away most of the bonus, as the table above shows.
• Putting it on a big multi. Plenty of value on paper, almost always nothing in practice.
• Letting it expire. An unused bonus is worth exactly zero.
• Treating it as cash. A $50 bonus is not $50. Plan around what you can actually keep.

Where to go next

• Matched betting, for where bonus bets come from and how to get more of them
• Bonus turnover, the software that finds the highest retention hedges
• How much you can make, once promotions are running and you want to add EV betting