I don’t know about you, but there have times when I’ve wondered how it is that bookmaker’s odds can differ so much. They’re all looking at roughly the same information and, at least when it comes to the major events, they’re covering the same markets. How, then, does one bookie make themselves more appealing than another?
In my opinion one of the most interesting ways bookies attract new and repeat custom is through enhanced odds Price Boosts, which in many instances are run at cost or even a loss to get you betting. But what does such an offer entail? Are all Price Boost deals the same with every bookie? Is it something that’s worth looking to take advantage of? They’re the questions you’re hopefully going to find answers to here.
Best Betting Sites For Price Boosts & Enhanced Odds
Unibet - Uniboosts For Racing
Uniboosts allow you to boost any single racing bets up to three times a day on stakes up to £20 (no min). This includes both horse and greyhound racing as well as harness and trotting races.
All winnings, including extra payout, are paid in cash, boosts are available via the betslip. Uniboosts refresh at midnight each day.
If your boost should be lower than the SP and the race qualifies for best odds guarantee then you will be awarded the SP odds instead. If a horse doesn't run get another boost.
William Hill - Big Boosters
William Hill have recently become leading players in the odds boosting leagues. They have four major price enhancement features:
Bet Boosts: These let you boost your own odds on specific events or bet types. The offers change through the year but it is common to see bet boosts that let you enhance your own accas, bet boosts for racing and bet boosts for in-play golf. These are stake limited but all extra winnings are real cash. WH often run several of these in parallel too covering a range of sports.
Enhanced Specials: Every single day for almost every type of event Hill's boost markets by around 20-25%. Many of these are wither pre-formed multiples or bets from the #YourOdds bet builder markets.
Super Boosts: Mainly for weekend football there will be a treble or small acca boosted by up to 60%, this usually have a £5 or £10 stake limit.
Coral - Best % Value Boosts
Coral have been boosting prices longer than pretty much any other bookie, its hard to say but I think they invented the idea of the price boost in the first place.
These days Coral don't quite boost as many markets as they used to before they joined with Ladbrokes but their Smart Boosts when available tend to be the highest value ones around, consistently boosting prices by over 20%.
Stake limits do apply, but in general for the lower stakes standard bettor these enhancements provide great value, especially considering the suite of other retention free bets and insurance offers alongside.
Ladbrokes - Daily Boosts for New & Exisiting Customers
Ladbrokes are brilliant for two things, daily boosts on popular lines and an odds boost promotion that lets you boost the odds of any bet you like up to once eacch day.
Daily Price Boosts - These are focused on major events, like top level football, major racing and big tournaments in other sports. They can add a huge amount of value if you were going to bet on these markets anyway.
Any Bet Odds Boost - This daily offer is hugely popular. All customers can boost any bet they like once a day on stakes up to £50. All extra winnings in real cash.
What Is A Price Boost?
Speaking simplistically, a price boost is when bookies offer to up their odds on specific events or outcomes, so instead of getting the genuine odds of, for example, 5/1 they’ll offer you 7/1. In essence it is that simple. There are two major types of price boost, those for new customers and those for existing customers.
New Customer Price Boosts – If you are taking a new customer price boost (e.g 16/1 Scotland to beat England, £10 max bet, as in example below from 888 Sport) then it is extremely rare, to the point of being virtually unheard of, that your winnings are paid in cash. Instead you normally get your winnings at the standard odds in cash with the rest topped up with bonus funds or free bets. Those free bets or bonus funds will come with terms such as expiry times or rollover requirements.
Existing Customer Price Boosts – This is what we are interested in as loyal punters, and what the table at the top of this page reflects. These are boosts open to all customers and on the whole will always give winnings in cash, although there may be maximum stake limits.
What Are Enhanced Odds?
Enhanced odds are exactly the same as a price boost, some bookmakers just use different names.
Welcome offer enhanced odds are a way of enticing new customers to join a bookie. They tend to be headline grabbing offers that people almost feel that they can’t turn down. Say that Liverpool are playing a non-league side in the FA Cup, for example. They would be obvious favourites to win so a bookmaker may make an offer such as “Get Liverpool To Win @ 40/1!”
The standard odds for that sort of match would more than likely be around Evens if not even more in favour of the Premier League team, meaning that those odds are very tempting. These offers tend to have maximum bet restrictions applied to them, meaning that it’s a great deal but you can only bet a maximum of £10 or what have you. Some bookies will pay you your winnings entirely in free bets or bonus funds, whilst others will pay the standard odds in cash and the rest in free bets. It differs from company to company and offer to offer.
The second type of offer in this genre are better known as Price Boosts. This is essentially the same principle but it they deals are normally available to current customers as well as new ones and they are also run reasonably regularly. Traditionally Enhanced Odds offers tend to be less attention grabbing, perhaps offering something like a 5 to 25% price enhancement along the lines of 10/1 instead of 8/1.
A number of bookies tend to offer Enhanced Odds deals on a regular basis; some might offer at least one Enhanced Odds deal on a televised horse race every day of the week, for example. Other companies might promise one Enhanced Odds offer every day, differing the sport that they cover in order to keep up interest. This is because Enhanced Odds tend to be a great way for bookmakers to retain customers. See our table at the top for the best price boost bookies.
If you are a regular bettor then finding a betting site that regularly boosts the type of sports, events and markets that you want to bet on can be hugely profitable over time..
Important Price Boost Terms
The first key thing that you’ll want to bear in mind is how you’re paid your winnings. Do you get paid everything in cash? If so grab that offer with both hands and tell all of your friends and family! If you are a new customer it is more likely that you’ll be paid part in cash and part in free bets. The free bet tokens are normally yours to spend how you want on the sportsbook of the particular bookie you took the deal up with, though there may be minimum odds requirements you’ll need to meet and so on.
If you’re paid in Bonus Funds then that normally means you’ll need to roll the money over a given number of times before you can withdraw it. There may also be a time limit on the funds and minimum odds that you’ll need to adhere to to make the most of them. Have a look at the individual offer to make sure you know what you’re getting.
Another key feature of these offers is whether or not there’s a maximum stake. It’s more common for that to be the case with existing customer Price Boosts. After all, if you see an Enhanced Odds offer that is 14/1 instead of 12/1 but you can only bet a maximum of £10 and you were thinking of betting £20, is it really worth it?
If they don’t have a maximum amount that you can bet then you might find that they’ve got a maximum payout instead. This works in a similar way but you can bet however much you like. Say the Enhanced Odds are 20/1 instead of 15/1 and you’ve bet £100. The bookie might have put a limit on how much they’ll pay out that says you can’t win more than £1500. That would see you £500 out of pocket, so do think about it when it’s time to place your bet.
Getting The Most Out Of Boosts & Enhanced Odds
Obviously we’re talking about two different things here, but they work in exactly the same way. Whether it’s referred to as a price boost or as enhanced odds, what you’re getting is an offer that will see the odds on an outcome increased past their usual odds at that bookie. What we want to know is whether you can use these offers to improve the odds of your bets compared to simply placing the wager with a higher priced bookmaker.
Of course, wanting to take advantage of something and being able to do so are two different things. The first thing that you’ll want to do is to figure out when it’s a really good deal and when it’s something aimed at enticing you to bet with the company in question. If you see the enhanced odds are offering you 40/1 when every other bookmaker is offering odds of around 2/7, say, then it’s fair to say that the offer falls into the latter category and you need to be cautious before jumping in with both feet.
Is The Offer Actually Good Value?
Elsewhere on this page I’ve made a reference to Liverpool playing a non-league side in the FA Cup, so let’s continue with that idea for a moment. If Liverpool played a non-league side 100 times then they would win in 99 of them. Bookmakers know this and they know that you’re going to want to take advantage of an offer that has a Liverpool win paying out at odds of 40/1 instead of the 2/7 offered everywhere else. The question is, it worth taking up this offer or is it something of a false economy?
Even the most generous of bookmakers will not be planning to pay you everything in cash on an enhanced odds offer of 40/1 when the real odds are 2/7. Why on earth would they, given the extent to which this will see them lose money? Instead, you’ll be lucky to find a bookie that will pay the real odds out in cash and everything else in free bets, rather than just paying the entire winning amount in free bets and thereby forcing you to place even more wagers with them and increase the likelihood of you losing your money.
As a result, you need to look past the initial offer and instead figure out what the rules are on the free bets that you’ll be paid. Is there a wagering requirement on them? Can you simply place one more bet at odds of Evens or greater and then withdraw your winnings? If so, it will probably be worth taking the bookmaker up on their enhanced odds offer, given that you can then use your winnings in the same way as you’d use cash and it’s the equivalent of getting yourself some free money, albeit you won’t get the stake back with future winnings.
More likely is the idea that you’ll have to meet certain wagering requirements with the free bet tokens, which will severely decrease the chance of you winning any money and actually just make life harder for yourself. You’ll have to spend your time researching bets that you won’t immediately win any money from, which is time-consuming and annoying when you could instead be using that time to research genuine wagers that will increase your bankroll and see the amount of money that you’ve won potentially increase.
Definitely Look For Genuine Prices
The other side of the coin when it comes to price boosts is when a bookmaker is essentially offering something as a loss-leader, knowing it won’t make them money in the majority of instances but taking the hit in order to entice new bettors. This is when the price on offer is only slightly increased over the odds offered by other bookmakers. The sort of thing we’re talking about here is when the price is 7/1 rather than 5/1, so it’s still within the margin of error for the bookies to feel like they’re not going mad.
An offer such as this is a boon for bettors that know what they’re doing, but it’s also only good if the thing that you’re betting on is likely to be a winner. In the case of Liverpool and the non-league team, a 100/1 offer on the non-league side when they would otherwise have been 90/1 might be worth a £1 bet just in case, but it’s not worth spending the maximum stake possible on when you consider that you’re almost certainly going to lose the bet, irrespective of whether the odds are nice and healthy to look at.
Getting Value From Enhanced Odds
There is literally not a bet that I’d tell you to place without doing at least a modicum of research before you pull the trigger. You might look at odds on the non-league team betting Liverpool and think that it’s well worth betting £10 to possibly win back £1,000, but there’s a reason why they’re so un-fancied and on 99 occasions out of 100 you’ll simply be bidding adieu to your £10. Instead, look for the price boosts or enhanced odds that fit in with your own research anyway and then jump on them.
Have you done research into a horse race and decided that one of the runners is being undervalued by the bookmakers? It makes complete sense to place a bet on said runner, but even more sense if there’s a bookie out there offering enhanced odds on it. This is the sort of thing that you should think about, not simply taking a bookmaker up on their offer because you’ve noticed that the odds are longer than most other bookies are offering. Long odds on a losing horse are as much use as a chocolate teapot, so don’t fall for it.
Ultimately, what enhanced odds of price boosts should be used for is to increase your bankroll. The question you need to ask yourself when you see such an offer is about whether or not it will allow you to do so. If not, or if it’s going to make life more difficult for you, then there isn’t actually any real world value in taking advantage of the offer and you’d be much better placed to stick to the wager you’ve researched and feel offers you excellent value. Anything else is just giving the bookie what they want, which no one should be happy about.
