On this page you'll find all of the best horse racing free bets so that you can ensure you're getting the best offer when joining a bookie. Check back often as we're constantly changing our free bet offers around racing festivals & events such as Royal Ascot, the Cheltenham Festival and the Grand National.
Nearly every bookmaker across the industry will be offering you free bets or trying to provide you with welcome offers in order to get you signed up to them specifically.
With the betting business so competitive different bookmakers will be offering you a wide range of different offers to sign up to, ranging from deposit free bets to odds specific enhancements & bonuses.
On our specific free bets page, we offer a wide variety of different free bets to sign up to that will offer similar but also different offers that you can choose to get involved in. With this, we also have details of how existing customers with specific bookmakers can utilise their experience with that specific company, you can find all you need to know at our Bookmaker Offers Page.
A free bet is pretty self-explanatory and easy to understand, essentially it is offered by a bookmaker in an attempt to get you signed up and using the facilities of their site or app in a betting capacity.
Many bookmakers will require you to use real money in order to claim the initial offer for you to then be able to claim the free bets on offer, these are a bonus for you using their specific company.
Most of the leading bookmakers in the industry will get you to place between £1-£10 as a first bet that will then qualify you to pick up the free bets. This is normally placed on a selection that either has enhanced odds or once placed then offers you the actual larger number of free bets to stake.
Usually the most common sign up offer that is available for new customers is Bet £10 cash to then collect £30 of free bets. However, there are normally stipulations behind how to actually place the bet to redeem the free bets and that will be something you will have to read in the terms of conditions of the offer for each different bookmaker.
With horse racing there are normally better offers to sign up with bookmakers when a big racing festival is set to take place or even during the festival itself. The biggest offers in racing normally take place during the Cheltenham festival.
The Cheltenham Festival is the biggest event in the jumps racing calendar and for many punters it is the biggest betting week of the year where they can access Cheltenham free bets. This means that Bookmakers like to take advantage of this opportunity and will try and bring as many new players on board as possible and they do this by offering far better sign up offers than the ones that are usually offered to the public across the other 51 weeks of the year. These sign-up offers can range from larger stakes on risk free bets or enhancing horses to win a specific race at huge odds compared to what the horse actually is in the betting market.
Again, The Grand National is another occasion where enhanced free bets are on offer for punters with many existing customers getting involved much more with this event with it being the biggest betting day of the year for many bookmakers. Similar to Cheltenham, bookies try to take advantage of punters coming to have a bet on the races and will offer much better sign up offers than seen usually throughout the year. These free bet opportunities will be linked to the Grand National and with 40 horses set to run it is a great opportunity. Offers like bet £10 on a horse in the National and receive a another £10 to back another. These are the most common parameters of free bets offered during the build-up to this race.
Ascots main event the Royal Ascot is the biggest few days in the flat season calendar and offers another occasion for racegoers and punters to be able to utilise there betting experience by claiming superb enhanced offers for existing and new customers. The offers that will normally be brandished around by a host of bookmakers is bet up to £20 on the first race and get your stake back if your horse loses. Another one that works well is stake up to £100 and receive a matched bonus in either cash credits or Royal Ascot free bet credits.
There’s a variety of types of free bets available to new customers when signing up to a bookmaker. We’ve listed what they are and what they entail below:
No deposit free bets aren’t particularly common with bookmakers, but when they are offered, they normally are highly successful for the company. A no deposit free bet is pretty much what it says, you can sign-up to the betting company without having to actually offer any of our own money, which effectively means you can use their service free of charge as a one-off tester.
This comes more with Casino betting, but reload bonuses are another way for existing customers to get a free bet. The free bets are credited on top of what you deposit and give you some extra bonus funds to use in the casino or sportsbook specified.
This type of Free Bet allows you to stake a certain amount (usually £20 but check the T&Cs) and then once the bet has settled, you will then receive your stake back in the form of a free bet or cash if the bet does fail to win. This gives you the opportunity to bet on pretty much anything you like, making it risk free.
This type of free bet is one of the more commonly used strategies by a bookmaker together you signed up to their betting company.
This free bet see’s the bookmakers match the stake of your first bet placed with them. Be sure to read the T&Cs with all of the bookmakers as sometimes it can be misconstrued that it is your first qualifying bet and not your first deposit.
With matched first deposit free bets, they can range from £10 to £100 depending on the specific bookmaker, which gives you the potential of acquiring a large number of bet credits.
Another great opportunity to be able to gather free bets but also place a bet on a selection that is far bigger than the original sports book price of the bet. A clear example of a bet like this is Presenting Percy to win the Cheltenham Gold Cup at 80/1 when the actual odds of the bet are 4/1. Should the bet win you will be credited with either free bets or cash depending on the permutations behind the offer.
Without a doubt the most common free bet offers available from bookmakers. This means you will have to place an opening first bet above certain minimum odds (usually 1/2) along with a minimum stake (usually £10) which will be listed in the T&Cs. When doing this you will then be credited with your Free Bets or Free Bet Credits which will be available to wager on any selection you like. Qualifying Free Bet offers are usually presented as ‘Bet £10 & Get £30 in Free Bets’ or Bet £5 and Get £20.
These bonuses are very self-explanatory and can be added to your existing accounts at any time that suits the bookmaker. The bookies can award you a loyalty bonus using one or two methods. If you are an inactive user of a certain account, they may credit you with a free bet to get you playing on their site again.
The other way is the opposite and if you are regularly using the bookmaker’s site, they can reward you for frequently using them and offer you a free bet for staking and betting with that specific site all of the time. An example of this is the Sky Bet Club which is a free bet for existing customers. Bet £25 throughout the week and the following Monday you’ll receive a £5 free bet. This free bet can be used on football or any sport.
Some bookmakers like to offer you money back as a free bet when big events take place. A clear example is with Sky Bet again with the first race of a festival they will give you your money back as cash or a free bet if your horse loses in the first race of the meeting. They may do this every day of a festival or just specifically one race during the race-day.
When going to claim your free bets you need to be careful around the parameters of how you can actually access them. One of the big things to do to avoid any confusion is to read the terms and conditions and other key pieces of information that comes in and around the sign up offer itself.
There are many different questions you should think of about when going through the terms and conditions of how to claim the free bet and we have made a list below of some of them that you should be aware of:
With this, still be sure to thoroughly go through pieces of text that will help you to understand further how to get the best scenario with your free bets.
Free bets on horse racing can be used very differently to that of betting on football or rugby with so many different markets within the sport. Free bets can be used to bet on Fixed odds betting like the outcome of a race or horse to finish in the placings (which will vary on the number of runners taking part in the race).
Free bets in horse racing can also be used to place bets on horses to win the race by a certain amount of lengths which is very hard to get right but does put the odds of normally a favourite in a race at much larger than what they are to just take the contest outright.
Fore-casts and Tri-casts are another style of bet you can sue your free bets on but again it is a case of reading the terms and conditions as some bookmakers may limit you to just a single free bet and not being able to use them on more than one selection.