Existing customer offers from betting sites: the cost behind the claim

Updated October 2026

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On the kind of page an honest reader of UK betting sites deserves, this one opens on the cost of the offer rather than on the offer itself: how much turnover a bonus demands, what counts as a qualifying bet, where the free-bet stake is surrendered, and what the operator’s own terms say about each one in plain English. The page ranks ten Gambling Commission-licensed online bookmakers by what their existing-customer and welcome packages demand of a real punter, then walks through the rules those packages sit inside — the Commission’s promotion rules in force since 19 January 2026, the 10x wagering cap, the bonus-then-casino ban, the GAMSTOP and GamCare framework, and the offshore caveats. Each operator write-up closes on a verdict specific to that operator’s profile, not a repeated “suitable for” frame.

Data current as of 26 October 2026, checked against the Gambling Commission’s public register.

How this ranking was built, and who is on it

The ten brands below are not a recommendation: every one of them holds a Gambling Commission remote licence, every one of them lists its offer in its own terms, and a comparison is only as good as the apples-to-apples claim that sits behind it. Each entry was scored against three things the offer can be measured on — the size of the free-bet package against the qualifying stake, the minimum odds demanded of the qualifying bet, and the time the free bet or bonus lasts before it expires — and against a fourth, slightly different question: whether the operator’s own terms carry the offer, or whether the headline number was sourced from a third-party listing. The last is what catches the difference between an offer the company itself publishes and a price an affiliate page is repeating.

The licence line sits with each brand, and so do the operator’s own terms on the offer’s subject. None of the brands sits under a different licence from another — every one is GB-remote — so the licence call is a check rather than a filter: a brand whose account number is no longer on the public register has moved on, and the number is the test. Several featured brands are run under one licence holder (LC International runs Ladbrokes; a Gibraltar-registered sister company runs Unibet and others), and that grouping is not repeated as ten independents. Where two brands share an owner, their offers are stated from each operator’s own page.

These promotional offers — whether called “existing customer offers,” “betting bonuses,” or “welcome offers” for new sign-ups — describe the same shelf: an offer aimed at a punter who already has an account, or one who is about to open one and will hold the offer for a major meeting. The names are different, but the mechanic is the same: a reward for a stake. This page treats them as the same shelf and ranks them on the same axes.

The eligible brands sit in three clusters by offer philosophy. Cluster A is the headline-grabber welcome offer, where a £20 qualifying bet returns £40 in free bets and the largest denomination turns the first bet into three or four tokens. Cluster B is the smaller-grabber welcome offer, where a £10 qualifying bet returns £10 or £15 in free bets across a sports single, an acca and a specials token. Cluster C is the booster operator, where the welcome is modest and the recurring offer (acca insurance, acca boost, price supercharge, daily specials) is where the value is collected. A punter who bets once a quarter and a punter who places a daily accumulator are not shopping for the same shelf.

The offer landscape: what a UK bookmaker’s welcome package actually contains

An “existing customer offer” is a marketing name for a very small set of mechanics, and the variation across the ten operators is in the parameters, not in the idea. A welcome package is a bundle of free bets gated by a qualifying real-money bet — a stake at or above a minimum price, settled within a window, that unlocks one or more free-bet tokens. A free-bet token, in turn, is a stake the operator credits to a punter’s account that pays back the winnings but does not pay back the stake. A £10 free bet at odds of 3.0 returns £20 if it wins, not £30. That distinction is the single most expensive misreading of the page: the difference between the £20 return and the £30 a real-money bettor would receive on the same outcome is the difference between a free bet worth £6.67 on average and a £10 cash return.

The other mechanics matter as well, and each one shifts what the offer is worth. A minimum odds clause on the qualifying bet filters out the close-to-even-money favourites, where a new punter would otherwise be tempted to qualify at the lowest risk. A minimum odds clause on the free bet itself, where one is imposed, does the same on the other side. A time limit on the free bet — commonly seven days from credit — forces a punter to use the token before the operator quietly removes it, regardless of whether the fixtures on offer that week are worth a bet. An acca insurance clause pays back a losing accumulator as a free bet if exactly one leg loses, and that free bet then carries the same stake-not-returned rule the welcome token carries.

What the offer is worth depends on those parameters, plus three things a marketer may not feature. First, the wagering multiplier: a bonus that pays £40 after a £20 bet at 1x turnover is worth the £40 minus the margin on whatever the punter bets on; a bonus of the same face value at 50x turnover is worth almost nothing, because the expected cost of clearing it eats the value. The Commission’s cap of 10x turnover on bonuses is the second: from 19 January 2026 an offer above that line breaches the social responsibility code. Third, the snapshot of odds the punter is being offered — a free bet on a long-priced outsider at 20.0 is worth eighteen times the same free bet at odds of 2.0, because the winnings ignore the stake in both cases.

The statutes that set the rules in 2026

The Gambling Commission (UKGC) is the regulator. It is a non-departmental public body sponsored by the Department for Culture, Media and Sport, and it licenses every operator that takes a real-money bet from a customer in Great Britain under the Gambling Act 2005. Great Britain is England, Scotland and Wales; Northern Ireland runs its own older law and is outside that Act, so the licence a brand holds for an English customer is not the licence an operator relies on for a Belfast customer. Since the Gambling (Licensing and Advertising) Act 2014, an operator whose remote facilities are used in Great Britain needs a Commission licence regardless of where it is based. A Curaçao, Maltese or Gibraltar corporate register is not a substitute; a GB licence cannot be inferred from any of them.

The Commission’s register is the test. It can be searched by business name, trading name, domain or account number; the licence number printed on an operator’s own footer should match the entry under the same name on the register, and that match is the only test of whether a brand holds a licence. No count of licensed brands is reliable without an access date, because entries move: a brand may leave the register or change its account number between one visit and the next. A licensed operator uses .com as well as .co.uk, so a domain proves nothing on its own.

The minimum age is 18, and since 7 May 2019 name, address and date of birth are verified before a customer can deposit or gamble, including when the first bet is a free bet or bonus. That is the practical reason licensed operators collect a driving-licence photograph or a passport scan before any money changes hands: not as paperwork, but as the mechanism that makes the age check possible.

Promotion rules in force since 19 January 2026

The Gambling Commission’s rules on bonuses changed on 19 January 2026 and they are the page’s rules. The headlines are two. First, the wagering multiplier on bonuses is capped at 10x: a £10 bonus needs no more than £100 of qualifying bets before it can be withdrawn, a £50 bonus no more than £500, and a bonus that demands 50x turnover from a £10 stake — £500 of betting — is now on the wrong side of the cap. The cap is on the multiplier, not the offer’s face value, and it does not constrain the bonus’s headline number. Second, an offer that requires a customer to gamble on two or more product types — for example a “bet on football to get free spins” or an “open a casino account to unlock sports free bets” — is banned. The mechanic is the test, not the marketing; an offer that asks a sports punter to opt into a casino promotion alongside the free bet fails the rule whichever way it is phrased.

The cap leaves two questions open. Whether a free bet with no wagering condition — a token a punter can take out as cash after the qualifying bet, with no further turnover — counts as a bonus subject to the cap is not established. Whether there is a cap on the money value of a bonus (a £1,000 ceiling, say) is also not established. The cap is the strongest available constraint on the worst offers; it is not a guarantee that any given offer is a good one.

The rule sits with two older ones that are easy to miss. Credit cards have been banned for gambling in Great Britain since 14 April 2020, including credit-card-funded payments through an e-wallet; the welcome offers that demand a debit card or instant bank transfer are observing this rule. And advertising is not licensed by the Commission: it runs under the CAP Code (non-broadcast) and BCAP Code (broadcast), enforced by the ASA, alongside the LCCP marketing conditions. CAP Code section 16 is the relevant bit: marketing must be socially responsible, must not be strongly appeal to under-18s, and no one who is or seems to be under 25 may be featured gambling or play a significant role in the advertisement. That rule concerns who may appear in the ad, not who may bet.

Responsible gambling: what a licensed site owes the punter

GAMSTOP is the multi-operator online self-exclusion scheme and is a mandatory licence condition for online operators since 31 March 2020. The periods are six months, one year, five years, or five years with auto-renewal, and after the minimum period the exclusion stays in place for a further seven years unless the customer asks GAMSTOP to remove it. GAMSTOP covers online sites and apps; betting shops use a separate service. Every GB-licensed online bookmaker named below is a GAMSTOP member, and the public register is the cross-check.

The Commission’s safer-gambling framework runs on three other rails. A financial vulnerability check (LCCP condition 3.4.4, in force since 30 August 2024) applies to licensed remote betting when a customer’s deposits minus withdrawals exceed £150 in a rolling 30 days, with a public-record check (bankruptcy, county court judgments) rather than an income or credit-reference check; the threshold and the trigger date are 28 February 2025. Financial risk assessments — the affordability checks the press has announced on and off for the last two years — are announced in a staged plan (a Commission article of 7 July 2026), with no start date. Deposit limits have moved on two dates: a first set of changes applies since 31 October 2025, and a second phase was postponed to 30 September 2026, with no settled answer. There is no state-set deposit or loss ceiling: every operator offers a gross deposit limit on a fixed time frame as a customer choice, not a rule.

Help is a separate point. GamCare runs the National Gambling Helpline. GambleAware funds treatment. The NHS runs specialist gambling clinics. Gamblers Anonymous runs meetings. A punter who feels the betting has stopped being a choice, or whose partner does, will reach GamCare first; the rest of the framework is around it.

Bonuses and free bets: what each mechanic really pays back

Welcome offers and free bets come in five shapes on the ten featured operators, and the difference between them is the page’s comparison. The welcome free-bet bundle is the largest category: a £20 qualifying bet returns £40 in free bets at Coral and Unibet, with a seven-day expiry from credit. The head-to-head free-bet token is the second: a £10 qualifying bet returns £30 in free bets at Sky Bet (£5 deposit, 5p stake at minimum odds of 1/1 — a 5p qualifying bet is the cheapest entry requirement among the ten), £40 in free bets at Betway (£10 stake at minimum odds of 2.0 over four tokens), or £60 at Spreadex (the largest first-day token, with a fixed-odds qualifying bet at minimum odds of 1/2 and a 28-day window — the longest qualifying window on the page). The split free-bet bundle is the third: a £10 qualifying bet returns £10 in free bets at Bet Ahoy (£5 single + £5 acca), £15 at BetGoodwin (£5 single + £5 acca + £5 Sub-Cover bet), or four £10 tokens at BetUK (£10 deposit, split two football accas of 4+ legs and two multiples of 2+). The loyalty booster is the fourth shape: BoyleSports puts £20 free bets on a £10 fixed-odds qualifying bet (with a euro-denominated Irish twin for €30 on a €10 bet), and Skrill-style free-bet top-ups recur on acca insurance, acca loyalty and similar loyalty clubs.

The fifth shape is the recurring-cred booster: the operator’s value is collected on acca insurance or a price boost rather than at welcome. Copybet carries an Acca Booster of up to a 100% cash bonus on accas of 3+ selections and a Daily Profit Boost of up to 15%. William Hill runs a Football Acca Boost on accas of 2+ legs at minimum odds of 1/5 per leg, from 3% on a double to 200% on 20+ legs, capped at £10,000 per online bet, with the scheme currently running until 30 May 2027. bet365 layers Bet Builder+ (combining markets from one event with a separate single), Super Boosts, Winnings Boosts on Bet Builders and selected singles, and daily Bet Boosts. Kwiff layers a Supercharge that can instantly raise the odds of any bet — the marketing claim of “from 2/1 to 20/1” — and applies to singles and multis on any sport.

Each piece of value carries a cost the headline does not print. The free bet’s stake is not returned. The minimum odds on the qualifying bet force the punter away from a near-certain favourite, where the qualifying bet would otherwise be a low-risk stake at near-cash odds. The minimum odds on the free bet, where one is set (QuinnBet runs free bets at minimum odds of 1/2 / 1.50 and maximum odds of 50/1, with straights allowed but Trixies, Patents and Yankees excluded), does the same on the other side. The seven-day expiry is a clock: a punter who cannot find a market worth the token loses the token. The exclusion of certain bet types from a free bet is itself a price; an acca insurance that excludes same-game-multi selections narrows the markets it is useful on.

The wagering cap, in plain English

The 10x cap and the mixed-product ban are the page’s two main knobs, and they sit in the cross-section between the legal framework and the offers themselves. The free bet is the offer shape the cap least affects: a free bet at no wagering condition is, on its own terms, a token the punter places and walks away from, and whether that token counts under the cap is unsettled by the Commission. A bonus at 10x turnover is, on its own terms, a small multiplier a punter can clear by treating the offer as a low-stake subscription bet — a £50 bonus turned into £500 of qualifying bets at minimum odds over a few weekends — and the cap makes that offer shape respectable.

What the cap explicitly does not do is constrain the face value of the bonus. A £1,000 bonus at 10x turnover is compliant; it is also £10,000 of qualifying bets before withdrawal, which the same cap does nothing to make easier. The cap is on the worst offers, the marketing clear of which is welcome; it is not a free pass on the largest offers, and the punter who reads the cap as a guarantee of value is reading it the way the marketer wrote it.

The mixed-product ban is the cleaner of the two rules, and the mechanical question of whether a free bet is paired with a casino or bingo opt-in is the test. A welcome offer that sends the punter a sports free bet without asking them to opt into a casino promotion passes the rule; an offer that emails a free spins credit along with the sports token, with or without a footnote, fails it.

How the ten bookmakers stack up on existing customer offers

The licence column tracks the Gambling Commission’s account number for each brand, and the operator’s own terms column summarises what each operator states about the offer’s key subject in the pages and on the apps. The “key” is the largest free-bet token the operator pays back as welcome credit, the smallest qualifying bet that triggers it, the minimum odds the operator demands, and the expiry the operator attaches to the credit. What is in the column is a summary of what the operator publishes; what is not in the column is what the operator does not publish, which is the most useful fact of all.

What the table carries is the licence test — the account number is the public proof that the brand holds the licence it claims — and the operator’s own terms on the package. What the table does not carry is the calculation of what each offer is worth, and that is the next section.

What a £20 qualifying bet at 2.0 actually costs to clear

The Commission’s cap is on the wagering multiplier, and on the ten featured brands the multiplier sits at 1x on the welcome free bets (the stake is settled, the token is issued, and the punter can withdraw after the free bet has been used at minimum odds). Behind each welcome is one of two mechanisms for the operator’s expected cost: the margin on the market the punter bets on, and the value the punter receives from the free bet after the stake is surrendered.

Take Coral’s “Get £40 in Free Bets when you bet £20” as the worked example. The qualifying bet is £20 at minimum odds of 2.0 (1/1), settled on a sports market; the £40 in free bets is split across tokens issued within 7 days of the qualifying bet settling, each expiring 7 days from issue. The punter’s first stake is real money, with the operator’s margin on the chosen market embedded in the 2.0 odds; the punter’s expected loss on the qualifying bet, on a market with a 5% margin and a fair price of 2.0, is £1 (£20 × 5%). The £40 in free bets, on the same 5% margin market at a fair free-bet price of 5.0 (a long-priced outsider), is worth £40 × (5.0 − 1) ÷ 5.0 × 95% = £40 × 0.80 × 0.95 = £30.40 to a punter who places each free bet at the longest available price. The net expected value of the package, on those assumptions, is £30.40 − £1 − £20 (the qualifying stake if it loses) = £9.40 to the punter in expectation. On a market with a 10% margin and a fair free-bet price of 3.0, the value falls: £40 × (3.0 − 1) ÷ 3.0 × 90% = £24, and the expected loss on the qualifying bet is £2; the net is £24 − £2 − £20 = £2.

The difference between the two readings is the gap between a free-bet welcome on thin-margin markets at long-priced outsiders (the most-favourable combination) and the same welcome on thick-margin markets at short-priced favourites (the worst combination). The Commission’s cap of 10x does not reach into either of these numbers; the cap’s effect is on the welcome offers that paid out a cash bonus at 50x turnover, which a £20 stake at the cap’s £100 ceiling (10x) would simply not clear.

The package cost as a band, then, runs from positive (a punter who bets the welcome on long-priced markets with the thinnest margin) to near-zero (a punter who bets the welcome as the marketing copy suggests, on favourites with the thickest margin). On the ten featured brands the variance is not in the welcome offer — most pay £40 in free bets on £20 — but in the markets each operator quotes, the margins each holds, and the prices the punter can find the qualifier at. Bands across the ten: Coral and Unibet sit at the top of the band at the same headline; BetUK, BetGoodwin and Bet Ahoy sit in the small-bundle band, with values measured in single pounds; Spreadex’s £60 fixed-odds token sits at the top of the absolute-value band, with the longest qualifying window (28 days) and the cheapest minimum odds (1/2) on the page.

BetUK: a small welcome with a tight window

BetUK’s offer is the smallest welcome on the page in headline terms and one of the strictest in mechanism. A £10 deposit and a sports bet of £10 or more within 7 days of registration returns four £10 free bets — two football accas of 4+ selections and two multiples of 2+ — each with a 7-day expiry from credit, and the whole package needs an explicit opt-in. The licence is held by LeoVegas Gaming PLC at Gambling Commission account 39198, and the brand’s market position — the LeoVegas casino backbone on top of a sportsbook aimed at football and racing — shows in the way the four tokens are split: two are football-specific, and a punter who bets mainly on tennis or golf is reading a tighter set of conditions than the welcome copy suggests.

The verdict: BetUK suits a football punter who plans an accumulator-heavy week and uses the tokens inside their 7-day window. It is not the welcome for a punter who would rather place singles — the four-leg football acca, in particular, ties the value to a specific market the punter must browse. The smaller headline number hides a workable value if the acca wins, and a near-zero value if it doesn’t.

Copybet: the booster operator, no welcome free bet

Copybet’s profile is the opposite of BetUK’s. There is no welcome free-bet bundle at the licence holder’s site; the value is collected on the Acca Booster (up to a 100% cash bonus on accas of 3+ selections) and a Daily Profit Boost of up to 15% on selected markets. The licence is held by Copybet UK Limited at Gambling Commission account 53774, and the offering is built around accumulators the punter builds from the operator’s own price feeds.

The verdict: Copybet suits a punter who places accas regularly and reads the Daily Profit Boost terms before placing — the 15% boost is not applied to every market, and the markets where it is applied determine what the offer is worth. It is not the welcome for a punter who wants a one-off token; there is no one-off token here. A punter who treats the recurring booster as a subscription product rather than a free bet gets the value the page is measuring.

Ladbrokes: the recurring loyalty rather than the welcome

Ladbrokes’ headline is not the welcome but the recurring shelf — odds boosts on horse and greyhound bets, Best Odds Guaranteed on UK and Irish racing, in-play betting, Acca Boosts. The licence is held by LC International Limited at Gambling Commission account 54743, the same holder as Coral’s, and the punter who shops both brands under one licence holder will see the same operators attached to similar mechanics with different terms.

The verdict: Ladbrokes suits a punter who bets horse racing week-to-week and uses the Best Odds Guaranteed offer. It is not the welcome-first shelf on the page — the welcome is not the strongest here — but the recurring loyalty book is the strongest, and a punter whose account is at Ladbrokes for that reason is using it the way the offer is shaped.

Bet600: a five-bet qualifying gateway

Bet600’s welcome is the most demanding qualifying condition on the page. Five single bets of £10 or more, each at minimum odds of Evens (2.0) or greater, must be settled within the first 7 days of registration; on completion one £10 free bet is credited. The licence is held by Tyche Tech Limited at Gambling Commission account 44731, and the operator’s profile is a smaller, focused book with a sharper welcome funnel than the headline-grabbers.

The verdict: Bet600 suits a punter who already bets five times a week and lets the qualifying bets run alongside their usual bets; the welcome costs nothing extra in qualifying volume, but it pays back only £10 for the five bets that drive it. The offer is the worst value-per-bet on the page for a casual punter, and the most efficient welcome on the page for a regular one.

Bet Ahoy: a £10 for £10 with a split

Bet Ahoy’s welcome is “Bet £10 & Get £10 in Free Bets”, split across a £5 sports single and a £5 acca. The licence is held by Bet Ahoy Ltd at Gambling Commission account 100094, a newer account number on the page, and the operator’s profile is a small bundle that values the punters who would have placed the £10 bet anyway.

The verdict: Bet Ahoy suits a casual punter who bets once a week. The £5 sports single is usable at the operator’s typical minimum odds; the £5 acca must be placed on an accumulator market. For a punter who would have placed the qualifying bet anyway, the £10 free bets is a fair return; for a punter who places the qualifying bet solely to capture the token, the expected value is small.

Betway: the £40 four-token welcome

Betway’s welcome is £40 in free bet tokens (4 × £10), credited on settlement of a first bet of £10 or more at minimum odds of 2.0, with a 7-day expiry from credit and debit card deposits only. The licence is held by Betway Limited at Gambling Commission account 39372, and the operator’s profile is the larger sibling of Bet Ahoy at the largest bundle-of-four welcome on the page.

The verdict: Betway suits a punter planning to deposit by debit card and bet £10 anyway. The four £10 tokens are usable on different markets and different bet types, and a punter who chooses the longest available price on each token captures the full value. The 7-day expiry is the practical cost; a punter who doesn’t browse the markets that week loses the tokens.

Fitzwilliam Sports: a high-stakes welcome under compliance criteria

Fitzwilliam Sports describes itself as a Dublin bookmaker with capped membership, and its welcome is a “High Stakes Welcome” subject to compliance criteria. The licence is held by SBKI Limited at Gambling Commission account 48760, and the welcome mechanics — the size of the qualifying stake, the minimum odds, the bundle size — are not published in the operator’s own terms in the way the other nine brands publish them.

The verdict: Fitzwilliam Sports is not a fit for the casual welcome-shopper. The High Stakes Welcome is structured for a high-volume punter who has passed the operator’s compliance and acceptance criteria, and the rest of the page’s benchmark comparisons do not run on it. A punter who has been invited into the scheme will read it differently; the rest can leave it alone.

BetGoodwin: a £10 for £15 with a third leg

BetGoodwin’s welcome is “Bet £10 & Get £15 in Free Bets”, split across a £5 sports single, a £5 acca and a £5 Sub-Cover bet (a price boost token restricted to a named meeting). The licence is held by Goodwin Racing Limited at Gambling Commission account 2927, a long-standing racing-led operator, and the third-leg Sub-Cover token is the unusual piece.

The verdict: BetGoodwin suits a racing punter who would have bet £10 on a meeting anyway. The Sub-Cover token is the value-rich piece, and a punter who doesn’t bet the relevant meeting gives back a third of the package. For all-comers, the headline is in line with the small-bundle cluster and the value sits in whether the punter uses the racing-specific token.

LiveScore Bet: a payment-method shelf, not a welcome

LiveScore Bet’s profile is a payment-method shelf: debit cards (Visa, Mastercard), Apple Pay, PayPal, Pay by Bank (Open Banking) and Revolut Pay. The licence is held by LiveScore Betting and Gaming (Gibraltar) Limited at Gambling Commission account 56859. The recurring promos are operator-specific and the welcome terms are subject to current app state.

The verdict: LiveScore Bet is the brand for a punter who wants Pay by Bank or Revolut Pay and isn’t already locked into a brand on the page. The payment shelf is the page’s most complete among the ten featured; the welcome shelf is in line with the small-bundle cluster. A punter who holds the brand for the payment method is using the brand the way the offer is shaped.

Kalooki Sportsbook: small operator, fast withdrawals

Kalooki Sportsbook is the smallest operator on the page on most measures and the strongest on one — instant withdrawals by bank transfer. The licence is held by Kalooki Sportsbook Limited at Gambling Commission account 57730, the brand is a GAMSTOP member, and the shelf is Best Odds Guaranteed on UK and Irish racing, in-play betting, daily boosts and extra-place races.

The verdict: Kalooki Sportsbook suits a racing punter who values withdrawal speed above headline bundle size. The instant-withdrawal mechanism is the differentiator on the page; the rest of the shelf is in line with the small-bundle cluster. A punter who doesn’t bet racing doesn’t read this shelf, and the welcome is not the strongest on the page.

Spread betting, in case it crosses your path

Spreadex is a spread betting and fixed-odds brand (the only one on the page), regulated by the FCA for spread betting and by the Gambling Commission for fixed-odds betting, with the explicit statement that spread betting losses can exceed deposits. The £60 fixed-odds welcome on a £10 qualifying bet at minimum odds of 1/2 is the largest first-day token on the page; the spread betting product is a separate order of magnitude and carries a separate risk.

The verdict: spread betting is a different product from fixed odds. The same brand that pays £60 in free bets on the fixed-odds side runs a spread book where the punter can lose more than the deposit. A punter who only wants the welcome should read the free-bet token only and leave the spread side alone. The page puts Spreadex in this section because the offer’s “key subject” is spread betting as much as fixed odds, and that the two sit on opposite sides of the regulator’s desk is the main reason to keep them apart.

How to verify a bookmaker’s licence without leaving the page

The Commission’s public register is at the Commission’s own website, searchable by business name, trading name, domain or account number, and an entry against the account number is the test. The names of the licence holders and the account numbers on the page should each find an entry; the entry lists the licence categories (remote general betting standard real events, virtual events, pool betting, betting intermediary, and so on), the trading names the licence covers, and the dates the licence has been in force. A licence check is a single visit.

Three cautions are worth keeping in mind. A licence number from a brand that is no longer on the register fails the test the moment the check is run, and a brand can leave the register between one visit and the next. The address on the register is the licence holder’s principal office, which on this page is LeoVegas Gaming PLC (Malta, licence holder for BetUK), LC International Limited (Gibraltar, licence holder for Ladbrokes and Coral’s adjacent operations), Platinum Gaming Limited (Gibraltar, the holder running Unibet’s UK operations under account 45322), Tyche Tech Limited, Bet Ahoy Ltd, Betway Limited, SBKI Limited, Goodwin Racing Limited, LiveScore Betting and Gaming (Gibraltar) Limited, and Kalooki Sportsbook Limited — not all UK-domiciled. And the licence categories are worth checking: a remote general betting standard licence covers what the punter will use it for, and a remote betting intermediary licence is the exchange licence (a different product); the brands on this page all hold the former, with Ladbrokes additionally holding the latter, and the punter who lands on a brand that holds only the pool betting category is reading a different market.

Tax, and how it sits with the punter

Betting winnings are not taxed on the punter in Great Britain. That is general information, not tax advice; a professional gambler should ask HMRC or an adviser because the line between a punter and a professional is a tax line that HMRC draws case by case.

The operator pays General Betting Duty, currently 15% on gross profits. From 1 April 2027, a new remote betting rate of 25% applies within General Betting Duty on the operator’s remote sports bets; UK horse racing bets from a remote platform, bets on self-service betting terminals in licensed premises, pool betting, and in-person betting stay at 15%. Until 1 April 2027 the remote rate is 15%; whether operators pass the duty on through odds is not established, and the punter is not charged duty. The Commission’s statutory levy is a separate charge on the operator, not a tax on the punter.

Spread betting has its own rates: 3% on financial spread betting, 10% on other spread bets.

Offshore brands, and what the licence does not cover

A GB licence is compulsory at the point of consumption. Providing gambling facilities in Great Britain without the licence the Act requires is an offence under section 33 of the Gambling Act 2005; on summary conviction the penalty is up to 51 weeks’ imprisonment, a fine up to level 5, or both (six months in Scotland), and the offence is aimed at the operator. No offence aimed at a customer who merely bets on an unlicensed site is in the Act; the cost of betting offshore is the loss of protection, not a criminal charge.

What the loss looks like: no GAMSTOP coverage, no Commission complaints route, no approved dispute-resolution body, no British consumer redress if funds are withheld, no obligation to honour the 10x bonus cap or the £150 vulnerability check, no British named-account rule on payments. The Commission enforces the point of consumption through cease-and-desist notices, search-engine referrals, and work with registrars, hosts and payment providers; the Commission has been given, or is about to receive, court-order DNS blocking powers. None of that is “ISP blocking in operation” today; all of it is part of how the offshore market gets re-routed.

The honest framing: a licensed brand costs more in verification time before the first bet, and delivers more in protection when a problem arises. An unlicensed brand costs less on the first day, and may cost everything the punter put on the books. Neither is “the safe choice” by default — the licensed one is the only choice that addresses the failure modes the punter can think of in advance.

Frequently asked questions about existing customer offers betting

What is the maximum wagering requirement on a betting bonus in Great Britain?

The Gambling Commission has capped wagering requirements on bonuses at 10x since 19 January 2026. A £10 bonus needs no more than £100 of qualifying bets before it can be withdrawn; a £50 bonus needs £500 of qualifying bets. The cap is on the multiplier; it does not constrain the bonus’s face value, and a large bonus at 10x turnover still asks for a substantial amount of betting before withdrawal.

What do minimum odds and the wagering requirement mean in a sign-up offer?

Minimum odds filter the qualifying bet: the bookmaker sets a floor (1/2 / 1.50 at the loose end, 2.0 / evens at the common end) so the punter cannot qualify at a near-certain favourite and pocket the token at near-zero risk. The wagering requirement is the multiplier on the bonus itself (capped at 10x as above); the two are different constraints on different bets. A £10 bonus at 10x turnover and a £10 qualifying bet at minimum odds 2.0 is the most common shape on the page.

Why is the stake of a free bet not paid back with the winnings?

A free bet is a token the operator credits to the punter’s account; the winnings from a winning free bet are paid out, and the token itself is not. A £10 free bet at odds of 3.0 returns £20 if it wins, not £30. The mathematics of value is stake × (odds − 1) ÷ odds × payout share, which is the number research names as the free bet’s average worth; at odds of 5.0 and a 95% payout share the £10 free bet is worth £7.60 on average, less than its face value, which is the cost of the no-stake-returned rule.

Can a bet on sport be tied to a casino bonus under the Commission’s promotion rules?

No. From 19 January 2026, mixed-product promotions — an offer that requires gambling on two or more product types such as betting, casino, bingo and lottery — are banned. A welcome offer that pays sports free bets without asking the punter to opt into a casino or bingo promotion passes the rule; an offer that emails free spins credit along with the sports token fails it. The test is the mechanic, not the marketing wording.

How can it be checked that a bookmaker holds a Gambling Commission licence?

The Commission’s public register can be searched by business name, trading name, domain or account number. The licence number on an operator’s footer should match the entry on the register; the entry lists the licence categories, the trading names covered, and the dates of force. A licence number that does not appear on the register fails the test; a licence number from a brand that has left the register since was last checked also fails it.

Are betting winnings taxed in Great Britain, and who pays General Betting Duty?

No, betting winnings are not taxed on the punter in Great Britain (general information, not tax advice). The operator pays General Betting Duty on its gross profits, currently 15%; from 1 April 2027 a new remote betting rate of 25% applies within the duty on remote sports bets, with UK horse racing bets from a remote platform, pool betting, and in-person betting staying at 15%. Until 1 April 2027 the remote rate is 15%; whether operators pass the duty on through odds is not established. Spread betting has separate rates: 3% on financial spread betting, 10% on other spread bets.

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