If you’re considering opening a new betting account, then the Cheltenham Festival could be the perfect time to take the plunge. The lead up to the festival and throughout the much-loved event itself, is go time for bookmakers, who love to launch lavish promos, juicy free bets and generous bonuses for both new and existing customers to take advantage of.
Online betting sites everywhere all join the clamour for your business during the Cheltenham Festival and you’ll routinely find dozens of excellent offers over the four-day horse racing spectacle. Below, we’ll shine a light on some of the promotions that you’ll get to enjoy.
✅ Cheltenham Welcome offer
Welcome offers are incentivised promos designed to encourage new customers to sign up with a particular bookmaker. They can come in the form of a matched deposit, a series of free bets or real cash. They are an excellent way to build an early bankroll and some of the welcome offers can be extremely lucrative. Always read the fine print however, as some welcome offers seem generous before you take a glance at the play through requirements.
✅ Cheltenham Free bets
Free bets do exactly what they say on the tin. Bookmakers credit your account with a free bet worth a certain value and you are free to wager that credit on just about anything you like. Generally, you will need to meet a set of playthrough requirements before you can withdraw any winnings, however.
✅ Event specials
From Ante post offers to non-runner bets and enhanced odds promos to tote betting, bookmakers run a series of superb offers and specials during the Cheltenham Festival. Each offer is usually tailored for a particular race and the Gold Cup on Day Four generally has the most attached in terms of exciting promos.
✅ Cheltenham Money-Back Offers
Money-back specials are excellent offers that allow you to get your stake back (usually as a free bet) if your horse loses. For example, you could have a money back offer if you back a horse that ranks outside the favourites. If your steed loses by a head or less for instance, bet365 could refund your original stake in the form of a free bet. Think of it as a fun little safety net.
✅ Cheltenham Price Boost Offers
Price boost offers add value to the odds of selected horses, giving you the opportunity to increase your profit if you successfully back them. During Cheltenham, bookmakers will often attach price and odds boosts to some of the Festival’s biggest names in a bid to snare new punters. For instance, the favourite to win the Gold Cup could see their price upped from 4/6 to 6/1 to entice new bettors through the doors.
✅ Reduced risk bets
With reduced risk or risk-free bets, punters can wager a certain amount on a horse and their stake will be refunded in full if their horse fails to win. These generally apply to selected events and horses only, though they can be an excellent way to enjoy a bet without the risk of losing your cash.
✅ Tote Betting
Tote betting is an enjoyable and potentially profitable way to stake a series of stakes on successive races at the Cheltenham Festival. With tote betting, punters pick a series of winners across the day’s racing and their stake goes into a prize pool, which is then split between the players who landed the most winners.
✅ Extra Places at The Major Horse Racing Festivals
Some betting sites offer enhanced place markets across the board. What that means is that you can sacrifice the value of your odds in exchange for extra places each-way i.e., your horse can finish further back in the field and still return some profit.
For instance, just say Bwin are paying out on three places in a particular race at Cheltenham, however, if they run an extra places offer on the event, they might pay out on up to five places, albeit at lower odds. In that scenario, your horse could finish fifth and still offer some sort of return.
All of the offers discussed above will come wrapped in a series of terms and conditions, and it’s always a wise move to give the related T&Cs a thorough readthrough before committing to any of the available promotions.
