How I beat the bookies for the FA Cup this weekend... using maths

This Saturday sees the final of the world’s oldest football competition – the FA Cup. Manchester City take on Manchester United in only the second ever Manchester derby in the FA Cup final.

I will be up front and admit that I am a Man City fan. Despite the club’s almost unparalleled success over the last decade or so, I can never quite shake the feeling that it is all about to collapse. No amount of success will ever shake the “typical City” mindset that I grew up with, watching my boyhood club consistently snatch defeat from the jaws of victory.

I don’t bet regularly, but when I do, to offset my persistent belief in City’s vulnerability, I tend to bet against them. Since City are usually the favourites in any competition they enter, I can usually get quite good odds on them losing. Hedging this way, I tell myself I won’t mind losing the occasional tenner if City come up with the goods, but if they lose, a least there will be some financial compensation.

Last week though, on my Twitter/X feed, I saw an advert proclaiming 40-to-1 odds on City to beat Tottenham – a crucial game in the lead up to the climax of the Premier League title race. Having already hedged, by betting £20 on Arsenal to win the league, I decided, this time, to take up this offer and to back my team against Spurs. I clicked the link which took me to a registration page for Paddy Power. I duly registered and then stopped to read the small print.

It turns out the maximum bet I was allowed to place at these odds was £1. Of course, I expected there would be a catch. As it transpired there wasn’t just one catch, but several. As well as limiting my stake, it turned out that even if I won the “40-to-1” bet – which was far from a done deal given that City had never even scored at the Tottenham Hotspur Stadium in the Premier League, let alone won – I would be rewarded, not with cold hard cash, but with £40-worth of free bets.

Any winning bets I placed with these free tokens would not return my stake like a normal bet would, but would only return my winnings. Given these restrictive terms, I am surprised these betting companies are even allowed to advertise this as a 40-to-1 bet given that the £1 I had staked would not be paid back with £40 if I were to win.

Nevertheless, I went ahead and registered my bank account details before depositing £10 (another condition of the promotion) and staking my £1 on City to beat Tottenham. On the night City won a nail-biting match by 2 goals to nil – an Erling Haaland penalty finally putting the match to bed only in the 91^st minute.

I logged on the next day in the hope of placing my £40-worth of free bets (using the credits in the next seven days being yet another stipulation of the Ts and Cs) only to find my balance at zero. Chatting to customer services it transpired that instead of linking my bank account, I should have deposited using a debit card or Apple Pay (a piece of small print I had clearly missed). To their credit, after a half hour text conversation and agreeing to register a debit card and deposit another £10, I was eventually rewarded with the £40-worth of free bets. Now my quandary was on how to “spend” them.

Betting on an extremely likely event – like Man City to win the title on Sunday – seemed like a good way to make a sure-fire return on my free investment, but at odds of 14-to-1-on, even betting all of my free bets would see me win only around £3 – not a very good return for all my efforts. Instead, I decided to split my credits up four ways and to double-side a couple of Premier League matches on the final day of the season. I bet on Manchester United to win against Brighton, and also for them not to win. I also bet on Nottingham Forest to beat Burnley and the reverse of the same bet.

Once the matches were complete (City coincidentally winning a record fourth consecutive Premier League title) I logged in to count my winnings. Unfavoured Man United had indeed beaten Brighton at odds of 2-to-1, while Nottingham Forest beat Burnley at odds of 5-to-4, giving me a total winnings of £32.50 – a decent return, I felt, on my £40 of free bets. With that, I withdrew my winnings and the £20 I had initially deposited, and deleted my account.

Smug as I was at having taken some money (albeit a relatively small amount) off a betting company, there were more important lessons I learned along the way. Firstly, the time and effort involved in setting up the accounts, placing the initial bet, wrangling with customer services, placing the follow up bets and finally closing the account was not inconsiderable. Despite finishing “up”, for the time I spent, my exploits earned me less than minimum wage.

Secondly, it became clear to me just how easy it is to fall foul of the terms and conditions required to win the free bets in the first place. I would guess a significant proportion of the people taking up these promotions will trip up – as I did – on one of the litany of terms and conditions. Others will forget to place the bets in time or look to recoup some money by betting on a “dead cert”, guaranteeing only miniscule winnings since the “free bet” stake is not returned. At this point, the betting company has you registered with an account tied to a source of money. Losing a few pounds to get their claws into your bank account long term is a small price for them to pay.

Finally, and perhaps most worryingly, I am acutely aware that although this was just a bit of fun for me, for many teetering on the edge of a gambling addiction, these aggressively marketed promotions can be the straw that breaks the camel’s back of their resistance. Given that the returns promised in these ads are never actually realised, in combination with the potential detrimental impact they may have on problem gamblers, we should at the very least be questioning the moral status of such promotions.

So while I may have been lucky enough to beat the odds, just remember: when you come across a bet that seems too good to be true, it usually is.