How do Accumulator Refunds work?

There’s nothing worse than seeing all but one leg of your accumulator come in, leaving you with a loss rather than a potentially huge profit. Accumulator refund offers, also known as ‘ACCA Insurance’, provide a safety net for these situations and credit you with your stake back should one leg of your ACCA let you down.

What is an accumulator?

An accumulator is one bet which contains multiple selections. All of these individual selections must win in order for your accumulator to win. One appeal to accumulators is that they can often have huge odds due to combining all of the odds of the individual selections. For example, an accumulator containing the following selections…

• Man Utd to win @ 1.8
• Chelsea to win @ 2.3
• Newcastle to win @ 3.1
• Southampton to win @ 2.4

…would give combined odds of 30.80! (around 30/1).

The most common type of ACCA is a football accumulator and you’ll find numerous bookies offing accumulator refund offers on these.

How to Accumulator Refund offers work?

The terms of each ACCA refund offer varies between bookmakers but the main factor is that if one leg of your accumulator loses, you will receive your original stake back. More often than not, your stake is refunded as a free bet and usually ranges between a maximum of £10 – £50. Other important terms to look out for are:

• The minimum odds for each selection in your accumulator
• The minimum combined odds for your accumulator
• The minimum number of selections your accumulator must contain
• Eligible sports, leagues & competitions for the selections in your accumulator
• The maximum refund you can receive should one of the legs lose

Various bookmakers offer accumulator refunds such as Bwin, Betvictor, Betfred, Fun88, Sportingbet and 888Sport.

Can you make money from Accumulator Refund offers?

It can be possible to lock in a profit from ACCA refund offers in certain circumstances by using matched betting. The process involves placing an ACCA and then laying each leg of your accumulator sequentially with ideal stakes which will return a profit no matter whether they win or lose. The main factor in determining whether or not an ACCA refund offer can potentially be profitable is how close the back odds for each selection are to the lay odds for the same selection on a betting exchange. It’s essential to find close matches for each of your selections to minimise losses when backing and laying, thus increasing your overall profit from the offer.

You’ll find full accumulator refund guides and offers on MatchedBets.com along with useful tools such as ‘Accabackers’ which will help you determine the ideal lay stakes to use for each of your legs. Accabackers will also determine whether or not your ACCA has a positive expected value and if it is worth placing.