Red Card Money Back Matched Betting Strategy

One promotion which various bookmakers run during the football season is ‘Refund if a Red Card is shown’. The offer is usually available on specific leagues and markets but dependant on individual bookmaker terms.

Red Card Money Back offers are often overlooked by matched bettors as there is no way of guaranteeing a profit from them and many will consider a red card being shown as a relatively unlikely event. However, there can be value in these offers and we’re going to explain how to spot it in this guide.

What are Red Card Money Back offers?

These offers are quite simple and generally, the bookmaker will refund your bets on certain markets if your bet loses and a red card is shown in the match. Your refund is usually credited as a free bet which needs to be taken into account when determining if there is value in participating in the offer.

How to profit from Red Card Money Back offers

In order to determine whether there is value in our bets, we need to know a few variables. These are:

1. Our qualifying loss
2. Our potential returns
3. The true odds on a red card being shown

Let’s take a look at an example to explain.

A bookmaker is offering a refund as a free bet up to £25 if your bet loses and a red card is shown in the match between Liverpool & Man Utd.

We find a close match on Mo Salah to score first at odds of 5.0 with the bookmaker and 5.1 with the exchange. We put these details into a matched betting calculator to determine our qualifying loss.

The calculator shows us that we will incur a £0.88 qualifying loss on our bet.

Now let’s take a look at the potential returns based on the various possible outcomes.

Salah scores first – We profit £100 with the bookmaker and make a £100.90 loss on the exchange. We make an overall loss of £0.90

Salah doesn’t score first and a red card is shown – We lose £25 with the bookmaker, make £24.12 profit with the exchange and receive a £20 free bet. Assuming we expect to extract £20 cash from our free bet, we make an overall profit of £19.12

Salah doesn’t score first and no red card is shown – We lose £25 with the bookmaker and make £24.12 profit with the exchange giving us an overall loss of £0.88

So, the maximum we can lose is £0.90 and the maximum we can win is £19.12

These means that the odds on Salah not to score first and a red card shown in the match is 22.24

Generally, the odds on a red card being shown in the match are around 5.0 – 9.0 which doesn’t make it a bad bet.

Should your qualifying bet lose early in the match, for example, if another player scored first, you may be able to lock in a profit by laying a red card to be shown.