A promise about price is a claim, and claims get tested
Racing promotions are mostly promises about price rather than promises about money, which makes them harder to read and much harder to compare. Some of those promises are mechanical and describable — a best-odds-guaranteed arrangement, for instance, pays out at the starting price where the price you took turns out to be shorter. Others are advertising claims, and the record of what happened when they were tested is unusually well documented for this brand. In October 2009 the Advertising Standards Authority banned an advertisement promising "£100 of free bets" as likely to mislead. In March 2010 it banned one asserting "William Hill best prices fact" for breaching codes on substantiation, truthfulness and honesty. In December 2012 it banned two more, on horses and on teams, along with a separate claim about guaranteed odds. This page is about how to read that kind of promise, and it deliberately quotes no current offer figures.
Four questions that survive any change of offer
Offers expire and get rewritten constantly. These questions do not, which is why they are more useful than a list of amounts copied from somewhere last year.
Is it a price promise or a money promise?
A guaranteed-price arrangement changes what a winning bet returns. A free-bet offer hands you a stake with conditions attached. They are advertised in the same breath and behave nothing alike once you win.
Which selections does it actually cover?
Price promises are usually bounded — certain meetings, certain markets, certain bet types, sometimes a maximum stake. The boundary is where the value is decided, and it is never in the headline.
When does the clock start?
Two offers can quote the same window and mean different things: one counts from the moment you tick the box, the other from the moment money lands. A page that leaves this unstated has skipped the half that decides whether the window is usable at all.
Figures we will not print, and why
We hold no account and cannot see any current terms. Publishing a figure lifted from another guide page is exactly how a withdrawn offer stays online for years, and we would rather this page be thin than participate in that.
How to read a racing offer in four moves
- Establish whether it changes the price you get paid at, or hands you a stake to use.
- Find the boundary: which meetings, which markets, which bet types, and is there a stake ceiling.
- Find the clock: when it starts, how long it runs, and what happens to anything unused.
- Find the ceiling: whether a maximum return applies to anything generated by the offer, before you decide it is worth having.
