The accumulator bonus is the offer most people should be reading

Comparison pages rank welcome offers because welcome offers have a headline number and headline numbers sort. The offer that actually affects a regular bettor in this market is usually the accumulator bonus, and it almost never appears in a table.

What it does

It adds a percentage to the winnings of a multiple, growing with the number of selections. On this register the published ladders start at a few per cent on a double and climb into the hundreds of per cent on a long slip, and one book pays on a slip with no minimum price per leg at all.

The important property is that it applies every time rather than once, and that none of the published ones carries a playthrough requirement. A welcome offer with a thirty-five times multiple in front of it has to be turned over before any of it can be withdrawn. An accumulator bonus is added to a settled win.

The catch, which is real

It only pays on multiples, and multiples are where a bookmaker's margin compounds. Each leg carries its own charge, so a slip of ten selections carries ten of them multiplied together, and a bonus of a few hundred per cent on the winnings of a bet that rarely wins is not the same as free money. It is a discount on a product that is expensive to begin with.

How to compare them

On the number of legs you actually bet, not on the maximum. A ladder that reaches a thousand per cent at sixty selections is describing a bet nobody places. What matters is what it pays at three or four, and where a book publishes minimum odds per leg, whether your usual selections clear it.