Have you ever heard of matched betting? It keeps coming up in the FIRE community, and I wanted to get to the bottom of it.

Matched betting is basically a technique that allows you to profit from online gambling, by taking advantage of Bookmakers loss-leading promotions. It exists because bookmakers give away free bets in order to encourage punters to bet with them.

Matched bettors collect these free bets, and then go to a betting exchange where they can sell them for 70-80% of their face value. It is a bit more complex than that and there is a few more steps, but that is the general vibe.

It is not a get rich quick scheme, it is certainly not passive income. Most people can realistically expect to make around $10 to $50 per hour once they get good at it (but you might even lose money over the first few weeks as you learn the ropes). Experienced matched betters using advanced techniques such as horse racing promotions may be able to get past the magical $100 per hour.

However, there are a few catches that you need to be aware of. I go more into all of these in the show notes.

So is it worth your time? In order to make a bit more sense of all this, Nico has jumped onboard to share his experiences with matched Betting