What is Matched Betting? Well, Matched Betting is actually a way of making risk free money using the free bets offered by online bookmakers to try and entice us into opening accounts with them.
What happens is a bookmaker will tempt to us to join them by metaphorically saying to us 'come and have a £50.00 free bet on us. All you need to do is open an account, have a bet of £50.00, and as we are so nice and generous we will give you a free bet for £50.00.'
The online bookmakers know that in most cases, a 'gambler' will be opening the account. The 'gambler' will probably lose one of these two bets, or maybe even both of them, meaning the bookmaker will at worst lose a few quid (on the two bets).
Even if the 'gambler' makes money on both these bets, in the majority of cases the online bookmaker won't mind, as they know that the 'gambler' will then continue gambling with that bookmaker losing money hand over fist to it for years and years, meaning the bookie still comes out on top in the long run.
In short, the free bets on offer are regarded as a loss leader by the online bookmakers, to grab our custom (and hard earned cash).
There is another way though, and that way is by using the 'Matched Betting' method - a non gambling method.
Despite the name Matched Betting, this isn't actually betting or gambling, but it does involve placing bets. I see it more as football trading, as most of the bets I place for matched betting, are placed on football.
The reason why it isn't regarded as gambling or betting is because we don't actually care what the outcome of the bet we place is. We are placing the bet as part of the system we are using, not taking a punt on who will win the big match on TV. This bet can win, lose or draw, it won't matter to us as we are not actually gambling.
I'm not going to go into the finer detail of matched betting here, that's in my blog post about how matched betting works. I have also written another post detailing the best free bets for matched betting.