Acca bonuses are one of the latest additions to bookmaker’s armoury to try and encourage punters through their doors. They are actually one of the more lucrative promotions within the industry, but they are also ones that often get overlooked the most.
The concept is pretty simple is that the more selections that you include in your accumulator the more bonus you get. The bonus will be a percentage of your overall winnings. So, if you are set to win £500 from your acca, with a 10% bonus applied, then providing that acca wins, you’ll get an extra £50 added to your returns.
See also: Acca Insurance
Football & All Sport Offers
Key Terms
Like all things to do with betting promotions and bookmakers, there are some key terms that you need to be aware of that we have highlighted below.
Number of Selections
Acca Bonus Example
| Bet Type | Bonus % | Returns | Returns Post-Bonus % | Variance (£) |
|---|---|---|---|---|
| 4 Folds | 5% | £50 | £52.50 | £2.50 |
| 5-6 Folds | 10% | £50 | £55 | £5 |
| 7-9 Folds | 20% | £50 | £60 | £10 |
| 10+ Folds | 30% | £50 | £65 | £15 |
The bonuses that are applied to your accumulator will depend on the number of selections that you include in your bet. As the number of selections increase, so will the bonus. The rate of bonus will range from bookmaker to bookmaker. A typical example that you could expect has been outlined above.
Eligible Sports, Leagues & Events
Often you will find that these bonuses aren’t applied to all accumulators that you place. The majority of bookmakers will target a handful of the best sports and then the highest profile tournaments that are involved within those.
For example, for one soccer acca bonus you will be able to include games from English Premier League, Italian Serie A, Spanish Primera Liga, German Bundesliga 1 or UEFA Champions League. Any games outside of these leagues will not count towards the bonus.
It’s also worth noting that if you include just 1 selection that doesn’t meet these guidelines then the acca wont be able to claim the bonus either. So, if you had 5 games from the Premier League in there with one game from the Championship, the acca wouldn’t be eligible to claim this bonus.
The same will apply for other sports as well, such as tennis. Again, sticking with bet365 as our example, they only allow markets from any Grand Slam, ATP, WTA or Challenger Tour event, as well as Singles and Doubles matches from the Davis Cup, Fed Cup and Hopman Cup. If your acca includes bets from outside of this, you wont be eligible for the bonus.
Betting Markets
Just like sports and leagues, you will likely find that a good number of markets are restricted as well. For example, bet365 only allow markets that include Full Time Result or Result/Both Teams To Score markets. Again, any markets outside of these will void the bonus.
It is worth noting that not all bookmakers enforce this rule and it’s probably the most commonly changeable rule within these offers. It’s well worth checking out your bookmaker’s terms before betting to find out for certain.
Return Limits
There are some bonuses that can return up to 100% of your winning as part of this promotion. As a result, the bookmaker will likely cap the amount that you can claim from this offer. A figure of around £100,000 isn’t uncommon, which allows for a huge range of bets to still claim.
If you find that your offer would in fact return more than this amount, then the bookmaker will pay you the £100,000, but not any money that is in excess of this.
Postponed Matches
As a general rule with accumulator betting, if a game within your acca has been postponed or deemed void then what happens is that the selection is removed and then the bet will continue with the remaining selections with adjusted odds.
For example, let’s say you place a 6-fold bet as follows:
- Newcastle to win: 2.00
- Everton to win: 2.00
- Chelsea to win: 1.80
- Arsenal to win: 2.10
- Liverpool to win: 1.60
- Dortmund to win: 1.90
This acca would pay out at odds of 45.95 and assuming that were using the same bonus offer as stated above, we would get a 20% bonus if the acca won.
After 10 minutes, the Arsenal game is abandoned due to bad weather. That game will now be removed from the acca, but the remaining 5 games will still run. The adjusted odds will now be 21.88 for the 5-fold. As we have 1 less game in the bet the 5-fold will now pay a bonus of 15%.
The remaining 5 fixtures all win, which gives us returns of £218.80 from a £10 bet. But, we also get a 15% bonus from our winnings on top of that, making the total returns of £251.62 including the acca bonus.
Cash Out
There are two lines that bookmakers tend to take when it comes to bonuses and bets that have been cashed out.
- Any bets that have been cashed out in full will not be eligible to claim any part of the bonus.
- Bets that have been partially cashed out will still be able to receive the bonus on the remaining part of the bet, providing that part is left to run and not further cashed out later down the line.
How do Accumulators Affect a Bookmaker’s Margin?
The bookmakers take a margin on every bet that you see on site. For example, if you were betting on the coin toss at a cricket match, the outcome can only be heads or tails. It’s a straight 50/50 chance and if the bookmakers were offering true odds, they would be even money bets for both.
But, the bookmakers don’t offer true odds and it’s likely that you will se odds of around 1.90 for either heads or tails. This is how the bookmaker, in the long term, make their money through margins.
With accumulator bets you are actually increasing the bookmakers margin. As the margins have already been created for each single bet, the more bets that you add gives them even bigger margins on these bets.
Let’s say you put an acca of 5 different cricket matches all on the coin toss at odds of 1.90 for each outcome. 5 x 1.90 = 9.50, but the true odds should be even money for each bet, so 5 x 2.00 = 10.00. This gives the bookmaker a margin of 5% for this bet.
As you add selections into the bet slip it starts to offset the margins even more. So, they already have 5% with each individual selection, if you include 5 selections this increases to a theoretical margin of 25% as with each bet you add, you worsen the relevance of the ‘true odds’. Hopefully this makes sense!
These increased margins then allow them to add bonuses on to these bets and still come out in front. If we go back again to the parentage list above, a 5 fold would give a 15% bonus, but the bookmaker are already making 5% margin on each selection anyway, which equals 25%, still bringing them 10% out ahead of the punter.
What you need to remember is that this is all over huge number of bets (millions) and whilst likely wont affect you personally as a punter or at least you wont see the affects, they are still out there for the bookmaker.
Big Accumulator Wins
The fact of the matter is, that someone, somewhere will win big with accumulator bets. That’s the nature of these bets and as rare as they might seem, the profits that you can take from there are staggering.
- 43k/1 Fivefold – One of the biggest wins that we have seen is that of £823,000 from just a £19 bet! The win came from an anonymous customer who placed a five horse accumulator at his racecourse in Punchestown. The best thing is that the punter hadn’t realised he won the bet until he returned home from a night on the booze and checked his tickets with the racing results!
- £450k From 20p – Another crazy win came from a returned accountant who’s 20p (that’s right, 20p!!!) accumulator romped home over 7 races allowing him to win over £450,000 in the process. The winner hadn’t even realised he had won his bet until receiving a call from Ladbrokes HQ asking him how he would like his money transferred! What’s even better about this and highlights the reason why it’s so important to shop around for the best offers and odds is that £228,000 of his winnings were actually boosted by Ladbrokes’ Best Odds Guaranteed.
- 20-fold Acca Win – The final win is one of the biggest in terms of selections. The punter from Suffolk placed a 20-fold accumulator bet with BetVictor, romping home to win him over £220,000. There were several 92, 94 and 95th minute winners included in the bet, with over £15,000 coming from Betvictor’s price boost.