How To Calculate Corporate Promotion Value

WHY NOT ALL PROMO OFFERS ARE BORN EQUAL

Not every Bonus Bet or Money Back Promo on offer has the same real-world value despite them all largely having the same terms and conditions – so what do you do when you’re limited either in the amount of stake you can put on, time, or simply looking for the best ROI?

Simply put – a Money Back 2nd or 3rd offer in a field of 3 horses nets you a 100% chance of either winning or triggering the promotion (an exceptional Promo Offer that you should take every time you have a chance), whilst the same Promo Offer in a field of 25 maiden horses is far more likely to result in your losing.

Because of this, a key part of long-term value is understanding not just the promotional terms themselves but the context in which you are going to use them, and then determining whether the value of taking that position outweighs the other race variables providing you an overall positive expected return – or whether staying out of the race altogether is the smartest play for your wallet.

In this quick introduction to this new concept, we’ll run through a handful (but not all of) the variables that we look at when making an estimate of the value of a Promo Offer.

Keeping in mind the above idea that not every Promo Offer is worth taking, it therefore makes sense that you should  learn how to “grade” promotions and then use this as the basis for determining whether or not you put the bet on.

For example, as we run into major Carnivals such as during September and October the Bookmakers tend to all go crazy putting multiple offers up in the air for grabs… the question is what to do if you simply don’t have enough cash or time to put on all of the promotions?

The easiest way to get around this is to objectively calculate the value of a Promotion and then bet only those Offers which fit your personal objectives and adversity to risk.

At Puntalyser we give our Premium Members an easy to follow grading system consisting of a single letter representing the overall value of the offer.

That is; a scale from “A” (top pick) to “D” (likely to leave unless you want more turn-over). How we actually calculate this grading is quite complicated; we look at the field size, the promo refund type, the maximum stake, number of eligible places, the market price of all of the selections etc. before we apply a weighted score to each of the variables we look at and spit out a grading.

The reason we do this is because, simply put, a Money Back offer in a field of 15 unraced horses is NOT the same value as a Money Back offer in a field of 6 horses with a $1.50 favourite and the rest of the field $10+.

If you are betting each promotion as if they are the same, regardless of the actual reality of the race, then you are setting yourself up for long term failure and significantly reduced income.

At the end of the day, there’s nothing stopping you from taking each and every promotion on offer, but because we are looking at value, return on investment and likelihood of success we only want to focus on the very best promotions which decrease our risk of stake loss, rather than giving the Bookmakers additional turn-over.

NUMBER OF PLACES

Pay careful attention to each and every promotion as not every Offer will have the same number of places that trigger the promotion, and it’s quite common to see the Bookmakers constantly change these numbers across the year so always check the terms.

This is one of the simplest yet most important components of grading a Promo’s value.

Generally you’ll see promos on offer for 2nd or 3rd placings at most Bookmakers however occasionally these terms will change… and the Bookmakers won’t be reminding you about it; so be sure to pay attention to exactly which places are available.

Every now and then there may be an increased number of placings to “2nd, 3rd or 4th” which was popular with William Hill when they were around.

Whenever a number of placings increases the maximum Stake tends to be reduced in order to help the Bookmaker cover their extra liability so be sure to check that this hasn’t changed.

In the case that there are an additional placing beyond 2nd and 3rd you can generally consider this a high value promotion even before you crunch the rest of the field.

You will need to weigh additional points in its favour if there is a small field or several clear favourites that are most likely to take home the win.

On the flip side, sometimes the Bookmakers aren’t feeling the heat and will actually reduce the promo offer to “2nd”.

Unless there is a significant increase in Stake size ($100 per bet as done with PointsBet) then this is a massive reduction in value and will dramatically affect the grading of the Promo.

PROMO OFFER MAX STAKE

Dramatic differences in the max Stake in the offer can make or break your profitability for the meeting. Because of this, you’ll need to take into account 3+ stake categories in order to properly grade these types of Promo Offers.

Fortunately the max Stake tends to be consistent across the Bookmakers and sits right around the $50 mark.

This is actually a pretty comfortable stake amount to work with as most people can scrape together $5000 in order to start their betting bank and this would mean that each Promo is exactly 1% of their starting bank; a very good staking size to go with for longevity and discipline.

However, sometimes Promos are reduced or increased in Stake size and you’ll need to take this into account alongside all of the other variables that you need to crunch in order to calculate value and find your best selection.

For example; BetEasy (formerly CrownBet/William Hill) have experimented lately with plenty of $25 Bonus Bet offers into some of the smaller racing markets.

Whilst the additional mid-week liquidity is welcome, the reduced stake represents just 0.5% of a $5000 betting bank as a unit size and is probably not worth your time considering the low pay-out, reducing the promo grade.

An increased max stake without reduction in placings would have the opposite effect, with a Money Back 2nd or 3rd Promo Offer along with a small field and a large stake of $100 would suggest an incredible amount of value and far worth the bet.

HORSE RACING MARKET DATA

Without getting into the extremely complicated topic of horse racing form, we can accept the idea that bringing raw market pricing and flucs information into the mix is another important key for grading as the value of the offer will change significantly depending on market sentiment and final Promo Offer pricing.

Let’s consider two races, both offering the same Promo Offer of a Bonus Bet if your selection runs 2nd or 3rd with a Stake of $50:

The first race is a country meet with a 15 horse field of mostly unraced selections on a recently rained upon track and the top three selections are priced $6.50, $7.20 and $8 respectively on Betfair.

The second race is a metro G3 on a Good 4 track with an 8 horse field of a variety of performers who have a track record and complete information on their previous placings, trial times, sectional times and a variety of public reviews and jockey information.

The top three selections are priced $3.60, $5.50 and $8 respectively on Betfair.

Without even having to crunch the numbers, we know that the second race is the preferred option – having a significantly smaller field made up of horses who have previously performed to their market price with track conditions and liquidity to back it up.

Before looking at the individual horses in the field, we can say that the only downside to the second race is that the selection prices are significantly shorter and a G3 is likely to have far more attention from Bookmakers, meaning you’d be lucky to get around $3.20 on the top selection.

In the first race, however, we’ve got a wet track which complicates things by removing the consistency of the runners alongside an extremely large field which will make developing an accurate Speed Map next to impossible.

All of this is made even more difficult by the fact that there’s little information available on these horses. The biggest benefit for the first race is that the Bookmakers are far less likely to move the prices due to the lower liquidity meaning you should be able to nab some great prices especially just before the jump and you also have much longer prices meaning a successful strike will result in far more profit in your pocket.

However; the biggest rule we follow at Puntalyser is consistency and return on investment over short sighted profitability with a higher risk; meaning that we will grade the second race much more favourably than the first race for all of the reasons outlined above.

The chances of the second race having a successful hit is far higher not only because of the shorter priced top three in the field, but also because of all of the other “intangibles” which most Punters completely forget about – namely; reproducibility, track conditions and the sheer probability of picking the correct trifecta in an 8 horse field versus the same in a 15 horse field.

Obviously these are two starkly contrasted examples and you’ll need to consider each and every variable (and yes; there are a lot which is why we offer to do all the work for you) when taking into account the grading of the Promo Offers.

PROMO OFFER REWARD TYPES

With a variety of Reward Types making up the Promo Offer landscape it’s important to consider exactly what you get back when triggering a Promo Offer in order to properly adjust the grading.

We’ve previously mentioned Bonus Bets vs Money Back and the fact that with Bonus Bets you’re looking at roughly 70-80% Stake returned depending on exactly how you want to play the reward.

However, there are other Reward Types including “Reward Points”, Deposit/Re-activation Offers and other offers such as “Bonus Bet If Bet Loses” which make the grading of every Offer a little bit more complicated.

Generally, at Puntalyser we classify Money Back as the best Reward Type, but when presented with a Bonus Bet offer with a significantly higher stake amount (eg: $100) or when it’s one of the rare Re-Activation Offers (Deposit $x get $y in Bonus Bets) then making a stand-out grade becomes significantly more difficult.

Our strategy then is to allocate a pool of points to each Promo depending on the Reward Type and then combine it with the Max Stake and Placing data alongside the Market Information in order to get a better over-all view of where this Offer should sit in our analysis.

For example, whilst we will penalise a Promo Offer when it’s Bonus Bets (let’s say +50 points) versus a Money Back offer (let’s say +100 points) other aspects of the Promo Offer may compensate for the Reward Type point reduction (eg: 4th placing +50 points).

$25 Bonus Bet If First Fixed Odds Bet Loses:

Starting Points: +200

Bonus Bet instead of Money Back: -50 points

Max Stake $25 instead of $50: -25 points

Reward Condition: Bet Loses versus Placing: +150 points (excellent offer!)

Total points = 275 (A Grade)

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$50 Bonus Bet If Selection Runs 2nd:

Starting Points: +200

Bonus Bet instead of Money Back: -50 points

Max Stake $50: +0 points

Reward Condition: 2nd Placing Only: -100 points (significant risk increase)

Total points = 50 (D Grade)

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$100 Money Back If Selections Runs 2nd, 3rd or 4th:

Starting Points: +200

Money Back: +0 points

Max Stake $100: +50 points

Reward Condition: 2nd, 3rd and 4th Placing: +100 points (excellent placings!)

Total points = 350 (A+ Grade)

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These are some basic examples of how you might begin to grade a Promo Offer before adding in Horse Racing form.

Exactly how you choose to grade the Promo Offers depends upon your personal appetite for risk as well as ability to place them but the above outlines some typical (basic) examples and a possible formula for determining value on their own.

TAKING ADVANTAGE OF PROMO OFFER GRADING

Accurate grading of all Corporate Promo Offers will mean that you’ve filtered out the low quality and low value Promo Offers which are likely to put cash back into the Bookmakers’ wallets, whilst targeting the ones which are going to produce the largest consistent profit for you.

As you can imagine; this is an incredible way to increase your long-term profitability.

However, like everything in this industry, taking time to learn about and Grade each Promo Offer means time off doing everything else in your life, so the best way to utilise Promo Offers and Grading to the full extent is to simply become a member at Puntalyser.

We hand-grade each and every Promo Offer using all of the strategies above combined with the exact selection to take and all form and staking data taken into account meaning you can focus on playing only the best Promo Offers and save your stake in the races designed to mooch from your betting bank.

Alternatively you could do all the Grading yourself – but why waste years of pain trying to squeeze out a winning strategy when we’ve already done the hard work for you?

Check out our Membership options below; with an average monthly return of $2700 our Premium Members can happily say that the membership fees are a pittance compared to the value that they are given each and every week.