The best Cheltenham free bets and betting offers in 2025

Cheltenham betting offers and free bets 2025

Your guide to Cheltenham 2024 free bets and betting offers

The best Cheltenham betting offers 2025

The Cheltenham Festival – the “greatest show on turf” – came to an end recently after another spectacular week of jump racing. 

Galopin Des Champs won the Gold Cup and State Man justified odds-on favouritism in the Champion Hurdle, while Ballyburn (Gallagher Novices’ Hurdle) and Lossiemouth (Mares’ Hurdle) were others to catch the eye. That quartet should all return for what promised to be a spectacular 2025 renewal.  

Our selections are based on expert knowledge, comprehensive data analysis and extensive research, and our ultimate goal is to ensure that your betting experience is both seamless and enjoyable.

Check out today’s top Cheltenham free bets

The eight best Cheltenham betting offers and UK horse racing betting offers for 2025

1. BetMGM

Our top recommendation for Cheltenham betting offers is BetMGM. This US brand recently started up in the UK and is fully embracing the Cheltenham spirit with a fantastic offer for the Festival.

BetMGM is offering £60 in free bets, which is matched by only one other bookmaker. To access this reward, all you need to do is make a standard £10 deposit.

There are four £10 horse racing bets included in the free bets offer, plus two free £10 accumulators, which could be ideal for creating a well-priced acca

BetMGM’s Cheltenham offer presents a fantastic opportunity to elevate your betting experience at the Festival.

• Check out the best horse racing betting sites and best horse racing betting apps

2. CopyBet

While CopyBet may be a recent arrival on the UK betting scene, its free bet offer is well worth considering for the Festival. Simply wager £10 and CopyBet will reward you with £50 in free bets, which is a very impressive deposit-to-bonus ratio.

You can take advantage of five free £10 bets that are specifically designated for certain markets. These include two in-play bets, one accumulator and one horse racing bet. All of the free bets can be used during the Cheltenham Festival.

• Discover the best horse racing betting offers

3. Betfair

With Betfair, you only have to place a £5 deposit to receive £20 in free bets. You can use the free bets in any way you like. For example, you could go for 20 £1 bets or one £20 wager.

Betfair also runs an exchange, effectively providing you with the benefits of two bookmakers in one.

• Here you can find our guide to the best betting exchanges

4. Paddy Power

Paddy Power is one of the big names in the UK and Ireland and, like the Betfair offer, you only need to make a £5 deposit and wager to get started.

That deposit will unlock £20 in free bets that can be used as you wish. You could place a £20 wager on a favourite or opt to spread the funds out across the remaining seven races from the Cotswolds.

5. bet365

bet365 has a global customer base of 50 million players and enjoys an excellent reputation. New users can take advantage of a great offer at the 2025 Cheltenham Festival: simply deposit £10 to unlock £30 in free bets.

• Find the best bingo sites and best bingo bonuses

6. Tote

Tote’s free bet welcome offer is good enough to compete with the industry’s biggest names as you get £30 worth of free bets to use after placing a qualifying £10 wager.

Again, these £30 worth of free bets come as Tote credits so they can be used in any combination you like, while you also get 50 free spins – a great extra not offered by most rivals.

What really sets Tote apart and helps them secure a place on our best Cheltenham Festival betting offers is its unique sole focus on Tote betting, which adds an intriguing element to Cheltenham betting. 

• Use our guide to Tote to learn all about Tote betting

7. Unibet

The final bookmaker on our list of the best eight for the Cheltenham Festival is Unibet who have a unique offer for the Festival.

Instead of a “bet and get” promotion such as the others on our list, Unibet will return your first wager, up to £40, as a free bet.

How to use your Cheltenham free bet

Once you have successfully signed up for the new customer Cheltenham promotion, you will receive a free bet, granting you the flexibility to choose where to place your wager.

With a line-up of seven top-tier races on each of the four days of the Festival, it is essential to consider the type of odds you’re seeking.

Highly anticipated races such as the Gold Cup, Champion Chase and Champion Hurdle stand out as highlights of the week, featuring elite horses and offering excellent betting prospects.

For access to expert advice and valuable tips for the world’s premier jumps festival, make sure to explore our outstanding Cheltenham Festival hub.

• Check out the best casino sites and best casino bonuses that are ready to be used.

Types of Cheltenham offers and free bets

Cheltenham free bets

Bookmakers typically centre their Cheltenham Festival new customer offers around tempting free bet promotions. However, it is essential to recognise that these purportedly “free” bets often come with specific requirements, such as a qualifying deposit and wager.

Once you meet these criteria, along with any other specified terms and conditions, you will find that your betting stake has significantly increased, courtesy of the offer.

Having a healthy supply of free bets is crucial when betting on the 2025 Cheltenham Festival, given the number of races and runners. This enables you to minimise your personal investment while still providing the opportunity to place bets on your favoured selections.

The Cheltenham Festival betting offer that presents the best opportunity to boost your personal kitty is BetMGM’s welcome offer, which will give you £60 in free bets to use on the racing when you deposit and wager £10.

Cheltenham long odds-on hot favourites

Instead of opting for a conventional free bet, bookmakers occasionally attract customers by offering highly favourable odds on Cheltenham Festival favourites, often considered nearly invincible.

However, there’s a caveat: the maximum stake permitted is typically restricted to just £5 or even £1, and any additional winnings resulting from the boosted odds are provided in the form of free bets. For instance, on the first day of the 2023 Festival, Sky Bet raised Constitution Hill’s odds to win the Champion Hurdle from 1/3 to 40/1, with a maximum stake of £1, and the profits were disbursed as four £10 free bets.

Unlike a standard free bet offer, this approach carries some risk, as evidenced by the outcome with Shishkin in the Ryanair Chase, where the odds-on favourite failed to clinch victory.

Cheltenham no-lose bets

To set themselves apart from other promotions, some bookmakers offer a risk-free betting option, guaranteeing that you will not lose your cash stake in case your bet doesn’t pan out.

Cheltenham bet-through-the-card offers

This type of promotion commonly entails placing a bet on the opening race of the day, thereby unlocking free bets for every subsequent race featured on the Cheltenham card for that day.

You can capitalise on this opportunity by placing a modest wager on the first race, enabling you to bet across the entire card without incurring additional costs.

While you’re likely to encounter at least one of these four new customer promotions, bookmakers are consistently seeking innovation and may introduce entirely different offers. It’s worth closely monitoring offers throughout the week, as it marks the busiest period of the year for bookmakers.

Cheltenham ambassador-related offers and promotions 

All the big bookmakers have teamed up with respected brand ambassadors from the racing world, such as trainers and jockeys, to provide entertaining and insightful content for the Festival.

Nicky Henderson’s Unibet blog often shapes the news agenda, while the thoughts of Paul Nicholls, Gordon Elliott and the up-and-coming Olly Murphy are all available to read via Betfair.

Bookmakers also like to tie in the tips from their ambassadors with free bets and offers on the Festival.

Cheltenham Festival offers for existing customers

For those holding an account with the vast majority of bookmakers who do not want to sign up to a new operator, there should be a number of existing customer offers to take advantage of.

Each betting site attempts to stand out by offering a variety of existing customer offers in an attempt to make them the punters’ bookie of choice

We will go through our top three bespoke existing customer offers to use this Cheltenham Festival below but there are also existing customer offers that have become an industry standard.

These include best odds guaranteed (although that appears to be on its way out), each-way extra places and no runner no bet. 

We have produced a table that shows who is and isn’t running those offers after our list of the best three Cheltenham Festival offers for existing customers so keep scrolling for that information.

• Here you can find our comprehensive guide to the best betting offers for existing customers

bet365 – 6 Horses Challenge

The final existing customer promotion from our list of the best three comes from bet365 and it is a free-to-play promotion.

Free-to-play games are a great way to create a bit of interest in the Festival’s races as well as having the chance to win a big cash prize with the prize pool at previous Cheltenhams often boosted beyond the usual £50,000.

To play the 6 Horse Challenge all you have to do is pick your winner in the six races that bet365 chooses for the game.

To be in with a chance of winning a cash prize you will need to get at least four right with the more correct choices, the more cash you will win.

• Check out our full explainer on the bet365 6 Horses Challenge

You can sign up to bet365 here:

Cheltenham best odds guaranteed (BOG)

If you are looking to make full use of the very best value when betting on Cheltenham, it is absolutely essential that the bookmaker you choose offers best odds guaranteed to ensure you get the greatest winnings possible. 

Most of the big operators have this promotion running year round – and it means that if you bet on a horse on the day of the race but its SP (starting price) is better, you will be paid out at the bigger price. 

• Here is all you need to know about starting price (SP)

Cheltenham extra each-way places

Each-way betting is always a big part of Cheltenham, and in the past few years bettors have been treated to up to seven places (standard place terms for each-way betting max out at four places) – but this is usually limited to handicap races of 16 or more runners.

Cheltenham non-runner no-bet (NRNB) special

All the best and biggest operators, as well as some of the small ones, will be running non-runner no bet specials – although on ante-post Cheltenham markets it could be a different story on the day of the race. You should make sure to check the market before placing your bet.

This promotion is really handy, especially with ante-post betting, as it means you will receive a cash refund if your selection does not run the race, regardless of the reason why.

Another thing worth double-checking is that some operators will only run NRNB on the big feature races, such as the Gold Cup in 2025 that will take place on the Friday of the Festival

Cheltenham money-back specials

Bookmakers frequently offer money-back specials for the initial race of each day during the Festival. This typically entails receiving a refund in cash or a free bet if certain conditions are met.

Bookmakers such as Sky Bet and BoyleSports consistently provide this promotion daily and are expected to continue doing so for the 2025 Festival. This opportunity allows bettors to potentially earn money without assuming any risk.

The offer might involve receiving a refund if your chosen horse finishes second to the Starting Price (SP) favourite, falls during the race or even just places. 

Evaluating which horses the bookmakers are cautious about with these promotions adds an extra layer of excitement to the Festival. Are their doubts justified or will the favourite prove victorious?

• Check out our guide to the best Cheltenham Festival money-back specials

Important things to consider when betting on Cheltenham Festival 2025

There is always a lot to think about and take into account before using your Cheltenham free bets.

First, as always, it is vital that you read through all the terms and conditions before signing up to a new bookmaker via one of the Cheltenham betting offers.

We have produced handy guides on horse racing terminology that will prove useful when making your selections.

Here are our guides to popular Cheltenham Festival bet types:

• Lucky 15
• Lucky 31
• Lucky 63
• Trixie Bet
• Yankee Bet
• Heinz Bet
• You can learn more about each-way betting here
• We also have a handy step-by-step guide to betting specifically on Cheltenham

How we tested these Cheltenham betting offers

We have been bringing readers the best Cheltenham Festival betting offers for a number of years now and our team has even more years of combined experience in the industry.

Thanks to that, we are well versed in the various betting offers that bookmakers provide over the four days of racing.

We have seen it all from lucrative ‘bet and get’ offers that remain popular to ‘bet through the card’ promotions that have seemingly fallen out of favour in recent years.

Not only do we have a professional interest but we are a team of keen punters, so Cheltenham often provides one of the highlights of the year.

Thanks to both our professional experience and personal passion, we have signed up for all of the betting sites mentioned in this article and taken advantage of the respective free bet offers.

With the more established sites, we have used them during Cheltenham, getting to know their intricacies so we know which ones promise the best value throughout the four days of racing.

For example, Paddy Power is known for giving free bets to both new and existing customers for every day of the Festival which is always a boost while Sky Bet is known for its money-back offers on the first race of the day.

Some new bookmakers, such as BetMGM for example, we may not have not used them during Cheltenham as they were not established for last year’s Festival but after becoming familiar with their platforms we know how they work and are confident in recommending them as the best free bets offer for this year’s Festival. 

Not only have we drawn on our vast experience, we have also consulted the data experts at the UK Bookmaker Awards, more details on which can be found below.

UK Bookmaker Awards 

The UK Bookmaker Awards is an annual event at which the very best operators are ranked in various categories. The results come from some of the most in-depth surveys on betting habits, markets and sports. These are then reviewed each month and weighted appropriately to create the final rankings.

We have included the top five in two very relevant categories in tables below so you can see who are among the very best operators. You can find out more about the UK Bookmaker Awards here.

Best welcome offers

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About the author: Connor Whitley

As an avid bettor, the Cheltenham Festival is always one of the highlights of the sporting year. 

As long as I have been betting, I have been placing wagers on the Festival – so I have forged a strong love for the Festival with Constitution Hill’s win at last year’s Champion Hurdle a big highlight.

Through my love for the Festival, I have taken up countless Cheltenham Festival betting offers and have signed up with all of the bookmakers mentioned here.

All of this means I am well placed to write about and advise on the best Cheltenham Festival free bets offers for the 2025 renewal.

• Read more from Connor Whitley

Find all of the latest news on our Cheltenham Festival hub

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Cheltenham 2025 streaming

Live streaming is an important part of betting – especially during the Cheltenham Festival, as the final two races of the day are not shown live on ITV.

With the big race of the day the last one shown, you will have to live-stream the final two races via a betting app – and fortunately there are a number of great options. 

Here are some of the best places to watch Cheltenham Festival

Bookmakers’ Cheltenham Festival free bets

Find out more about the Cheltenham Festival offers for new and existing customers that are available at each of the following bookmakers. 

• bet365 Cheltenham offers
• Betfair Cheltenham offers
• Betfred Cheltenham offers
• Paddy Power Cheltenham offers
• Unibet Cheltenham offers
• William Hill Cheltenham offers
• BetVictor Cheltenham offers
• BoyleSports Cheltenham offers
• Betway Cheltenham offers
• Coral Cheltenham offers
• Ladbrokes Cheltenham offers

Cheltenham Festival Free Bets Frequently Asked Questions