SBK Review UK: Bet £10, Get £40 in Free Bets

SBK is the bookmaker from Smarkets, the betting exchange, and it’s built for punters who care about the price. It sells itself on low margins, it’s app-only (there’s no desktop site) and new customers get £40 in free bets for a £10 bet at 2/1 or bigger.

Those free bets come as eight £5 tokens, all for bets of four legs or more. Here’s how that works in practice, what else SBK does well and where it falls short against Betway, Unibet and Virgin Bet.

SBK key facts

How the SBK free bet offer works

Make a first deposit of £10 or more by debit card or bank transfer, then place a £10 bet at 2/1 (3.0) or bigger. It can be a single, a multiple or a Bet Builder, as long as the stake is £10 and the price is at least 2/1. A tenner on Newcastle at 9/4 away from home would do it. Once it settles, win or lose, the free bets start to arrive.

You get £40 in total as eight £5 tokens, released in three batches. When your bet settles you get a £5 football Bet Builder and a £5 horse racing multiple. After 24 hours you get a £5 Bet Builder, another £5 football Bet Builder and another £5 racing multiple. After 48 hours come two £5 multiples and a final £5 Bet Builder.

Every token needs at least four legs, and they can’t go on full cover bets like Yankees. Each one expires 5 days after it lands, which is shorter than the 7 days most bookies give you. If you’re a weekend-only punter, the 24-hour and 48-hour batches can run out before your next Saturday.

Winnings go straight into your withdrawable balance, but the free bet stake isn’t returned. SBK’s own example: a £10 free bet at 3/1 that wins pays £30.

SBK promo code: do you need one?

No. You don’t need an SBK promo code. Download the app, make a first deposit of £10 or more by debit card or bank transfer, then place a £10 bet at 2/1 or bigger. Your first free bets arrive once it settles and the rest follow over the next 48 hours.

How to claim the SBK free bets

Who owns SBK?

SBK is the fixed-odds bookmaker of Smarkets, a betting exchange founded in 2008 by Jason Trost and Hunter Morris and based in London. The licence holder is Smarkets (Malta) Limited, Gambling Commission account 39173, which covers both smarkets.com and the SBK domains.

That exchange background explains the pitch. SBK says it runs on low margins and has a feature called SBK Best Price that compares odds in real time. Because SBK and Smarkets share a company, existing Smarkets Exchange customers can’t claim the SBK welcome offer. If you’d rather back and lay at exchange prices, see our Smarkets review.

What can you bet on at SBK?

Everything happens in the app. That’s fine on a phone at the pub for the Saturday 3pm games, less fine if you like studying racecards on a laptop.

What do players say about SBK?

SBK has far less public feedback than the high-street names, and we couldn’t get a current Trustpilot score for it in October 2026, so we can’t give you a star rating to compare. What we can say is where new customers most often go wrong, based on the offer’s own rules.

There is one useful comparison point: its sister exchange, Smarkets, scores 2.2 out of 5 from 626 Trustpilot reviews (checked October 2026). Both brands sit under the same licence holder, so it gives you a rough idea of the service side.

• The wrong deposit method. Revolut, PayPal, Skrill, Neteller and virtual cards, including virtual Monzo cards, all rule you out of the offer.
• Odds too short. The qualifying bet must be 2/1 or bigger. Evens, the minimum at most rivals, won’t do.
• Expired tokens. With 5-day expiry and three separate batches, it’s easy to let the last tokens lapse.
• No desktop. If you don’t want to bet on your phone, SBK isn’t for you.

SBK: the good and the not so good

SBK vs Betway, Unibet and Virgin Bet

Here’s how SBK’s welcome offer compares with three other well-known bookmakers.

SBK and Betway both give you £40 for a tenner, and both make you use it on four-leg bets, but Betway lets you qualify at Evens. Unibet asks for a £20 stake, and Virgin Bet gives less but has the lowest minimum odds. SBK makes most sense if you’ll stick around for the prices rather than just the sign-up offer.

Is SBK worth joining?

If you bet mainly on your phone and care about getting a good price week after week, SBK is worth a look. The exchange background shows in its focus on margins, and the in-app racing streams are good.

The welcome offer is less friendly than it looks. 2/1 minimum odds, four-leg tokens and 5-day expiry mean you need to plan how you’ll use it. Desktop punters should look elsewhere. Compare it with the rest on our UK betting sites page.

SBK FAQs