What Is Betting Insurance

Online sports betting is constantly evolving and the best sports betting sites are permanently looking for new ways to offer new promos and greater value when it comes to providing their customers with a superior experience to what their competitors are doing.

Of which betting insurance is a good example. Browse the promo sections of the best cricket betting sites or those dedicated to the likes of US sports, tennis or football and you’ll find plenty of mentions of it.

But what is betting insurance? How does betting insurance work? Which sports and markets do betting sites offer it on?

Think of regular insurance. Like for a car, or health insurance. The terms would say ‘We’ll pay for damage to another driver’s car IF you caused it’ or ‘We’ll cover 80% of the costs of your surgical procedure IF it’s needed for what wasn’t an existing condition’.

Betting insurance is similar. It involves you getting some money back IF a certain event happens or IF you fall just short of a winning bet. For example…

First up, let’s remember that ‘parlay’ is just another word for an accumulator/acca, or a multiple; parlay is just what it’s normally called at US sportsbooks. 
Parlay betting insurance normally means that customers will get their money back on a losing parlay bet if just one leg lets them down. 

For example: 

You place a bet with the (fictitious) bookmaker Betting Beauty, made up of the following five football teams all winning: 

Chelsea/Everton/Bayern Munich/Real Madrid/Juventus at odds of 16.0 for a 2-unit stake. 

The first four win but Juventus only draws, meaning you miss out on a payout at odds of 16.0. 

However, as per the terms of Betting Beauty’s Parlay Insurance offer, you get your betting stake of 2 units refunded if just one leg lets you down on parlay bets with 5 or more selections.  

Remember that Bet Builders are also a form of parlay bets so you could come across acca insurance with stakes returned where just one leg of the Bet Builder let you down. 

As is so often the case with these things, the answer is: it depends. Each one will have their own terms and conditions for acca insurance offers so it might vary slightly from one to another. But here are a few common requirements of an acca insurance offer: 

• Number of legs- You normally have to have 4 or 5 legs in your parlay bet for the acca insurance to be available.
• Minimum odds- It might be the case that each of the legs is placed at minimum odds e.g. 1.5, or that the parlay as a whole comes to minimum odds of say 5.0.
• Minimum stake- Sometimes the Sportsbook may say that the parlay bet must be placed for a minimum stake for parlay insurance to kick in, other times it can be for any stake. 
• Cash, free bet or bonus money? - Sometimes the refund is straight cash, other times you’ll get a free bet to place for the value of the refunded stake. And on other occasions, the refund is bonus money that needs to be wagered 1x or 2x before you can withdraw it. 
• Opting in- You may have to opt into the betting insurance offer by ticking a box in order to be eligible. 

This normally applies to ice hockey matches, where it’s common for games to go to overtime. Unlike regular season football matches, regular season ice hockey games go to overtime if they’re drawn after normal time. Football matches only go to overtime at the knockout stages of a competition. For example: in the Champions League, or Euro 2024.

So, let’s say you’ve backed the Boston Bruins at 2.4 to beat the New Jersey Devils in the NHL. Our old friend Bookie Beauty may run overtime insurance that says if your team loses in overtime, you’ll get your money back, meaning you get two bites of the cherry:

• The team you bet on wins- You have a winning bet, whether they win in normal time, or overtime. 
• The team you bet on loses in overtime- Overtime insurance means you’ll get your stake back.

Given this is an extremely generous offer and you don’t see it too often. Maybe only for selected special games or the latter stages of say the Stanley Cup.

It might also be available on NBA matches.

This is most commonly offered for NBA (basketball) matches.

For example, if the team you backed scores 115 points or more and still loses, you might get scoring insurance paid back to you.

But you might also see it in football. One well-known betting company offered scoring insurance on the first goalscorer market during the 2023-24 Premier League season. So, if you backed Phil Foden to be first goalscorer and he wasn’t but ended up scoring the last goal of the match instead, you’d get your stake back.

Another one normally reserved for NFL matches. If the team you backed was ahead at the end of the third quarter and ended up losing the match, the insurance would kick in and you’d get your stake back.