Accumulator bonus

A book that adds nothing for combining selections pays the arithmetic product of the prices and no more. A book with an accumulator ladder adds a percentage on top of the winnings, and the percentage climbs as legs are added: a couple of points at two selections, tens of points in the teens, a headline number somewhere past thirty legs that almost nobody reaches.

The headline is the top rung and it is what gets printed everywhere. The rung that matters is the one at four or five selections, which is where most slips actually sit, and it is usually a small fraction of the number on the banner. Several ladders also carry a minimum price per leg, which quietly excludes the short-priced favourites people build accumulators out of.

Four of the books filed here run no first deposit offer at all and compete on this instead. That is why an index of this market cannot treat the accumulator ladder as a footnote to the welcome offer: for a good part of the register it is the offer.