Tweet a bookmaker a combination — your team to win, two players to score, over nine corners — and minutes later a price appears with your request attached. Request-a-bet markets are one of modern betting’s most effective products: social, personal, and shareable. They are also, almost without exception, among the worst-value prices on the site. Both things are true, and this page explains the second one.
What a request-a-bet actually is
A request-a-bet is a custom same-game multiple: several outcomes from one match combined into a single price. It is the social cousin of the bet builder — same product, except a trader or pricing model builds it for you in public, often in reply to a social post, and then offers it to everyone. The format exploded because it turns pricing into content: every answered request is an advert that costs the bookmaker nothing and arrives with built-in engagement.
How compilers price novelty requests
Each leg starts from the bookmaker’s own single-market price, which already contains a margin. Combining legs multiplies those margins together, and where legs are correlated — a striker to score and his team to win, say — the model prices the combination off the correlation rather than naively multiplying, which almost always clips the odds further. On genuinely novel requests with no liquid market to reference, compilers price defensively: when a trader is unsure, the uncertainty is charged to the punter, not absorbed by the book. The result is that a multi-leg request routinely carries a built-in edge far above the few percent on a straight match-odds bet.
The margin maths in one example
Suppose each of four legs carries a modest 5% margin. The combined price retains roughly 0.95 to the power of four of the fair value — about 81%, a built-in cost of around 19% before kick-off. That is the optimistic case: it assumes independent legs priced as sharply as main markets, and request-a-bet legs are usually neither. The same maths is covered leg by leg in our margin guide — multiples don’t dilute the house edge, they compound it.
Why bookmakers love the format
Request-a-bets convert the hardest customer to reach — the casual fan with an opinion — into a bettor with a personalised slip. The stakes are small, the margins are chunky, the social reach is free, and losing a €5 novelty bet rarely stings enough to prompt a value calculation. None of this is hidden or improper; it is simply good business, and knowing it is good business for them tells you what it is for you.
Using them honestly
Treated as priced entertainment — a fiver on your exact prediction for the big match — a request-a-bet is harmless fun, and fun is a legitimate thing to pay for. Treated as a value strategy, it is the most expensive counter in the shop. Keep stakes at entertainment size, compare the offered price against multiplying the single-market odds yourself, and never chase a near-miss with a bigger request. 18+ — Gambling Awareness Trust, 1800 753 753, gamblingcare.ie.
Frequently Asked Questions
Essentially yes — both are same-game multiples. A request-a-bet is built by the bookmaker’s traders or model in response to a customer’s request, often publicly on social media, then offered to everyone. The pricing maths is the same as a bet builder.
Each leg carries the bookmaker’s margin, and combining legs compounds those margins. Correlated legs are clipped further, and novel requests with no reference market are priced defensively. Four legs at a modest 5% margin each leave roughly 81% of fair value — about 19% gone before kick-off.
Many bookmakers will price custom requests on big GAA, League of Ireland and racing occasions. Expect novelty requests on smaller Irish markets to be priced extra defensively — with little liquid reference, the compiler’s uncertainty is charged to you.