From free TVs to £10 cash back for each English goal and half price return flights to Africa on a private jet; marketers are making the most of consumer interest in this summer’s main sporting tournament by offering performance-based incentives as part of their World Cup promotions.

Glasgow-based private jet company Jet Logic for instance is offering customers a 50% refund on the cost of flights to and from South Africa for the World Cup if England win and Wayne Rooney scores in the final.

Similarly, Toshiba has been pushing its World Cup promotion by offering a free TV, with the promise that if customers buy a TV before 10 June they will get their money refunded should England win.

Currys meanwhile is offering customers £10 for each goal that England scores during the tournament.

Increasingly, however, businesses will not take a financial risk on these offers, instead hedging their exposure to the event. For example DSG (owner of Currys) has had its hedge secured via insurance markets, but this is not the only way that brand marketers have managed to offer such incentives while avoiding the risk. More and more businesses are turning to bookmakers and placing bets directly.

Jet Logic’s half price flights deal takes in £2 million of bookings, with the £1 million of risk hedged by placing a bet with bookmaker Paddy Power’s risk management insurance division Airton Risk Management. And it seems that this bookmaker avenue is growing ever more appealing, with original insurance contracts becoming too expensive.

Sportsrisq Capital is a bookmaker specifically serving businesses protecting themselves against sporting results and director John Nagle explains its appeal: “Betting is a more efficient way of doing this, as insurers don’t know how to price this stuff.”

Meanwhile, Rod O’Callaghan at Paddy Power’s Airton Risk Management warns that, although not a new phenomenon, businesses are still keen to keep customers in the dark about their hedging activities: “People don’t like customers to know they are hedging. There is an element that businesses want customers to feel that they are taking the cost of a promotion.”