Financial Spread betting gives players the opportunity to play the financial markets without ever taking physical ownership of the underlying instrument. This means that the player can speculate in the direction of any financial instrument, whether it is specific shares, currencies, commodities or indices without ever owning them.

Financial Spreads is appealing to ever greater numbers of players for several reasons, not least of which is the absence of capital gains tax on profits (unlike conventional share trading) and the lack of stamp duty on transactions .