If there’s one thing almost every internet user has done, including online casino players, it’s clicking the button stating they’ve read the masses of terms and conditions when they’ve barely given them a glance.
Sometimes the small print may as well be in a foreign language given how hard it is to understand and you think to yourself, what difference does reading it really make? When it comes to online casino offers however, there is often a lot of detail found in the terms and conditions which shouldn’t be overlooked. There are certain terms that feature in almost every offer and it’s these which we will take a look at in this article to ensure you are familiar with the essentials.
Wagering Requirements
This is the big one when it comes to online casinos and it’s something that can vary massively depending on which offer you are claiming. Online casinos tempt new customers by offering them large deposit bonuses or ‘free money’ but it’s not as simple as claiming the money and then transferring it into your bank account. To get to the point where withdrawals are possible, the bonus/free funds that you have been handed will need wagering a certain amount of times.
Whatever casino you join, chances are there will be wagering requirements attached to the bonuses and offers.
Given that it is in one sense some might (inaccurately) describe such offers as “free money”, it’s far from an unreasonable ask and it’s something you will find with virtually every sign-up offer. The wagering requirement might be as low as 10x (ten times) but on other occasions as high as 40x. To demonstrate what this means for you, if you were given a £50 bonus with a 20x wagering requirement, you would need to wager £1000 (£50 x 20) in total. Once the requirement is met, the bonus funds will be ‘unlocked’ allowing you to spend them how you please.
Different game contributions
In the wagering example above, you would need to bet a total of £1000 with your bonus funds to meet the requirement but that assumes you only play games with a 100% contribution level. Games like slots will usually contribute 100% but casino classics such as Roulette and Blackjack tend to be between 20% and 5%. The figures vary between casino sites and it’s important to check them out as these percentages can make a big difference to how many times you have to turnover any promotional funds.
If you exclusively play a game that has for example a 20% wagering contribution, this effectively means that for every £1 spent on it, £0.20 will go towards the wagering requirement. If your target wagering amount was £1000, you would in this case need to bet £5000. Ideally you will want to avoid exclusively playing games with a very low contribution too much as meeting the wagering requirement playing these can take quite some time.
You might have just thought to yourself that you can easily meet the wagering requirement by simply sticking your money on 35 numbers of a roulette wheel a few times. The bookies are way ahead of you there though and typically any bet that covers more than two thirds of the wheel will not count at all towards the wagering requirement.
Deadlines
Bonus funds handed out by casino sites will rarely sit in your account forever so it pays to be wary about when the deadlines are. Even when winning something like free spins during a promotional game, extras like this will sometimes need to be claimed within a few days before they expire. It will always be stated how long you have to meet the wagering requirement on a bonus or to accept a prize.
Some casino sites offer long expiry dates while others have a much shorter window. Players who claim a large introductory bonus but play quite infrequently can sometimes get caught out by this. If they’ve not turned over the funds within the specified time period then their bonus fund balance will perish and there’s no getting them back.
Duplicate accounts
You’ve claimed a juicy new-customer offer, won a few quid, and now you are thinking about signing-up as your brother to do it all again. This is absolutely not something you should be attempting as bookies are very alert when it comes to preventing abuse of any offers they have. Promotions are limited so that only one member of a household can take advantage of them and if your e-mail, payment card, phone number etc. has been used before, you won’t be eligible either.
You might have experienced a bit of bad luck with your first sign-up offer but its little bother as you can simply try again with a different provider. There are a wide range of bookmakers available, all offering generous sign-up offers as you can find on our site and it will be a long time before you use up all of the promotional deals.