A common feature of online casino play is a welcome bonus offer. These are incentives that operators use to lure in new customers and they can be presented in a very alluring way. Casino welcome bonus offers generally provide players with the chance to collect free bonus cash and free spins.
Similarly, a sports interaction bonus can be found in online sportsbooks, and are often deemed to be less restrictive than casino offers. Special one-time Casino deals can seem like they are giving players huge amounts, and they tend to be larger than amounts offered by online poker sites. However, a common question in this area of online gaming is whether casino bonuses are worth it?
The answer may be not all the time and it could boil down to how you approach them. Are some casino bonuses just too good to be true? Here we have a look at four factors you should consider when analysing a bonus offer and whether it’s simply too good to be true. Let’s dive in:
Bonus Funds
A casino sign-up offer will usually be something like a matched deposit bonus. This is where the operator will match a percentage of your first payment on the account, with bonus play. This amount can vary greatly between different casinos.
You may see anything from a 25% matched bonus up to 100% matched offers. Sometimes it can even go beyond that to 200% and up. But it is important to realise that this isn’t the absolute true value of what the casino is giving.
It is bonus funds – and it is only the winnings from those bonus funds that you can keep. So even if you collected 200 in bonus play but won 30 from playing it, the latter is the amount of cash that you can collect and therefore the actual value of the sign-up bonus.
But it doesn’t stop there. As good an offer may initially look, everything hinges on the wagering requirements.
The Wagering Requirement
The wagering requirement is always the first thing to check in the terms and conditions of a welcome bonus offer. These have to be listed along with the offer, so you can easily check what they are before playing.
Ranging anywhere from 35% to 50% on average, the wagering requirements (sometimes called a playthrough), set how many times you have to play through the bonus amount before being able to withdraw winnings from it.
That means you may need a large lump sum of real cash to meet the requirements. Even 20 in bonus play at 35x wagering requirements would need 700 total in real cash staked before winnings would be converted to withdrawable cash.
Again if only 30 was won from the bonus play, that would have required a lot of money to be risked, just to put that smaller value into your account. So while a casino welcome bonus offer may seem fantastic, it can all be unravelled by a high wagering requirement.
Where is the line on the wagering requirement? 35x is pretty much the baseline standard, while 50% is deemed a very high limit for these terms. The higher it is, the worse the deal.
Account Balance
Finding Your Balance
Following any links to a Casino offer or sportsbook recommended by Match Center CA, Bonusfinder, or other reputable casino bonus comparison sites, you are going to meet a welcome bonus offer. On the surface, seeing a deal that offers a 100% match of your first deposit plus some free spins may seem like a great deal.
But it’s not always the case. Sometimes depositing a huge first amount on an account can restrict your ability to complete the full wagering requirements. Free spins are slightly different in that you are still subject to wagering requirements but on the bonus amount won from them.
Time Limited
Another factor that worked into welcome bonus offers at casinos is the time restrictions, as you don’t have unlimited time to fulfil an offer. This is something else that can take the shine off of a promo. You may only have 7 days to meet the full wagering requirements, for example.
The sound approach is to read the terms and conditions of any promo first. Check as to what is a manageable amount to deposit that you play and still comfortably meet wagering requirements.
Bonuses Value Elsewhere
Welcome bonus offers at casinos can seem too good to be true sometimes. You are not obliged to take one and there may be better promotional value as an existing customer.
Casinos run regular offers, like Reload Bonuses, Free Spins, Cashback and Loyalty Clubs that can provide more achievable bonuses for players. Still, these may come with wagering requirements, but can be lower and smaller sometimes. While it’s more fun to play through the bonuses and read terms and conditions, our advice is to truly look at the T&Cs before claiming any bonus. This way you will avoid many unpleasant surprises on the way!
