As you will see in this Low Wagering Casinos section of Inside Casino, bigger isn’t always better when it comes to bonuses.
If you see a casino that is offering you thousands of pounds, you know there are going to be strings attached. In the industry, we call these “strings” wagering requirements.
In a nutshell, the wagering requirements are the conditions that you must complete in full before bonus money becomes withdrawable for players. It is expressed as a multiple, for example x30 which means that the bonus needs to be wagered 30 times the bonus amount (or sometimes bonus and deposit amounts combined). We deem any bonus that has 20x wagering or lower to be a low wagering casino.
If you’ve received a £50 bonus, with a 30x bonus amount wagering requirement, then you’ll have play through £1,500 before you can withdraw any funds deriving from your bonus. And added on top of that, you’ll probably have a fairly small window of time in which to complete them. Otherwise? You could end up forfeiting the bonus.
If you’ve signed up to an online casino and deposited money before, then you’ll already know that a welcome bonus will usually be subject to wagering requirements. But others less familiar may not be aware of this industry quirk. It also highlights the importance of reading the terms and conditions of an offer before you sign up… or letting us cut through all the noise and find the deals we think are best for players.
This may sound a little doom and gloom, but these days there is more and more good news. There has been something of a sea change. Thanks to increased awareness, regulatory intervention by the Competition and Markets Authority, as well as the emergence of really forward-thinking operators, there are more casinos offering bonuses with low or even no wagering requirements.
Unfortunately, casinos will give some games greater weighting than others. Slots and other arcade games like scratch cards will usually count 100% to the wagering requirements. However, table games like roulette and blackjack will contribute very little; less than 20% and sometimes zero! This is because players can make a lot of low-risk bets that can grind down a casino bonus’ wagering requirement in a way that it doesn’t like. These people are termed by the industry as “bonus abusers.”
In our estimation, anything below x20 is a low wagering bonus or offer, all the way down to x1, or even no wagering requirements at all.
