What is Bonus Wagering?

If you’ve ever visited an online casino, then you’ve almost certainly seen splashy banners offering you such things as cash and free spins for signing up and making your first deposit. Some like https://rocketplay1.com/ even offer you both. Who in their right mind would turn down such an offer? 

Well, like many other forms of advertising, the devil is in the details otherwise known as terms and conditions. A big cash bonus might sound like an unbelievably generous deal, but you won’t know the true value of any bonus offer until you’ve read the bonus wagering requirements.

You don’t honestly think that a casino is simply going to fork over a fat wad of cash with no strings attached? Of course, they won’t. They are going to make you work to cash out those bonus bucks. They do this by requiring claimants to meet bonus wagering conditions. This means that you must place a certain amount of wagers before your bonus money becomes eligible for withdrawal.

Let’s say you see a welcome bonus promising you a 100% match bonus up to $1,000. The first thing you need to do is check out the offer’s details or T&Cs. Here is where you find the bonus wagering requirements. You’ll see something like 5X, 10X, 40X, or some other number. This is the number of times you must wager the bonus amount. 

So, if you claimed the maximum $1,000 in bonus cash, and it was subject to a 40X bonus wagering requirement, then you will have to place $40,000 in wagers to release your bonus. If the wagering requirement was set at 10X, then you would need to wager $10,000 to redeem your bonus cash. As you can see, there is quite a significant difference between these two example bonus wagering requirements. 

If you had to meet the 40X wagering requirement playing games with an average RTP of, say, 95%, you can reasonably expect to lose about $2,000 whereas the expected losses from wagering $10,000 would be about $500. Keep in mind that these RTPs are merely averages. Nevertheless, you need to ask yourself whether incurring an expected loss of $2,000 to get $1,000 is worth the effort. A $500 expected loss is a lot more reasonable and it gives the offer with the 10X rollover requirement a lot more value.

Always make sure to consider the bonus wagering requirements whenever you are thinking about claiming any online casino bonus offer. Some of them simply aren’t worth it.