Casino bonuses are cool, right? Yeah, we love them too. It’s always nice when an online casino tosses a few bonuses in our direction as an incentive to gamble there. You know what we are not a fan of, though? Reading the terms and conditions of bonuses. It is important, though. Those terms and conditions contain a shedload of information, and very few pieces of information are more important than the “wagering requirements” (sometimes called rollover requirements). Now, if you are an experienced gambler, you’ll know what wagering requirements are. They’re everywhere. If you’re newer to the gambling scene, well you’re in the right place.
This is a guide to wagering requirements. Not only will we tell you what they are, but we’ll let you know why they exist too.
What is a wagering requirement?
Before we talk about why wagering requirements exist, we want to make it very clear what they are. This is because it is a concept that seems to baffle many people, mostly because online casinos are not always the best at defining these terms.
A wagering requirement is simple – it is the number of times you need to play through bonus cash before you can withdraw it from your account.
Let’s say you are all about online slots, and through some good luck, you have a casino bonus of $100. You may also have a wagering requirement of 20x. This means that you would need to play through that $100 a good 20 times before you can withdraw it from your account – or at least withdraw your winnings. So, you’d need to gamble at least $2,000 from your bonus cash pile before you can withdraw anything from that bonus cash (your real cash will stay separate).
This does mean that most people will probably never withdraw the cash they have received from a casino bonus. This is irritating, but online casinos have a reason for it. That leads us rather neatly to the next section.
Why do wagering requirements exist?
Wagering requirements seem rather cumbersome, right? We agree. However, wagering requirements serve a purpose. Admittedly, they don’t benefit the player all that much, but they benefit the online casino. There are several reasons how, too.
Online casinos don’t like to give away money
Imagine this – you run a business, perhaps not one that made $1.6bn in revenue last year, but a successful business nonetheless. As with all businesses, the whole idea is to make as much money as possible. Do you really think that you’d make much money giving away cash for free without the customer needing to do much for it? Exactly!
Online casinos have wagering requirements in place because while they are perfectly happy to pull customers to the site through their bonuses, they don’t really want to give away any bonus cash. In their mind, an ideal customer would be one who consistently loses their bonus cash, and thus they have to pay out absolutely nothing, but they know they need to look after the customers and give them a fair shot at winning.
By having wagering requirements in place (and high wagering requirements, at that), the chances of somebody withdrawing cash are slim. The higher they are, the less chance there is that the online casino will need to give cash away.
It keeps the player gambling
The whole reason casino bonuses exist is to try and entice customers to gamble on a specific platform. Most people only ever gamble at a single site, and the online casinos know that the longer they can keep somebody on their platform, the more likely they are to gain a customer for life.
So, by offering casino bonuses with wagering requirements, the online casinos can keep people kicking around on their online casino, gambling with their casino bonus in mind.
It prevents abuse
There are people who hunt out online casino bonuses, benefit from them and then disappear to the next online casino. It was a major problem in the past. Online casinos really don’t profit from this at all, so to cut down on potential abuse, they instituted wagering requirements. This keeps those who have no intentions of gambling long-term on a platform far away, and the online casino only caters to those they can make money from.
Final thoughts
Remember, first and foremost, if you don’t understand what any terms in gambling mean, look them up in an online glossary so you can gain clarity before you put money down. Always check the wagering requirements when you take advantage of an online casino bonus. This way, when you start gambling at SkyCity Casino or any other platform, you’ll know exactly how much you need to gamble through to be able to withdraw your bonus cash. Chances are that it’ll be much more than you think.
