Bonuses are incentives offered by online casinos to get you to play on their site. After all, there are so many online casinos to choose from with so many new ones opening every day that it becomes difficult to distinguish one from another. This is where bonuses come into play.
Each casino chooses a certain number of bonuses (or bonus packages) to attract new clientele and as well, to retain the clients that they already have. In short, a casino’s type of bonus packages is one way to make it stand out from the rest of the pack.
Wagering Requirements Explained
All best casinos are in the business of making money – that is a fact. Therefore, most of the time, bonuses come with some strings attached. These strings are called “Wagering Requirements.” Wagering requirements are basically used by online casinos to minimise the possibility that a bonus actually turns into real money.
Let’s take a free spin bonus, for example. If you are awarded 10 free spins and win £10 on one of them, chances are that there is a wagering requirement on those winnings that you will need to fulfil. It might be that you will have to bet that £10 any number of times before you can call that money real money and withdraw it as winnings. Some of those wagering requirements may be as high as 80X.
If the wagering requirement is 80X, you will need to be that £10 80 times before that money becomes yours. That is 80X without losing. That would be a very long streak of very good luck. You would, in fact, be wagering £800 over that time.
So there might be times where it is not the best thing to do to accept some bonuses, because of oppressive wagering requirements. If that means that you have to bet that money 80-100 times to make it yours. That can be a fool’s game. No casino is in business to give away and lose money.
No Deposit Bonuses on Slots
One popular type of bonus offered by online casinos is a no deposit bonus on their slot games. More or less, all a potential client needs to do is to register with the casino and he or she will be credited with a certain number of “free” money or free spins to their new account. Once again, this is a tactic to attract new players to their casino.
Normally, there are differences between free money and free spins in no deposit bonuses. First of all, as was discussed above, the free money usually comes with a wagering requirement which makes it difficult to actually convert that money into real money. However, when the no deposit bonus is money, it can usually be used throughout the entire online casino as the player chooses.
This is not the case with free spins. Free spins that come as part of a no deposit bonus offer are usually tied to 1 or more specific slot games. The player usually will not have the liberty to play whatever game she chooses. Those games will be decided for her.
As well, those wagering requirements might rear their ugly heads as discussed above. If money is won on a free spin, that money might have to be put back into to play dozens of times before it becomes real money and can be withdrawn. This is the truth for the majority of online casinos.
Welcome Deposit Bonus Packages
Welcome deposit bonus packages (or just Welcome Packages) are a large part of online casino player recruitment. They are used by nearly if not all online casinos, at least those that claim to be the best. Welcome packages can be a combination of bonuses—a set number of free spins, bonus money deposited into your new casino account, and even another set of bonuses that arrive when you make your first (and sometimes second) real money deposit.
From the casino’s point of view, when the welcome package is delivered, the prospective client has now been converted into a member of their online casino. Some casinos with give bonuses of 100% your first deposit; other casinos may give even more.
However, the thing to remember is that if there are wagering requirements included with the bonus, the amount of money that you will need to bet to transform the bonus into real money might be astronomical. It is something you need to keep in mind when comparing all types of best welcome bonuses out there.
Every online casino site will claim that their welcome deposit package is the best. Even though the chances are high that their offer is fairly good, if they have NetEnt slots in their portfolio, you should learn how to be objective, when evaluating casino bonus campaigns.