Understanding the Conditions of Top Online Casino Bonuses

One of the best things about gambling on online and crypto casinos is their many bonus offers. These are given to new players as an incentive to register an account and to existing players to reward their loyalty to a casino and keep them returning for more.

While these bonuses help you get the most out of the online gambling experience, they come with some strings attached. Join us as we look at the conditions underlying these bonuses so that you’ll know which deals to go for and which to avoid in the future.  

Types of Bonuses

Although online casino bonuses all reward you in one way or another, not all bonuses are created equally, and some offer more bang for your buck than others. 

Regardless of what gateway to the newest casinos in online gambling you use, the most common types offered are welcome bonuses for new players, deposit match, cashback, free spin, no deposit, loyalty, and reload bonuses. Welcome, loyalty, and reload bonuses usually combine other forms (such as deposit match and free spin bonuses) to offer better incentives to attract players or to reward those who play often. 

Although each bonus is unique, most share the same basic requirements and conditions. Like with perks that offer more than one type of bonus, however, some come with more conditions than others, while some have the same conditions but stricter benchmarks to reach. Let’s review the most common of these.  

Wagering Requirements

Anyone looking to claim an online casino bonus must understand what wagering requirements are and how they work. This condition is the most common and is often attached to almost any bonus gambling sites offer to new and returning players alike. 

A wagering requirement stipulates the amount of your own money that you will need to wager (or play through) before you meet the conditions of receiving the bonus. These can range from 15X to 30X the bonus amount. 

For example, should you receive a welcome bonus with a 100% deposit match up to $500, you will receive a $1,000 credit in your account after depositing $500. However, $500 of this amount comes with a 25X wagering requirement.

Therefore, to utilize this additional $500, you will first need to spend a minimum of $12,500 of your own money – either by depositing more or reinvesting your winnings. This requirement is almost always bundled with the following common condition: a time requirement. 

Time Requirements

Time requirements set a clock on how long you, as a player, must satisfy all bonus conditions before you forfeit the benefit the bonus offers. This time limit varies between operators and commonly falls between 7 and 15 days. 

As mentioned, a time requirement is often combined with another bonus condition. In the scenario above, for example, the casino may require you to meet your wagering requirement of $12,500 within 15 calendar days. Failure to do this will result in your additional $500 being forfeited. 

Game Restrictions

When it comes to types of bonuses like free spins, a unique condition called a game limit restricts which online slots you can use your free spins on. Under this condition, the site will provide a list of slot games on which you can use the provided free spins – although sometimes they are valid only for one type of game.

While this may seem limiting, the games online casinos select for a free spin bonus are often great games that are fun to play. So, while this bonus may not allow you to play whatever you’d like, it can still benefit you even when playing a game you wouldn’t have chosen.  

In addition to specifying which games can be played with free spin bonuses, game restrictions are also commonly associated with wagering requirements. This condition doesn’t necessarily limit you to a particular game but rather a specific type of game. 

For example, when receiving a welcome deposit match bonus, one of the conditions that may be stipulated is that only money spent on slot games will count toward the wagering requirement. If this is so, cash spent on table or live dealer games won’t contribute toward reaching the requirement. 

Geographical Restrictions

Geographical conditions are among the least common types of string attached to an online bonus. However, they still appear occasionally, particularly on sites with an extensive presence in many international jurisdictions. 

These types of bonuses limit the ability to claim the reward of a bonus based on where you are playing. For instance, if the welcome bonus above were reserved for US players, those accessing the same online casino from the UK would not be eligible to claim the bonus.

However, it should be said that almost every online casino uses IP geolocation to track the country players are from. In the US, this action is recommended by the American Gaming Association and, more importantly, has become a legal requirement. Due to this, your location information will be used to automatically hide region-specific deals from players in a country or region where they are not valid. 

Withdrawal Limits

Although stated clearly when it is in place, one of the sneakiest types of conditions online casinos can attach to a bonus is a withdrawal limit. This will limit how much players can withdraw from any winnings they achieve using the bonus at any one time. 

This type of condition ensures that players who register an account and hit it lucky shortly after don’t immediately cash out all their winnings. Instead, it encourages them to return to the website numerous times and use some, if not most, of their winnings to continue playing.  

Finding the Best Bonus

With the various conditions attached to bonuses, finding one that will work for you could be tricky. However, many sites identify the best types of perks for players and list them according to their worth and the conditions they attract. 

Like knowing how to manage your bankroll, being aware of the different types of bonuses and the conditions they hold and using sites that find the best options for you can significantly enhance your time gambling online. This allows you to focus more on the entertainment of the games and (hopefully) on winning.