Casino Promotions

An overview to casino promotions

Due to the low costs of running an online casino and the competitive nature of the industry, the vast majority of casinos are prepared to put their money towards casino promotions to sign up new customers. The typical sign up bonus is a £50 match (i.e. deposit £50 get another £50). To keep existing customers happy, some casinos also run monthly match bonuses of around £25, reward point schemes and competitions.

Wagering requirements
Of course there is no such thing as free money and there are always strings attached to casino promotions. Typically you should expect to meet a gambling quota of 30x the bonus before you can cash in their money (often worded as 15x the deposit + bonus amount). Read more on bonus terms

Lock in
Traditionally the bonus used to be awarded to your account the moment you made a deposit. While this gave a nice boast to the player's starting bankroll, this also created the problem that their money would be locked in until the player had met their wagering requirements.

A popular trend seems to be that more and more casinos are now awarding the bonus after wagering requirements have been met. While this does mean the player only has their initial deposit to play with it does mean if a player suddenly gets a huge win, they can walk away without having an annoying wagering quota to meet.

Some of the best offers are 'Risk Free' bonuses, where the customer can gamble with the casino's bonus money and have the option of leaving before they risk their own (determined by the casino's terms & conditions).

Promotion tarts

Every casino is stung by 'promotion tarts' or 'bonus hunters' people who play only for the bonuses and never come back, because of this the terms & conditions are getting stricter & the offer themselves are getting smaller.

Bonus absue has pretty much killed off the No deposit bonuses (where a casino gives a risk free token sum of say £20). Now some casinos will not allow bets on low edge games like Blackjack count towards your wagering requirements virtually leaving only slots as the valid games for bonuses.

Future of casino promotions

We predict that the following casino promotions will be more prominent in the coming years:

Slot bonuses - Since the house edge on slots games are much higher, it's far harder for a bonus hunter to abuse them but it begs the question of whether these types of bonuses are any good for someone who just wants to play the classic casino games?.

Loyalty/Rebate schemes - Very little effort have been given towards these schemes as they never had the impact of the massive sign up bonuses we have seen in the past. We can see a lot of potential in these such as a monthly 5-10% rebate on losses or amounts wagered (with wagering requirements of course).

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