What is wagering and how does it work?

The ‘wagering requirement’ indicates how often you have to play a casino bonus before you can withdraw your possible winnings. All online casinos offer bonuses to new and existing players. By offering an nice bonus package they increase the chances that players will register and play at their casino instead of one of the many other competitors out there. One of the most important factors of the bonus – besides the amount – is without a doubt the wager. The easiest way to explain this is with an example.

Let’s say you consider opening an account at an online casino and they have a nice welcome bonus for you: Deposit €100 and get €100 bonus. This means you can play with €200 instead of €100. Pretty nice, right? But this is where the Terms & Conditions come into play. It is very likely that the bonus will have wagering requirements attached to it. In this example the wager will be 30x. This means you will have to play the €100 bonus amount that you received from the casino 30 times before you can cash out any profit. As long as you have not completed this wager, you cannot cash out any wins. So you have to wager 30 x €100 = €3000 before you can cash out.

casino bonus wagering explained

Some casinos attach the wager on the bonus alone, but there are also casinos that attach the wager to the bonus + your deposit. So in this case the wager would be 30x (€100 deposit + €100 bonus) = €6000. When a casino attaches the wager to both the deposit and the bonus, the wager is often lower, like 15x or 20x. When it comes to bonuses there are more factors to take into consideration before acceptig a bonus.

At our site we list the selected casinos not only with the score we have given but also with the wager that comes with the welcome bonuses. You can also see wether the wager is only attached to the bonus or the bonus and your deposit combined. Do keep in mind that additional bonuses in a package can have other wagering requirements.

There are also some casinos that offer a non sticky bonus, also called a parachute bonus. This bonus only gets activated after you have played through your deposit. You can read more about the paracute bonus here.

Maximum bet size, maximum win

A casino can decide to attach a maximum bet size to a bonus. This means that while you are wagering the bonus, you are not allowed to have your bet size higher than a certain amount. When you play with a higher bet size than stated in the bonus conditions, the bonus will be cancelled and your possible wins will be forfeited. There is also the possibility that the bonus can not be played on all games. Sometimes the casino selects one or more games the bonus must be played with or it excludes a number of games from the bonus wager.

There are even casinos that attache different percentages to different kind of games and/or slots. So some slots will contribute 100% to a wager, others 75% or 125%. Often table games are also contributing less to a bonus wager.

With free spin bonuses there is often a cap on the maximum win you can cash out. Free spin bonuses sometimes don’t have any wagering on them, so this is another way for a casino to reduce the risk on big wins.

Bonuses also often come with an expiration date or restrictions for certain countries. If you don’t play your bonus within a certain time window, you will lose the bonus. This is often the case with free spins that are received over multiple days. You have to keep track of your bonus conditions to make sure you don’t miss out on them. Some countries are excluded from a certain type of bonus because this type of bonus is not allowed.

Checklist for bonuses

To make it easier for you, we have made a small list with the most important things to look for when considering to play with a casino bonus. We always advice players to read the terms and conditions, but we also know that it is not the most appealing part of playing at online casinos. So for this reason we have made this list with 7 important points, so you know what to look (out) for in the bonus terms and conditions.

  • Check the wager requirements.
  • Check wether the bonus is valid with your deposit method (sometimes a bonus cannot be played when depositing from an ewallet).
  • Check the maximum bet size.
  • Check wether certain games do not contribute to the wager
  • Check for a maximum win.
  • Check the verification proces.
  • Make sure your country is not restricted for the casino and /or the bonus

Get verified right away

What also helps is to ask the support team a couple of questions through the live chat, this way you get a feeling about the casino support and how they treat their players. If you have decided to play at the casino, make sure you get verified right away. When you want to withdraw wins and you are already verified, this can save quite a bit of time.

Neteller and Skrill

We know that ewallets like Neteller and Skrill are gaining in popularity amongst casino players. And for good reason because these ewallets are flexible, come with some nice perks and most online casinos can process payments to ewallets faster than they can do to bank accounts and credit cards. But sometimes payment through an ewallet is not allowed with a bonus, so after your deposit you find out that you will not receive any bonus money. Again a reason to read those terms & conditions so you can enjoy the excitement of the online casino games instead of being annoyed about certain conditions you were not aware of.

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