What Are Wagering Requirements in Online Casino Bonuses? – Guide to One of the Most Important Terms and Conditions in Casino Bonus Offers

Wagering requirements in online casino bonuses are limitations on what you can do with casino bonus funds unless you use them for betting at the casino. Typically, this means any bonus funds are “locked” in your casino account until you wager them multiple times.

This makes understanding wagering requirements vitally important to finding the best bonuses in online casinos. We would go so far as to say that this requirement is the most important thing to look at. Yes, even compared to the bonus offer itself. What good are thousands of dollars in bonuses if you can’t actually use them?

The guide below explains everything you need to know about casino bonus wagering requirements and why they’re so important.

What Are Casino Bonus Wagering Requirements?

Wagering requirements, sometimes also called playthrough requirements, represent a fixed number of times you have to wager your bonus before it becomes withdrawable.

If that sounds a bit confusing, no worries. We’ll explain this definition bit by bit.

Let’s say you want to take advantage of a tasty welcome bonus at a new casino site. It offers to double your deposit, so you top up your account with $100 and receive $100 as a bonus.

Contrary to what some casinos claim, this isn’t just “free money.” You can’t turn around and just withdraw $200. After all, casinos are not in the business of handing out cash.

This bonus instead has to be used for betting at the casino. Moreover, you will need to bet the bonus several times over before it becomes fully available to you.

The number of times you have to bet the bonus is known as the wagering requirement.

Let’s use a simple and common example – 30x. This would be considered on the lower side of average for many top casino welcome bonuses.

So, if you collected $100 with a 30x wagering requirement, you have to play through the bonus 30 times. This means that you will have to bet a total of $3,000 at the casino before your bonus becomes fully available for withdrawal.

Wagering Contribution

The playthrough requirement itself is not the only figure you need to look at. There is also the matter of wagering contribution, which impacts how easily you’ll be able to clear said requirements.

Wagering contribution refers to the percentage of every bet that counts toward meeting playthrough requirements. Different types of games usually (but not necessarily) contribute at a different rate.

Going back to our earlier example, you would need to make 3,000 bets sowrth $1 to clear the full $3,000 requirement. However, let’s say some of your bets have only 50% contribution. That would mean that you would need to wager a total of $6,000, assuming you’re only playing that one single type of wager.

Now we hear you asking – but why are contribution rates different at all? Why not just increase the requirement and call it a day?

Frankly, it’s because different casino games provide different returns, on average. In the world of gambling, this is referred to as RTP – the percentage of every bet that a player can expect to win back, on average.

Games with low RTP are generally considered worse for the player. Online slots are probably the most well-known example, with average RTP rates sitting around 96%. Thankfully, this means that most casino deposit bonuses come with a 100% wagering contribution from slots.

On the other hand, online blackjack often boasts RTP as high as 99.5%. That’s why even top online casinos impose restrictions on most table games, live casino tables, and similar high-RTP categories. Sometimes such games contribute towards meeting requirements at severely lowered rates (often as low as 5%) or are outright banned from using bonus funds (i.e. 0% contribution.)

Expiration

There’s another important detail you have to be on the lookout for when looking for the best casino bonuses – time limits. Most bonus funds have a fixed expiration date. If you fail to use your funds before the date, you forfeit them.

Casino bonus time limits can either be a non-issue or a major problem, depending on several factors.

The first issue is the length. The most respected and best online casinos often allow you to play around with your bonus for up to a month. Unless you’re a really casual player, that probably won’t be a problem.

On the other hand, some sites provide tiny windows in which to use bonuses. For instance, some only last a few days or a week. While not a problem on its own, this limit sometimes comes paired with high minimum deposits or other limitations. This forces players to wager more money than they usually would at a casino, which is why we consider short timeframes to be anti-customer.

Other Details

Beyond the big points above, we have a few other tips and tricks about wagering requirements. Here are a few additional common items you should keep an eye on.

• Minimum odds – Some bonuses have terms regarding the minimum odds needed for the wager to contribute towards completing requirement. These rules prevent you from, for example, making every bet at a roulette table.
• Bonus + Deposit – Some bonuses place wagering requirements on the bonus + deposit amount. This means you’ll essentially have to play through the amount you deposited and the amount you received as a bonus. In the case of 100% offers, for example, that functionally doubles the wagering requirement. It’s best to avoid such offers.
• Sticky bonuses – Sticky bonuses mean that you’re not only prevented from withdrawing the bonus until you complete requirements but also the initial deposit. Again, they’re best avoided.
• Maximum winnings – Some casinos opt to put a hard limit on how much you can win. This maximum is often placed on winnings from free spins, but we’ve seen it applied to bonus money as well.

Conclusion

By now, you hopefully understand what wagering requirements in online casinos are and why they matter so much.

The terms and conditions of a bonus can make or break it. Like we always say – always pay attention to the fine print. Considering this is a condition you’ll find in pretty much every promotion out there, it’s crucial that you understand how it all works.

Before we wrap things up, remember to check out our list of the best casino bonuses. We took wagering requirements, contributions, and all of the other details into account while making it. This ensures that our rankings are fair, complete, and transparent.