There are alternatives to the standard online casino bonus offers

There are many ways for a business to attract new customers, one of which is to be extremely competitive on pricing. This of course is how most internet retailers compete with their rivals on the high street because they generally have much lower overheads and can therefore afford to charge lower prices but still maintain their profit margins. Price cutting has also served the newer low cost supermarkets well and enabled them to compete very successfully against the more established brands, but does this low price policy work when competing against other companies with similar low operating costs. Take the online casino sector for example, where their ability to allow their customers to play casino games for mush lower stakes than their land based rivals can afford is very effective against the real casinos and bingo clubs but totally ineffective as a means of competing against all the other online casinos. The online casino sector is also somewhat unique in that their main competitors have never really been the real casinos or bingo clubs which is why these land based gambling companies have not been as seriously affected by the internet as the high street has been. The online casino operators are in reality only competing against each other so they have had to come up with a different marketing strategy. The most common approach the online casino site operators have chosen is what we here at onlinecasino.ie now refer to as the online casino bonus deals. These online casino bonus offers usually take the form of a promise to match a new customer’s first deposit with a 100% bonus thereby doubling the amount of stake money they have to play casino games, and some online casinos even offer further reduced bonuses on the second and even third deposits. On the face of it this sort of welcome bonus appears to be very generous and therefore an attractive proposition for any potential new online casino games player. Unfortunately the fact that it is a generous and potentially expensive offer from the online casino operators means that there are a number of terms and conditions associated with all of these online casino bonus deals, and some of these conditions almost certainly make these bonuses less attractive for some players. The online casino operators are in effect allowing new players to play casino games and potentially win using the site operator’s money. This approach is however only viable if the player is persuaded to stay on the site and keep gambling on playing the casino games for as long as possible, which is why all of these welcome bonus offers are conditional on what is called a play through requirement. This play through requirement is probably the most important of all the terms and conditions associated with this type of online casino bonus and it is essential that any new online casino customer understands what it means before agreeing to accept the bonus.

Almost all the play through conditions that come with this form of welcome bonus are defined in much the same way and detail the amount of money a player is required to stake on playing casino games in order to qualify for the bonus and before any winnings resulting from that bonus can be withdrawn. This play through requirement is generally expressed as a multiple of the sum of the deposit plus the bonus, and is usually at least a factor of twenty. If we put that into plain English, a relatively modest deposit of say 20 euros would attract a bonus of a further 20 euros making a total of 40 euros. If we then multiply that sum by a factor of twenty the amount of money a player is required to stake on playing casino games becomes 800 euros, which may well be considerably more than the player intended to spend playing online casino games and worse still may even be more than they can afford. Some of these online casino bonus offers also apply a time limit on the play through requirements and may even restrict the type of casino game which qualifies towards that required stake. It is easy to see why there has been a certain amount of criticism regarding the transparency of the terms and conditions associated with this type of online casino bonus, but it is also clear why the online casino operators need to apply those terms and conditions when using this type of approach to attracting new customers. Some would argue of course that this type of online casino bonus is not necessarily even a very good marketing strategy because almost all the online casinos offer a very similar welcome bonus to new customers and it therefore does not even achieve its objective in offering something better than other online casinos.

This situation has in fact now been recognised by a few online casino operators, and we now have at least two relatively new online casinos who have decided not to use online casino bonus offers as a way to attract new customers. One of these is the No Bonus casino, not a particularly imaginative choice of name but with a new and innovative alternative approach. Instead of a welcome bonus which only applies to new customers the No Bonus casino has decided to offer a cash back deal for all their casino games players. The cash back offer is designed to compensate any players who run into a streak of very bad luck which results in them losing the whole of a deposit on the same day as it was made. In those circumstances their online casino account will be credited with a cash back sum of 10% of the deposit the following morning. There are no terms and conditions and the cash back can be used in any way the player chooses, including withdrawing it from their account. Although it clearly only kicks in when the player has a very bad run of luck it is a very welcome alternative to the standard welcome bonus. We should also high light the Free Spins casino which is another online casino with an obviously different approach.