Many of the common online casino bonus offers are complicated

There are many different ways in which commercial businesses try to stand out against their rivals, and their chosen marketing strategies may well be the difference between success and failure. Clearly advertising to establish brand awareness is important, as is product quality and customer service, but more often than not price will be the most important element in a competitive market. Internet retail businesses regularly use lower prices as their greatest advantage over their high street rivals and it is also often the most important factor when competing against their online competitors, but what about business sectors such as online casinos where price reductions are not an option. The online casino operators can’t run a cut price sales event to attract new customers and it is their customers themselves who choose how much money they want to spend on playing the casino games. Many of the online casino operators have therefore decided that their only option is to offer some form of online casino bonus to new customers. Brand awareness is of course a major factor in the online casino sector with bookmakers such as Paddy Power and Ladbrokes benefitting from their extensive high street presence in our towns and cities here in Ireland, but even with that sort of advantage over other online casinos with little or no brand awareness generated by high street betting shops they still choose to offer online casino bonus deals to attract new casino games players. Unfortunately an online casino bonus deal is not as straightforward as many other bonus offers, and there have been several reports of misunderstandings leading to problems for some new players. Most of the bookmakers who operate online casinos also offer online sports gambling on their sites, and it is not unusual for them to offer their sports gambling customer’s free bets or cash back deals in various forms but all of these bonus offers are relatively simple and easy to understand because there are very few terms and conditions attached. That is however not true of most of the welcome bonus deals offered by our online casinos, all of which come with a fairly long list of terms and conditions which must be met in order to qualify for the bonus. The most common form of online casino bonus is a promise to match a new player’s first deposit with a 100% bonus, which means that they have twice as much stake money available to play the casino games on the site. Many welcome bonus offers of this type also promise a reduced bonus on the second and even third deposit, but they all come with important terms and conditions.

Clearly being offered the opportunity to play online casino games with someone else’s money is an attractive proposition, but it is very important that every potential new casino games player who is considering accepting a bonus of this type understands what they need to commit to in order to qualify for that bonus. As we have already indicated all of the online casino bonus deals of this type come with a list of terms and conditions, but the one that causes the most misunderstandings is what most people refer to as the play through requirements. The online casino operator is offering their customers the chance to play casino games using the casino’s money, and they therefore want those players to stay on the site for as long as possible so that they have a chance to get their money back. They do this through stipulating that the player must gamble a minimum sum of money in order to qualify for the bonus. That minimum stake is defined in the play through requirements detailed in the list of terms and conditions, and usually takes the form of a multiple of the sum of the deposit plus the bonus. That multiplier is almost always at least a factor of twenty which means that the amount a player is expected to gamble on playing casino games in order to qualify for the bonus is always significantly more than the initial deposit they have paid into their account. In simple terms for example, if a new player decides to accept the welcome bonus and pays a relatively modest 20 euros into their account, therefore attracting a bonus of a further 20 euros, they will be expected to gamble at least 20 x 40 euros on playing casino games in order to qualify for the bonus. That is a total of 800 euros in order to qualify for a bonus of just 20 euros, which may not be as attractive to some people as they might have thought. On the other hand for those people who can afford to stake that sort of money on playing casino games and stay within their gambling budget, it clearly is a good deal. The important thing is that any player considering accepting a welcome bonus of this type fully understands what the play through conditions actually mean before choosing to accept the offer. Before we go on we should also highlight two possible further conditions which are commonly found associated with these online casino bonus offers. The first of those additional conditions is that there may also be a specified time limit on satisfying the play through requirements, so again it is important that players considering accepting the bonus should check whether that still fits into their comfortable gambling budget. The second common additional element of the terms and conditions associated with many of these welcome bonus deals is a restriction on which casino games qualify fully towards the play through requirements. Some online casino games have a smaller house edge than others, so many of the online casino site operators either discard those games completely from the list of qualifying games or they reduce their value by allowing only a percentage of the money staked on those games as a qualifying amount. There are of course good reasons why the site operators may think that these terms and conditions are necessary, but it is important that their customers fully understand what is required of them.