Online casino bonus deals are not always worth the money

For many years the big high street stores primarily used their window displays to compete with their rivals and attract new customers. Television and newspaper advertising were also major marketing tools, as were the annual sales shortly after Christmas, but although these techniques still play an important part in the marketing plans of most major companies, the growth of online retailing has led to a massive rethink of just how effective those strategies are in the modern world. It is now so easy for us to access all the different suppliers of any particular product without even needing to leave home, that there usually has to be something else to attract us to a particular site. There is of course no doubt that cost has always played a major part in our decisions when purchasing any product or service, whether we are on the high street or searching online, but there are also many business sectors where price comparisons are simply not relevant, and the online casino sector is one of them. The online casino operators needed to come up with an alternative approach to attracting new customers, and almost all the big bookmakers who were of course instrumental in establishing the first online casinos by introducing casino games on their online sports gambling sites, chose to offer them what we now call an online casino bonus. It is still somewhat debatable how effective these online casino bonus deals have been over the years, but there are still many online casino operators using online casino bonus offers as one of their main marketing tools, so they are clearly important enough for us here at onlinecasino.ie to consider them when compiling our list of recommended online casinos. Although each online casino bonus offer is clearly intended to provide a reason for new customers to visit that particular online casino as opposed to one of their rivals, most of the online casino bonus deals are actually remarkably similar. The most common online casino bonus is a promise to match a new customer’s first deposit with a 100% bonus so that they have twice as much stake money with which to play casino games. Some online casinos also offer reduced bonuses on the second and even the third deposits, but they all come with a list of important terms and conditions which need to be fully understood by any new online casino games player tempted to accept one of these bonus deals. This type of online casino bonus has often become somewhat controversial since they were first introduced, and the reason for this is usually a lack of understanding of the terms and conditions associated with these bonus deals, and in particular what is generally known as the play through requirement. Clearly the online casino operator is offering to allow their new customer the opportunity to play casino games for a period of time without risking any of their own money, so they obviously want that customer to keep coming back to the site and spend as much time as possible playing the games. They do this by imposing a minimum amount of money which needs to be staked on playing casino games before any potential winnings can be withdrawn from the player’s account.

In most cases this play through requirement is a condition of accepting this form of online casino bonus, and is usually expressed as a multiple of the total of the deposit plus the bonus. Most online casinos operating this form of online casino bonus use a multiple of at least twenty, so a deposit of say 20 euros plus a matching bonus of a further 20 euros would require the player to wager at least 20 x 40 euros, namely 800 euros on playing casino games before being entitled to withdraw any potential winnings. There may also be a time limit imposed on this play through requirement, and even a restriction on which casino games actually qualify fully towards that requirement, so it is obviously very important that these terms and conditions are fully understood before accepting one of these online casino bonus offers. What on the face of it may appear to be an extremely generous offer may not be suitable for every potential new online casino games player, particularly those with a restricted budget. One of the greatest attractions of playing casino games online is that we can play for much smaller stakes than we can at a real casino, or indeed when playing bingo at a bingo club, so many new players will not be anticipating risking a great deal of money on this form of leisure activity and may not even be able to afford to comply with such a condition, however seemingly generous. An online casino bonus of this type can of course be a very good deal for some people, but they can also lead to unfortunate problems when not fully understood. Although most of the online casinos on our recommended list do offer a welcome bonus of this type for new customers there are now at least two of the newer specialist online casinos which have chosen to use other means of attracting new customers. In both cases the clue to that approach is to be found in the name they have chosen. The first of these new online casinos is of course obviously the well named No Bonus casino. In this case the casino operator has decided that the best idea is to compensate any of their casino games players who unfortunately suffer a run of bad luck. The idea is that any player making a deposit today and then losing the whole of that deposit in one session will receive a 10% cash back paid into their account the following morning. There are no strings attached and the money can even be withdrawn without penalty if the player chooses to do so. The other online casino which does not use the matching bonus type of deal is of course the Free Spins casino. Once again the clue to their approach is in the name.