Most online casino bonus offers come with conditions

There are many ways that marketing companies try to attract our attention and persuade us to part with our money. The big high street stores generally use regular sales events with big advertised discounts, whereas the supermarkets tend to use the multiple buy discounts or two for one offers as they are generally known. Even the banks use a form of discounting to persuade us to apply for one of their credit cards, with a variety of cash-back offers on certain purchases or zero interest on credit transfers for a period of time. All of these marketing schemes are deemed necessary because of the highly competitive environment in which these companies operate. We should not be surprised therefore that the gambling sector and in particular the online gambling sector also use similar tactics to encourage us to their sites, because this is also a highly competitive market. If we look at the sports gambling sector in Ireland there are two main bookmakers on our high streets, but we have online access to all the major bookmakers’ sites. Unlike the online casino sector of online gambling however the bonus offers we find at the online sports gambling sites are relatively simple and easy to understand. They are usually confined to free bets for new customers, or money back offers in the event of certain results, whereas the online casino bonus offers are usually far more complicated and certainly far more likely to be misunderstood.

Almost all the online casinos accessible in Ireland operate some form of welcome bonus for new customers, and many also operate loyalty bonus schemes to encourage their existing casino games players to keep playing on their site. There is one exception to this of course and that is the No Bonus casino which as the name suggests does not use any of the usual form of online casino bonus offers, preferring to operate a cash-back system instead which we will come back to later. As far as all the other online casinos on our recommended online casino list are concerned the most common form of online casino bonus is the welcome bonus which promises to match a new customer’s first deposit with a 100% bonus. In some cases there are also reduced bonuses available on the second and third deposits, but all of them have one thing in common and that is a list of terms and conditions which can and often does reduce the appeal of these offers. Generally speaking a Free Bet offer at a sports gambling site is what it says it is and there are no strings attached, but that can’t be said for the majority of the online casino bonus offers you are likely to come across at an online casino site. On the face of it a promise to double the stake money you have available to spend on playing casino games looks a very generous bonus indeed, but new online casino games players may not find some of the terms and conditions associated with almost if not all of these bonus offers quite so appealing. The most significant of these terms and conditions which come with this sort of online casino bonus is what is called the play through requirement. The play through requirement stipulates how much money a player needs to stake on playing casino games before they can withdraw any money from their account, and usually takes the form of a multiple of the total initial deposit plus the bonus. For almost all the online casinos offering this sort of casino bonus this multiple will be at least 20 times, and can be as high as 30 times the total of the deposit plus bonus. For those who may not be that good at maths, let’s look at what this means for a new casino games player wishing to open their online casino account with a relatively modest 50 euros. If this new customer decides to accept a 100% bonus on this deposit so that they have 100 euros to spend on playing online casino games, the play through terms would require that new player to stake at least 2000 euros on playing casino games before withdrawing money from the account. It is probably fair to say that most new players starting to play casino games with a 50 euro deposit would not anticipate spending 2000 euros on playing online casino games unless they had reduced the size of their initial deposit deliberately to take advantage of the welcome bonus. There is another common condition associated with these online casino bonus offers which has also come as a nasty surprise for some new players who accepted a bonus deal, and that is a time limit on the play through requirements which can be as little as 30 days. Add to that another common feature which you may also come across in the terms and conditions, which defines which casino games qualify for the play through requirements and which may not and you can see that it is very important that a new player fully understands the terms and conditions before accepting this type of casino bonus.

So far this article may appear somewhat scathing about these online casino bonus offers, but here at onlinecasino.ie we are not against what the online casinos are offering their new customers we are simply trying to ensure that potential new online casino games players are aware of the terms and conditions and are able to make an informed decision. Clearly for any new player with the time and the budget to take advantage of this type of casino bonus it is a very good deal, but they are not suitable for every potential new casino games player and can in some circumstances encourage irresponsible gambling where a player exceeds their budget simply to satisfy the terms and conditions associated with a casino bonus. As we have already said there is one online casino which offers a different form of incentive. The No Bonus casino offers a simple 10% cash back to anyone who has a run of bad luck and loses their deposit within 24 hours, with no strings attached. Hopefully that sort of bad luck is not common, but it is some compensation.