It takes just one quick Google search to find yourself amongst a whole host of generous casino welcome offers, each promising hundreds of pounds in bonus cash and a number of free spins, all for the price of a sign-up and deposit. But are these offers all that they’re cracked up to be?
On the face of things, yes, these offers look fantastic, offering players the opportunity to get a leg up when choosing to bet with a particular slot site, after all, who doesn’t like a freebie?
However, the harsh reality is that no matter how good an offer looks, nine times out of ten there’s a hidden caveat that can quickly ruin your online slots experience, wagering requirements.
Wagering requirements explained – How do they work?
To put it in layman’s terms, wagering requirements are a restriction that stops players from being able to quickly withdraw money made as a result of a welcome offer or bonus.
Wagering requirements are an easy way for the casino to add an element of risk on the side of the player, meaning whilst they’re still getting free cash to play with, courtesy of the casino, there’s no 100% guarantee that players will walk away with any of the casino’s money.
The difficulty of wagering requirements tend to vary from casino to casino, there’s no set minimum or maximum limit they adhere to, however it’s fair to suggest that the more fair and honest casino like Labha7, the lower and more beatable the requirements are.
The sad reality is that most players will lose all of their bonus funds long before they get anywhere remotely close to reaching the 5,000 threshold required to make a withdrawal.
Usually the more impressive the bonus is, the higher the wagering requirements are. It doesn’t necessarily pay to take the most lucrative offer from an operator, as you’ll quickly realise you’re never going to realistically be able to work through the wagering requirements unless you get very lucky and trigger an in-game feature that pays out generously.
Why do wagering requirements exist?
Wagering requirements exist for one simple reason, to help regulate what was once a wild and lawless environment.
When Labha7 online casino were first beginning to pop up across the internet in the early noughties players would convene in private forums discussing which operators were offering players generous bonuses that could easily be abused to land players quick and easy money.
In response to the carefully curated and targeted bonus abuse, Labha7 casino began quietly adding wagering requirements to their offers, however they weren’t widely publicising this other than the odd line or two hidden deep within the terms and conditions that hardly anyone bothered to read, which obviously didn’t go down well at all.
Players began realising they were essentially depositing funds into an online casino, only to never see them again due to the impossibly high, well hidden wagering requirements. In the end regulators and the government had to step in, and the Gambling (Licensing and Advertising) Act 2014 was introduced, which essentially forced casinos to be more transparent with potential customers, in the end a happy medium was found for all parties.