Ultimate Wagering Requirements Guide
Whether you’re a newbie or a veteran, you’ll have seen promotions and offers on all of your favourite bingo sites. But these offers don’t come without a price; they’re all subject to wagering requirements. These requirements can get rather confusing, so BingoPort has put together an Ultimate Wagering Requirements Guide to help you read between the lines and figure out when an offer is too good to be true!
You should read this guide before you accept any of our listed bingo bonuses and promotions; otherwise, you can get caught in a web of complications. It can be a common scenario for many bingo players: they join up to a site and accept a welcome bonus, and they even win a decent jackpot. But they soon find out that they can’t actually withdraw any of their winnings, because they didn’t meet the wagering requirements.
So pay attention, before you have to go through such a soul-destroying experience!
What Are Wagering Requirements?
While wagering requirements might sound a little scary and complicated, this guide will help clear up any confusion. There are a small crop of some no wagering bingo sites, but most of main sites have wagering promtions to avoid bonus scammers.
Most bingo sites have promotions on offer, such as ‘spend £10 and get £30 to play with’. These promotions are all subject to wagering requirements. A wagering requirement is the amount of money you have to bet (or spend) in order to receive the bonus. In most cases, you won’t be able to withdraw any money until you’ve met the wagering requirements.
So, what do they look like?
The most common wagering requirement for bingo sites is 4x, which means that you have to wager four times the bonus offer. For example: spend £10 and get £30 to play with, with a wagering requirement of 4x, would mean that you’d have to spend £120 before your requirements have been met. Please note that the wagering requirement sometimes includes the bonus and the deposit, so make sure you check!
While you might think that kind of number is ridiculous, it’s actually quite fair, particularly in comparison to casino websites, which can have requirements as high as 50x! Ultimately, wagering requirements are designed to ensure bingo players keep coming back to the site; you have to spend more time on the site to claim a bonus, which is what all sites want.
Why Do Bingo Sites Need Them?
Wagering requirements can be a nightmare, but they are extremely vital to the gambling industry. They’re one of the few ways that bingo sites can make a profit; if they weren’t there, members would be able to take and withdraw bonuses without spending any time on the site.
Without wagering requirements, bingo sites wouldn’t want to offer you any promotions, because they wouldn’t make any profit! And you’d be left to live in a world without promotions!
Wagering requirements are 100% legal, even if they don’t seem fair to you. By joining a site and accepting their terms and conditions, you are agreeing to follow and accept wagering requirements.
Where Can I Find A Site's Wagering Requirements?
You can find a site’s wagering requirements in various ways:
- Terms and Conditions: typically located at the bottom of a site’s homepage. To find the wagering requirements, you might have to look under ‘promotions’ or ‘withdrawal rules’.
- The promotion’s small print: most promotions will have a small ‘terms and conditions’ section, explaining the promotion’s conditions and wagering requirements.
- Support Team: if you’ve tried the above methods, and you still can’t find the requirements, or you don’t understand them, you should contact the site’s support team. They can typically be contacted using a phone line, email or live chat. It’s important to do this if you’re unsure; you don’t want to lose out on a jackpot just because you didn’t ask the right questions!
It’s vital that you take the time to locate and read these wagering requirements, because your bingo site won’t take the blame if you haven’t read them before making a deposit!
How Do They Work On Bingo Sites?
Now you know the basics of wagering requirements, but how exactly do they work?
Typically, bingo sites don’t offer ‘real money’ bonuses, so when they offer £30 for a £10 deposit, they mean that you can claim £30 bonus to spend on bingo tickets; you won’t actually be able to withdraw it as real money.
Please note that some sites won’t allow you to make any withdrawals until you’ve met their wagering requirements.
Let’s apply it to an example:
- Welcome Bonus: deposit £10 to play with £30.
- Wagering Requirement: 4x
What does this mean?
Once you deposit £10 and get the £30 bonus, you have to spend four times the bonus in order to withdraw any winnings from the £30. This means you would have to spend £120 on bingo tickets before you meet the requirement. Please note that this requirement could have a time limit, for example 30 days. You should always make note of time limits, otherwise you risk losing out on your winnings!
Let’s say you won £500 on this site after spending £10 on bingo tickets. You wouldn’t actually be able to withdraw any of this until you spent an additional £110 on bingo tickets. Once you meet these requirements however, you’d be able to withdraw your £500 winnings.
For most sites, if you try to make a withdrawal before wagering, you’ll immediately forfeit your deposit bonus and any winnings generated by the bonus, and it will disappear from your account.
A wagering requirement of 4x is pretty average for most bingo sites. The higher the requirement is, the more difficult it will be to meet. So, if a site is offering a huge bonus, the odds are that it will have an equally huge wagering requirement attached.
Tip: If you’re not interested in bonuses, some bingo sites offer members the chance to opt out
What Conditions Are Attached?
Wagering requirements aren’t without any additional conditions, so you need to read the fine print! They all differ from site to site, so don’t assume that one speaks for all!
Time Limit
Wagering requirements usually have a time limit attached, e.g. welcome bonuses usually last around 30 days. If you don’t fulfil the requirements in that time, you’ll be unable to claim the bonus. So, if you’re eyeing up a large bonus, you should work out if you’d actually be able to meet the requirements before your time’s up.
Withdrawal conditions
For most sites, you won’t be able to make any withdrawals until you’ve met the wagering requirements, and if you do make a withdrawal, your bonus and any winnings generated by it will be forfeited. So, do be aware; winnings can disappear entirely if you don’t meet the wagering requirements.
Not all games are worth the same
Some games can contribute more to a wagering requirement than others, depending on the site. Many bingo sites only allow bingo tickets to contribute to wagering requirements, so playing on slots won’t count. This might be different for casino and slots sites; let’s take a look an example for a better understanding:
- Keno is worth 100%, but others in the ‘games’ category = 50%.
- Baccarat, Let Them Ride Poker and Wild Viking = 25%.
- Craps, Roulette and Stravaganza = 20%
- Blackjack and Casino Hold’Em = 10%
- Video poker games = 5%
So, if you wagered £10 on Keno, then it would contribute £10 to your wagering requirement, whereas if you wagered £10 on Wild Viking, it would only contribute £2.50.
As you can see, you need to make sure you read the wagering requirements carefully, otherwise you could end up spending hundreds on a game that only contributes a minuscule percentage of your wagering requirement.
Tips To Make The Most Out of Wagering Requirements
By this point, you should be aware of what wagering requirements are, where to locate them, and how they work. But to help you further, here are a few tips to help you make the most out of your money!
1. Calculate the wagering requirements before joining a site
Before you accept a welcome bonus or any other promotion, you should calculate the wagering requirement. If a site is asking for a 7x wagering requirement for a £40 bonus, you’ll have to spend £280 to break even, and that’s not even taking into consideration any time limits attached! If it doesn’t seem worth it in the long run, then you should keep looking until you find a site with lower requirements, or lower bonus offers.
2. Take it slow
While it might be tempting to go for the big promotions, you should bear in mind that they usually come with large wagering requirements which can take a long time to pay off. If you pick a site that offers lots of smaller promotions with low wagering requirements, it could prove to be a more effective use of your cash. This might not be the most exciting, life-in-the-fast lane strategy, but there are definite benefits: taking it slow and building up small jackpots might help you in the long run.
3. Figure out what you need
You need to fit bingo offers to your own needs. If you play bingo 24/7, and you love big jackpots, then high wagering requirements won’t be problematic because you’ll be able to clear them relatively quickly. But if you’re someone who only enjoys the occasional game of bingo, you might not want to go for a bonus that has a high wagering requirement that can only be paid off in 30 days. Otherwise, you won’t have the time to actually win anything.
4. Explore and Compare
There are hundreds of bingo sites out there—each with different promotions and wagering requirements. You just need to window-shop until you find the perfect fit! One of the best ways to compare is with BingoPort, which allows you to check out bingo reviews and read member feedback in the comments section. This is usually the place where bingo players will comment and complain about withdrawals and wagering requirements
The main takeaway here is that research is key. After all, you can’t blame anyone but yourself if you rush into playing on a bingo site and run into problems with wagering requirements and withdrawals!