This next section is all about online casinos. For many punters, casino games go hand in hand with sports betting – just look at the prevalence of FOBT machines that are present in most high street betting shops. It should come as no surprise, therefore, to learn than pretty much all online bookmakers also offer some form of online casino on their sites. These range from a handful of sidegames through to a full blown casino equipped with live dealers and huge jackpots.
On this page you’ll find a list of casino offers which you can claim when registering at an online casino, this includes the casino section of an online betting site as well as dedicated stand-alone casinos. If you want to learn a little more about the casinos, we also have a casino sites page which gives you a bigger run down on the features and games that are available at each.
Best Online Casino Sign Up Offers & Welcome Bonuses
Casino Bonuses Explained
There are a few key differences between the way casino offers and sports betting offers work, which you should make yourself aware of before claiming. The following is a quick guide to everything you need to know.
Offer Types
First things first, what kind of offers can you claim? Generally speaking they’re almost always going to fit into one of the following categories:
- Deposit Bonus – Nice and simple, you make a deposit and they add bonus funds. The offer is usually listed as a percentage with higher values meaning bigger bonus multipliers. For sign up bonuses it’s common to find bonuses starting at 100% (a pound for pound match, so deposit £100 and get a £100 bonus) and going all the way up to 300%+. Bigger isn’t always better though, as the higher the percentage you receive, the higher the WR is likely to be (see below). Although this isn’t always the case.
- No Deposit Bonus – A bonus that you can receive without first making a deposit. These tend to come with higher wagering requirements and often come with maximum withdrawals. So if you receive a £10 free casino bonus, your winnings from it may be capped at £100.
- Free Spins – The last offer type we’ll talk about are free spins. These are becoming increasingly popular with both the casinos and the players and, just like the name suggests, gives you free spins on the slots. Sometimes these are on specific games whilst other times they can be used on any slot. There are a number of reasons why you might be given free spins – sometimes it’s on registration to entice you to sign up, whilst other times it’s to reward you for loyalty or for making a deposit. A few casinos also like to give out free spins on new slots when they’re release to promote them.
New Customers Only
Whilst this sounds like an obvious one, especially if you’re familiar with sports offers, the definition of a new customer sometimes trips people up and is handled differently from casino to casino. In some places, you’re considered ‘new’ if you haven’t played at the casino before, regardless of any other product you’ve used at the same site (such as the sportsbook). So in this scenario you can claim both the sports and casino offers, as well as any others that they might have (bingo, for example, if you’re so inclined).
However, some sites only consider you a new customer if you’ve never been active on the site before, regardless of which product you’re using. So here if you’ve ever bet on sports, you can’t claim the casino bonus as well.
Admitedly this lack of consistency is a little confusing, but it should be spelled out in the terms and conditions of the offer. If not and you already have an account with the bookie, then you may want to jump on live chat just to double check.
Wagering Requirements
Unlike most free bets, pretty much every casino bonus in the world is going to come with wagering requirements (WR). These are set amounts that you need to play before withdrawing the bonus and the winnings you’ve received from it. Early bonuses didn’t have this clause attached and could be simply withdrawn by the player as soon as they were credited… which people often did. Hence the introduction of these conditions.
WR is usually given as a multiple of the bonus. For example:
- 30x Bonus WR – If you receive a £100 bonus, you’ll need to play through £3,000 before withdrawing (£100 x 30 = £3,000)
Whilst this may sound like a lot, especially if you’re more used to sports, it will go pretty quickly especially as a spin of the slots only takes a few seconds. And statistically speaking, the average player will turn over their deposit 40 times in one ‘session’.
It can also be given as a multiple of the bonus plus the deposit. For example:
- 20x Bonus + Deposit WR – If you deposit £100 for a £100 bonus, you would need to play through £4,000 before withdrawing ([£100 + £100] x 20 = £4,000)
There is quite a big difference betwen using just the bonus and the bonus plus the deposit as the base for the WR, especially on lower match percentages.
When it comes to free spins, the wagering requirements tend to be on the winnings you generate from the spins rather than the value of the spins themselves. For example, if you receive 20 free spins and win £12.50 and there is a WR of 20x then you will need to play through £250 to withdraw the winnings.
Eligible Games
Now is where it starts to get a little tricky. In an ideal world you’d get your bonus, play it the required number of times and (hopefully) walk away with some winnings. But there are a number of games which give the player such a low house edge that you can bet pennies and sometimes be lucky enough to walk away with most of the bonus. For this reason, the terms of an offer will usually covering the following:
- Excluded Games – Some games are flat out excluded from play with a bonus. If the offer you’re claiming has an excluded game, then don’t touch it – if you do you’ll likely lose the bonus and any winnings you’ve generated from it.
- Increased WR Games – Thankfully these days less and less games are on a casinos excluded list. But that doesn’t take away the fact that some are much more player friendly than others. To counteract this, some games with a higher RTP (return to player) will come with increased wagering requirements. For example, on a £100 bonus with a 25x WR you need to bet £2,500 before withdrawing. But if you want to play roulette and, for the sake of this example, it has a 50% weighting then each £1 you bet on roulette only counts for 50p – meaning that you would need to bet £5,000 on roulette before withdrawing.
- No Jackpots – Jackpot games work by taking a portion of the bet and adding it to a pool, which increases until it’s won. Many casinos don’t like you playing jackpots with a bonus because it means they have to start making contributions to the jackpot fund out of the bonus – meaning that even if you were to lose the bonus, it will cost them money and making it a lose-lose situation for them (because if you win, then they obviously lose money as well). For this reason many jackpot games are excluded from play with bonuses, although this isn’t always the case.
Withdrawal Limits
A final term we should cover, but one that is less common in UK casinos, is withdrawal limits. Some casinos will limit the amount you can win from a bonus – either as a monentary amount (such as £10,000) or as a multiple of the bonus (eg: 10x). This is more common with no deposit bonuses or free spins, and rarely found on deposit bonuses (at good casinos, at least).
If you’re playing with a bonus that has a limit on it, then you should keep this in mind whilst playing. If you’re limited to a withdrawal of £1,000 and your balance is sitting at £2,000 then you may want to play less volatile games and reduce your stake to complete the wagering requirements without risking too much of your balance.