All bingo sites are businesses and as much as the sites are there to help you win money, they’re there to make their backers money as well. A lot of sites attract new players by offering games that you can play without making a cash deposit. Once you start playing with real money, there are minimum wager requirements, though not all sites make information about these requirements accessible. You can usually find full information tucked away in the terms and conditions section. Be sure to read up all about these requirements before you get started so you know exactly what you’re doing.
How do wagering requirements work?
Usually whenever you make your first deposit, your money will be doubled, trebled or multiplied by an even greater number, allowing you more money to play with. These deposit bonuses do vary from site to site, of course, and many sites offer bonuses on second, third and fourth deposits. There can also be regular deposit bonuses to look out for. Bingo sites, and all other gambling sites which have bonuses on offer, use a system whereby players have to have made a certain number of wagers, or waged a certain amount of money, before they can withdraw their winnings. All sites will offer full information about this so customer don’t get angry when they realise they can’t withdraw their winnings straight away. It’s standard practice and it shouldn’t be too long before you can withdraw money: usually the amount of money you have to have wagered is quite low and the number of wagers you have to have made is also quite low. Wagering requirements do vary greatly from site to site. The minimum amount usually depends on what bonuses the site has to offer; because all sites offer a great variety of bonuses, there’s no single wagering requirement common to all sites. Some sites may happen to have the same requirements, but always double check each site just in case.
Common requirement
More often than not you’ll find you have to wager a certain amount before you’re allowed to withdraw any money. Most of the time, you’ll have to wager and spend the full amount of the bonus you received when you made your first deposit, so if you deposited £10 and got an extra £20 to play with, you’ll probably have to wager £20 before you can withdraw money. Bingo sites do this so you can’t just withdraw bonus money without having wagered anything. A lot of bingo sites will require you to wager at least twice the bonus amount, essentially making you spend some of the money you deposited. This is completely fair, after all, because you are on the site to spend your own money, so you’re not being asked to do anything you weren’t already planning on doing. The sites don’t want to have people come on, gamble with bonus money and withdraw their winnings; they want people to actually invest some of their own money into the games as well. Bonuses are offered to attract customers, but there’s always a mutual understand that customers will spend their own money, as well as bonus money, on the games. Some sites do things a little differently. They separate your bonus and deposit into two different funds, thereby making it impossible for you to withdraw your bonus money. You also can’t use your money for side-games that some sites offer. Your bonus money can only be used to purchase bingo games with and nothing else, because that’s what it’s there for – really, that’s what most sites think it should be there for. Bingo players actually prefer this because they don’t have to read everything about bonuses in the terms and conditions and everything they win on side games will have been won from their own deposited money, so they’ll be free to withdraw it. If you want to withdraw any money won from games where you’ve used a bonus, you’ll have to spend your bonus money.
Wagering requirements for bonuses, too?
As well as applying to withdrawals, minimum wagering requirements can often apply to bonuses. A lot of times you’ll see bonuses that can only be claimed if you’ve wagered a certain amount of money on bingo tickets. By doing this, bingo sites ensure that people can’t just walk away with free bonus money. The main reason minimum wagering requirements exist is to ensure that things are fair for the player and the bingo site; players have to wager a minimum amount on bingo games, and that’s really not much at all to ask. All in all, minimum wagering requirements are put in place to give the gaming site a chance to make some money. It’s in their best interests not to have people sign up and fleece them by earning bonus money and withdrawing it all straight away. Players understand why these requirements exist; if they didn’t, the sites would probably lose money quite fast and they wouldn’t be able to carry on operating. Once you’ve signed up to an online gaming site, you should get used to minimum wagering requirements quite fast.