Finding the Best Bonus Offer
As a rule of thumb, the best betting sites also come up with the best bonus offers. They have the means to offer their customers various different bonuses and usually do just that.
In fact, punters who don’t normally follow online bonus updates should probably just stick with the best online bookmakers. They always have decent promotions and are a safe option in this regard. Basically, if you don’t want to spend time researching bonus offers, your best bet is to open an account with a popular wagering site and use its tried and tested promotions.
However, most punters are not like this. They would rather spend some time going through bonus offers then blindly accept what bookmakers serve them. If you belong to this group of bettors, you have come to the right place.
Stay with me, and you will find out all you ever wanted to know about the best online bonus offers. You will discover how you can deposit €10 and get as much as €30 in bet credits courtesy of a betting site.
This might seem like an outlandish claim, but if you do your bonus research, you will see that there are lots of sites that offer bonuses such as this one. And that’s only the beginning. If you are willing to do a little digging, you can find some real bonus gold.
Top Betting Offers
You might think that you recognize top betting offers when you see them, but I would challenge you to think twice. If there is one thing that I learned in my years of gambling experience is that you should go deeper than just scratch the surface. This goes double when hunting for that top-rated bonus.
Most punters simply don’t have the time to read the small print in a bonus offer. This is actually a very big mistake. To find the best casino bonus or new customers sports betting offer, players need to do one of two things.
They can either do their own research. This means spending time going through bonuses’ Terms and Conditions instead of playing Blackjack or Roulette. Alternatively, they can leave this tedious task to casino geeks such as myself. If I was a player who loves watching that roulette wheel spin, I know which one I would choose.
People like yours truly here love crunching numbers, looking at wagering requirements, and comparing which game restrictions apply to a given bonus. These Rain Man-type character traits come in quite handy when sifting through tons and tons of bonus offers. And you, my friends, will be the beneficiaries of my perfect bonus search.
Stick around to find out the good and not so good aspects of all types of bonus offers out there. In addition, learn how to differentiate between an honest bonus offer and an inflated one.
Finally, I will give you a rundown of some under-appreciated promotions which don’t get much love, but definitely should. Basically, you are getting an insider’s access into how the gambling industry designs its bonuses free of charge.
Matched Betting Reload Offers
Nowadays, welcome bonuses are all the rage with punters. They get all the attention from bookmakers and players and are all over the net. However, one other type of bonus offer is definitely not getting the recognition it deserves. This is surprising as it is at least on par with the much-lauded new customer bonus. I am talking of course about matched betting reload offers.
Punters get matched betting reload offers when they become existing sportsbook customers. They obtain them after completing certain preconditions and usually get them on a weekly or monthly basis.
For example, a bookmaker requires a punter to bet €10 in 7 days. As soon as the punter meets this requirement, he gets €5 in free bets. However, he will have to use the €5 free bet on certain minimum odds, and the offer might also come with predetermined rollover requirements. These are things that are easy to complete and only slightly reduce the quality of a reload offer.
The great thing about these matched reload bonus offers is the reload part. This means that if a betting site says that you need to spend €10 in a week to get a €5 free bet, this will be true for every week. That’s 52 weeks in the year in which you could get 52 x €5 free bets. What’s not to like there?
Advantages of Matched Betting Reload Offers
Let’s say that you have already used your welcome bonus at a betting site. What is more, you have actually bet with the same bookmaker for several weeks now. This means that you should probably check for a matched reload bonus. You look around and find exactly that. This is the offer you discovered:
- Bet €10 x 3 on min odds 1.2 within 14 days and get €5 in free bets (minimum deposit €10, offer expires after 7 days, T&Cs apply).
This offer rewards existing customers who deposit €30, distributed in three €10 bet slips, within 14 days. This means that every second week a punter will get €5 free bet credits to use as he sees fit.
Let’s do the math behind this and see how profitable a reload offer actually is. Let’s say you are a regular punter who has no problem spending €30 within 14 days. This is probably the case with most bettors as €30 is really a modest amount of money to stake within 14 days. So you qualify for the offer easily.
You don’t have to be a math wizard to figure out that you would get €10 worth of free bet credits every month. That accumulates to €120 in free bets every year.
Now let’s say most of your bet slips come with modest total odds of 10.00. Betting €5 on odds of 10.00 returns €50 as clean profit (the €5bet is free bonus credits, remember?). Even if only 10% of your annual free bets are successful, you will still win €120 every year.
Once again, the money you won with the bet credits the betting site gave you. It’s free winnings, won with free money. That’s synonymous with a great deal.
Free Bets
Wagering bonuses are very often in the form of free bets. Players may get these as part of the welcome bonus, in loyalty programs, reload bonuses, and lots of other promotions too.
For example, you might get a free bet for your birthday courtesy of the bookmaker. Similarly, another punter can get a free bet after reaching some betting milestone. Let’s say you have been wagering with the bookmaker for a year, so the betting operator rewards you with a gift in the form of a free bet.
Even in situations in which you haven’t bet for a period of time, betting sites might reward you with free bets too. For instance, you haven’t placed a bet for 30 days. The bookmaker sees that you have been inactive for some time and wants to remind you that they are still there for you. They send you €5 in free bet credits in an effort to rekindle the relationship and reward you as a valued customer.
Free Bets Examples
Free bets come in various different packages. A punter can get a free bet offer after signing up with a betting operator, but that is only the beginning. Loyalty schemes, reload bonus offers, and risk free bets all come with some types of free bets in them. Let’s look at some of the common free bet examples:
Welcome bonus free bets: Bet €10, get €30 in free bets (new customers only, min. deposit €10, min. odds 1.50, 4x wagering requirement, expires within 30 days T&Cs apply).
Reload bonus free bets: Bet €5 x 4, get €5 in free bets (existing customers, min deposit €5, min. odds 1.50, free bets expire after 7 days, T&Cs apply).
Loyalty program free bets: Bet €10 every day for 14 days and get €10 in free bets (existing customers, min. €10, min. odds 1.35, free bets expire after 7 days, T&Cs apply).
As you can see, bookmakers love giving away free bets as part of all types of promotions. They do this to increase their popularity, but that doesn’t mean that you cannot profit from them too. In fact, free bets are a very nice way to make some extra cash out of nothing.
Combo Boosts
If you are great at making large ACCA football or basketball bets, combo boosts are the promotion for you. Combo boosts increase your potential winnings substantially if you include a lot of betting selections on a slip. This means that the more betting selections you include, the higher the boost you will get.
Let’s say you are a football betting enthusiast who frequently stacks up lots of games on a bet slip. You enjoy in the excitement of following multiple matches and also appreciate the high winnings that these accumulator bets bring. If you feel that this describes your wagering habits, then you should definitely look for combo boosts online.
This is because, with a combo boost, you can get 50% to 100% higher winnings. Bookmakers who have these, design them to increase winnings progressively. For example, if you include 3-5 selections on your ACCA slip, you will get between a 3% and 8% increase.
Once you start putting more basketball or football bets on your slip, the percentage also increases. When you include around 9-10 bets, the bookmaker increases the number of your potential winnings by around 30%-35%. If you include 13, 14, or even 15 selections, you will get between 50% and 60% in extra winnings. This percentage can become higher and higher, and bookmakers can increase potential ACCA winnings by as much as 100%.
To sum up, if you always rack up 10 to 15 bets on a ticket, but have never benefited from a combo boost, you should change your bookmaker immediately. There are tons of bet sites that offer excellent combo boosts, and you should stop missing out.
Odds Boosts
Odds boosts are also a great way to increase winnings on a bet slip. However, unlike combo boosts, these don’t increase the winnings based on the number of selections on a ticket. Instead, when players get odds boosts, they see their original odds increase.
Betting sites give odds boosts frequently and usually increase odds for particular selections. For example, let’s say the Houston Rockets are playing against the Minnesota Timberwolves.
The Rockets are the obvious favourite to win, so the regular odds for them to win are minuscule and set at 1.10. Betting operators know that they are not going to get a lot of Rockets bets at those odds so decide to boost them. Instead of 1.10, they now make them 1.20.
These increased odds now benefit both the bookmaker and the basketball betting enthusiast. The bookmaker gets a lot more wagering traffic on the NBA game, while the bettor gets higher odds.
Great for Popular Events
It’s not just low regular odds that get boosted. Betting providers almost always have special odds boosts reserved for popular events. Football games from the Champions League, English Premier League, and World Cup international duels come with increased odds almost without exception. The only thing you need to do is to find a betting provider which offers them.
Similarly, NBA playoff and MLB World Series games always see their odds boosted. The same is true for blockbuster events such as the Super Bowl, Formula 1 Grand Prix races, MMA betting extravaganzas, and Wimbledon tennis spectacles.
Something akin to this happens in betting on horse races too. Odds boosts usually go by the name enhanced odds in horse racing and guarantee punters to get the best odds possible for a race. The difference between the original and enhanced odds can be particularly pronounced here. That’s why punters should always first check if the horse they want to bet on comes with enhanced or regular odds only.
Insurances
You have probably heard about the insurance side bet in Blackjack. However, sports betting also offers various bet insurances too. Blackjack insurance and sports bets insurances are obviously different, but they achieve the same goal. The aim of any insurance bet is to get you at least some money back in case of an unfavourable outcome of your original bet.
Sports wagering enthusiasts can use bet insurance offers when they compile accumulator bets. The rule here is simple: if one selection on an ACCA bet lets you down, you get your stake back. However, to make a qualifying bet here usually means meeting several bonus requirements. Let’s look at an ACCA insurance offer and explain this:
- Bet €10 on a 4+ football/tennis/basketball accumulator and get a €10 free bet if one selection lets you down.
The premise of this offer should be easy to understand. Basically, if you include 4 or more bets from the given sports and only one lets you down, you get your money back. Actually, you don’t get your money back, but get a €10 free bet which you can use to make a new wager, which is more or less the same.
So you are probably thinking to yourself: “Great, I will include 4 selections with odds of 1.20, back them with a €100 stake and it’ll be a win-win situation for me.”
Unfortunately, this is almost never the case. Bookmakers would never expose themselves to paying out punters with low-risk, or even risk free bets. To have any chance of obtaining a free bet from an insurance offer, a punter would have to make a riskier bet.
Insurance Bets Requirements
The insurance bonus offer above is too good to come without any requirements. In most situations ACCA insurance offers of this type would come with the following preconditions:
- Bet €10 at odds of 5.00 or greater (total odds of winning selections);
- If one selection lets you down you get a €10 free bet;
- One free bet refund per 7 days.
What this means is that you cannot just include minimal odds of 1.20 and expect to qualify for this bonus offer. To get to the minimum odds total of 5.00, each of your selections has to come with odds of 1.50 or more.
And this is actually the best insurance bonus offer that I managed to find. Others require the punter to have a minimum of 6 selections per bet slip. What is more, they stipulate that you only qualify for the bonus when winning selections have odds of 15.00 or higher.
New Sign Up Betting Offers
All of the bonus offers listed here are enticing. However, none of them is as enticing as a new sign up betting offers. These bonus offers go by several names. Some people call them welcome bonuses while others label them as new customer offers.
Regardless of how you call these first deposit bonus offers, they all mean the same. They stipulate that you will get a certain bonus reward for signing up with a bookmaker. These rewards can be matched deposit offers, free bets, risk free wagers, and so on.
The most common and most popular welcome bonus offer is the matched deposit one. With this offer, the bookmaker guarantees to match the first deposit that a new customer makes. These matched deposit bonuses can sometimes increase the first deposit by 50% while other times will go as high as 100%. Let’s look at an example of a sign up bonus offer:
- A 100% up to €100 new customers bonus (min. deposit €10, bet at min. odds of 1.50, 4x wagering requirement, expires within 30 days, T&Cs apply).
This offer stipulates that all new customers that sign up and deposit a minimum of €10 on their accounts qualify for a 100% matched deposit bonus. This means that if a punter deposits €50, he will get €50 in bonus credits. If he deposits €150, he will get €100 in bet credits.
However, to be able to withdraw the winnings acquired from this offer, the bettor would first have to do a couple of things. He will have to rollover the deposit and bonus money 4 times and do that on bets with minimum odds of 1.50. This means that until the punter meets the wagering requirement, he won’t be able to withdraw his bonus winnings.
Promo Codes
Lots of bonus offers come with promo codes. This means that to activate the bonus, punters have to write a string of letters and numbers first. If they don’t do this, the bonus or promotion won’t be active.
Bonuses for new customers come with promo codes quite often. This is something which catches beginner punters by surprise, and they are often quite confused. However, there is nothing complicated when it comes to activating first deposit offers with promo codes.
Basically, all you have to do after opting-in for the bonus is write that string of letters and numbers that you see in the offer. That’s it. There’s nothing more that you should do as the bonus is probably already active.
Live Betting Offers
In-play or live betting offers are also popular these days. They are not as lucrative as most of the other bonuses here, but they do serve a purpose. For bookmakers, this purpose is to increase the numbers of punters which bet live. For bettors, on the other hand, the goal is to get some odds boosts or insurance offers on their in-play bets.
For example, there are lots of bookmakers who offer punters 10% back on certain live bets. Let’s say you are betting on popular eSports events from CS: GO or League of Legends. Bookmakers know that these sports are popular in the regular wagering offer, but not so many punters choose them in live bets.
As a result, the bookmaker would offer 10% back on all CS: GO, and LOL live bet losses. This means that if you back Astralis with €100 to win in the live bets section, but they happen to lose at the end, you will get €10 back. This is a win-win situation both for the wagering operator and for the punter.
Cash Out Functions
Experienced bettors love to cash out functions. They enable punters to get a certain amount of their potential winnings before a bet turns sour and loses.
If the bet ends up as a winning one, activating the cash out function will mean that you won less money than you could have. However, the fact that you were spared from the last nerve-wracking moments of the bet sometimes comes without a price.
In contrast, if the bet is a losing one, the satisfaction from cashing out early is even greater. This is because it proves that you are an excellent predictor of the game. What is more, it also tells you that you can outwit a bookmaker and turn a losing situation into a winning one. Moreover, you got some money from a bet that would normally pay zero.
However, for a punter to be able to cash out, the bookmaker has to offer the cash out option first. This means that punters should make it their priority to find bookmakers that have cash out feature. This might not sound as catchy as an enticing bonus, but on many occasions, it will win you much more than any promo offer out there.
How does it Work?
Let’s use a simple example to explain how you can get a cash out on your bet. It is best to use an ACCA bet as bookmakers tend to give cash out options for these most often. Let’s say you have compiled a bet slip with the following selections:
- Raonic to beat Dimitrov,
- Real Madrid to score more than 2.5 goals against Osasuna,
- LA Clippers (-5.5) to defeat Miami Heat,
- Yankees to defeat Chicago White Sox.
The first thing that you want to check is the sports that the cash out function is enabled for. Some sportsbooks accept most sports, but others have a list of sports that qualify for a cash out.
In the example above, there are selections from tennis, football, basketball, and baseball. This means that the punter has to check whether these sports come with a cash out option enabled.
The next thing that the punter should check is whether the bet types he has would make for a qualifying bet. This is important because some bookmakers only allow cash out on specific markets. These are usually the most popular betting propositions such as match winner, handicap lines, over/under totals and so on.
Seeing how the example above comes with popular sports and fairly common bet types, it will probably qualify for the cash out function.
How to Make the Best out of a Cash Out Offer?
Once you have covered these two aspects, you are ready to watch the action unfold. What is more, in case things don’t go according to plan, you know that you have a safety net.
And let’s say that things did go according to plan at least in the beginning. That is up until the Yankees – White Sox game started. All of the previous bets were successful, but after watching the Yankees in the first inning, your bet’s prospects suddenly don’t look very good.
You can see that the Chicago side is dominating the game and it’s only a matter of time before they put the win beyond any doubt. This is where the cash out function comes in handy.
Let’s say your potential winnings were €100. However, because the Yankees look unlikely to win, the bookmaker gives you cash out offer of €40. You know that this is as good as the offer can get, click on Cash Out and take home €40. The Yankees lose the game, and you are happy that you trusted your instincts.
The chances are that if you had waited longer, the cash out amount would have got much lower. This means that you pulled out of the bet at the right moment.
This is actually the trick with cash out offers. If everything is great in your bet slip and you are minutes away from winning, the cash out offer will become higher and higher as time goes on. However, when your bet is in an unfavourable position, waiting for too long can reduce the cash out amount to almost zero.
Cashbacks
Another way in which you can get some money back from a losing bet is through cashbacks. Cashback offers are an essential part of most loyalty and VIP programs and stipulate that you get some of your losing stakes back.
They are usually in the form of daily, weekly, or monthly cashbacks and range from 1% to 25%. For example, a sportsbook might offer to its loyal customers the chance to get 10% of their monthly losses back.
However, that might be the offer that the bookmaker has for mid-level players. For their top players, which are usually the highest and most valued VIP customers, the cashback amount is probably 20%-25%.
Let’s say you are a VIP customer, and you frequently deposit large amounts of money on your account. You win some of your bets, but you also lose some of them too. Let’s say that you spent €500 on losing bets in the past month.
Because you are a valued customer, you get 20% monthly cashback on all of your losing bets. This means that for the past month, you would get €100 in cashback funds. That’s great and looks like a decent reward for all those losing bets.
Cashbacks as Free Bets
Some bookmakers opt to give customers cashback offers in the form of free bets. So let’s say that the bettor who just got €100 in cashback can only use it as free bets. Obviously, it would be much better for the punter to get the money straight away. However, even if he gets them as free bets, it’s still better than not getting anything back from losing stakes.
This type of cashback offer would look something like this:
- All VIP members get 20% of their losing stakes as cashback every month;
- Customers can use cashback bonus funds as free bets,
- First free bet must be placed within 14 days,
- All free bets must be placed within 30 days
- Winnings obtained from free bets subject to 2x wagering requirements (T&Cs apply).
This means that the punter must use all free bets courtesy of the cashback offer within 30 days of being credited. What is more, the player would have to rollover the free bet amount two times before he can withdraw winnings from it. That would mean that even after getting the money from losing stakes back, punters still have to meet some requirements to actually get them.
So in spite of having tons of advantages, cashback offers come with some drawbacks too. The worst of these is that the punter can’t withdraw the cashback money immediately. Bonus credits and winnings from them can be withdrawn, but only after the bettor has completed the rollover requirements.
Another thing which is a disadvantage with cashbacks is that in order for a player to get high cashback amounts, the punter would have to lose a lot too. Actually, the more you lose, the higher the cashback, and losing a lot is hardly ideal.
Betting App Offers
Bonus-savvy punters know that in addition to all the regular bonuses, they can also benefit from betting app offers too. There are various different types of app bonus offers out there. The punter gets most of these when downloading and installing the wagering app, but he can also get them on some other occasions too.
For example, betting sites might give bettors who have installed the new app the chance to:
- Bet €10, get €10 in free bets,
- Bet €5 at odds 1.2 and get €5 in free bets,
- Place their first bet using the app and get €30 in free bets.
As you can see, in many cases, these bonuses resemble a first deposit or welcome bonus offer. In fact, installing a betting app and placing a bet on it offers similar perks to bonuses for new customers.
In addition to yourself, you can also help someone else get an app bonus too. There are many bookmakers that have a Refer a Friend promotion. With it, punters can recommend the app to someone else, and the sportsbook would then reward everyone involved handsomely.
This means that after your friend installs the app and places his first bet on it, both you and the friend get a certain bonus to bet with. This can either be in the form of free bets, matched deposit bonuses, or something similar.
Live App Bets
Another way in which a punter can benefit from a wagering app is to use some app-specific promotions. These can be of different kinds and can look something like this:
- Bet live via the app and get 30% cashback on your first bet,
- Bet €10 on live markets and get €5 in free bets,
- €5 risk free bets for all live bets made through the app on Thursdays,
- Bet €30 on live games and get €30 in free bets and 30 free spins as a casino bonus.
As you can see, live app bets are quite useful when it comes to promoting a betting app. They sound catchy and are quite rewarding too.
Conclusion
There’s a reason why punters decide to go with sportsbooks that give them enticing bonus offers. Playing with the bonus credits courtesy of the bookmaker is much better than playing with your hard-earned after all. Similarly, free bets are much better options than using some of the funds you deposited and worked hard for.
Punters should know that there are different types of betting offers available to them. The most popular among these are bonuses for new customers, cash-out functions, reload offers, ACCA insurance offers, odds boosts, combo boosts, and so on.
However, punters should also know that not all bonuses are as enticing as they claim to be. Some promotions promise punters tons of perks, only for customers to later find out that they cannot benefit from any of them. In these situations, it is crucial that players know how to differentiate between a good and a poor bonus.
This means that bettors shouldn’t go for offers, which give them 5 free bets of €10 each if those free bets come loaded with 10x rollover requirements. The chances are that by the time you complete a 10x wagering requirement, you would also use up all of your free bets too.
Similarly, new customers shouldn’t jump head-first for a matched deposit bonus without reading the Terms and Conditions of the bonus first. New players are particularly vulnerable to a faulty bonus, so reading T&Cs of offers should become their second nature.
Finally, bettors must know how to combine different bonuses to get the most out of each of them. It is crucial that a player is constantly on top of his game bonus-wise if he is to make the most out of the free bets he gets.
References
- https://www.asa.org.uk/uploads/assets/uploaded/08173495-b3af-40a3-943fd92505be58c2.pdf
- https://www.sciencedirect.com/science/article/abs/pii/S0747563219304388?via%3Dihub
- https://arxiv.org/pdf/1903.06991.pdf