Spotting unfair bonus terms

A headline like "250% up to $500" describes the ceiling on the free money and nothing about the price of collecting it. That price is set by five clauses, all of which appear in the terms, and four of which are single numbers. Read them in the right order and an offer stops being a marketing claim and becomes arithmetic you can do on the deposit you were actually going to make.

This is the clause that does the most damage, and it hides in a preposition. "35x the bonus" and "45x deposit plus bonus" look like variations on the same term. On a £100 deposit taking a £100 match, the first asks for £3,500 of turnover and the second asks for £9,000 — and in the second case your own £100 is locked in the account until the requirement clears or you forfeit the lot.

A multiplier quoted on its own — "x45 wagering applies" — is half a term. If the offer page does not say what the 45 multiplies, the terms page will, and the answer is worth finding before you click rather than after.

Almost every offer caps the stake you may place while a bonus is active, usually between £1 and £10. Breaching it typically voids the bonus and everything won with it, and enforcement is automatic — no warning, no discretion. The cap is not unreasonable in itself; without it, a bonus could be cleared in three large spins. It becomes a problem in combination with the number above it. Nine thousand pounds of turnover at a £2 ceiling is 4,500 spins, which is around four hours of uninterrupted play at three seconds a spin.

Not every pound staked counts as a pound of turnover. Slots almost always contribute 100%. Live dealer tables commonly contribute 10% to 20%, and table games are frequently excluded outright. The effect is much larger than it sounds: a £150 bonus at 35x is £5,250 of slot play, or £52,500 of live-table play at a 10% weighting. If you opened the account for the live floor, the welcome match is close to useless for the way you intend to use it.

• Check the weighting for the games you actually play, not the headline 100% that applies to slots.
• Excluded-title lists are normal and are usually specific — high-RTP and low-volatility slots are the common entries.
• A maximum bet that sits below the minimum on the tables you would want is an exclusion by another name.
• Free-spin winnings often carry their own multiplier, applied to the winnings rather than to a bonus amount.

Thirty to forty-five days is a comfortable window on a normal requirement. Five to seven days on a large one is where offers stop being generous and start being decorative: £9,000 of turnover across seven days is nearly £1,300 a day, every day, at a capped stake. Free spins usually run on a separate and shorter clock than the cash bonus in the same package, so a "30-day" offer can contain a seven-day component.

The last clause caps what the offer can ever pay, usually as a multiple of the bonus or a flat figure on no-deposit spins. A 5x cap on a £100 bonus means £500 is the maximum outcome, however the £9,000 of turnover goes — everything above it is removed at withdrawal. This is the clause most often placed in a different document from the wagering terms, and the one people discover last.

• The offer is pre-ticked on the deposit screen, so declining it is an action rather than the default — one untick separating your money from a wagering requirement.
• The wagering basis and the cashout cap live in separate documents.
• The terms reserve a right to amend the offer for players who have already opted in.
• Support answers a question about a specific clause by pasting the whole policy.
• The bonus balance and the cash balance are shown as one number, so you cannot see what is locked.

Worth being fair about the opposite case: bad terms plainly written are still bad terms, but disclosure changes what you can do about them. The weakest term sheet in our published set states its deposit-plus-bonus basis and its cashout cap in the summary panel beside the offer. It is a poor deal you can price in fifteen seconds, which is a genuinely different thing from a poor deal you find out about at the withdrawal screen.

1. Find the multiplier and, in the same sentence, what it multiplies.
2. Work it out on the deposit you actually intend to make, not the maximum the offer allows.
3. Divide the turnover by the maximum bet to get the number of rounds.
4. Divide it by the days remaining to get the daily rate, then decide whether you would play that much anyway.
5. Read the cashout cap last. It tells you what the ceiling was the whole time.