At this site you will receive many useful tips on how to spot and recognise the best sports betting bonuses offered by bookmakers. We will present you with some offers from renowned and big online betting companies that have a long tradition in providing online betting services, some of them existing online as early as 1997. These can serve you as a reference on how a good bonus offer or promotion should look like, what should the terms & conditions for such bonuses specify and how big the bonus amounts can be.
How to Determine a Good Betting Bonus
Trying to find the best bonuses around can be a painstaking task especially with so many bookies around. How can you determine which one is a good betting bonus? Are there any rules that I need to pay attention to? Are all bonus offers fair? What is the most important aspect of the terms and conditions? If you think like this, you might find you have a lot more questions than answers. But, with our help you can become even more proficient in filtering out the good bonuses, so read on to find out the key points.
Bonus Amount
One of the first things you need to determine is how big of a bonus you need and will the maximum amount that you can get meet your betting needs. Some sports bettors are satisfied with a minimum bonus of just £10, while some may need a high-roller bonus of up to £1,000. This can be a huge and important factor.
However, the best bonus is not always the one that offers the most money. Big bonus amounts sometimes carry weight in terms of fulfilling the wagering requirement. The higher the bonus, the tougher it will be to complete the wagering requirement.
Wagering Requirements
This is where your dreams of a great and big bonus offer come crashing down in an instant. Don’t be deceived by big bonus amounts because behind them may be an unfair wagering requirement that takes magical betting skills to fulfil. When you’ve found a bonus amount that suits you, the wagering requirement is the second if not the first most important thing to watch for. Some wagering requirements are high enough to be considered unfair, devised in such a way so you won’t be able to cash out your winnings. Immediately refer to the terms & conditions to find how big it is.
Deposits and Withdrawals
Now that you have found a bonus amount that suits you with a wagering requirement that you can swallow, it’s time to find out how much you need to deposit to opt-in for the bonus. Also, it’s wise to immediately find out what is the minimum withdrawal limit. Some bookies have high withdrawal limits or even fees for every withdrawal. This way they make it unprofitable for bettors to make frequent withdrawals of their winnings so that they will keep their winnings in their betting accounts and ultimately spend them. Moreover, find out what deposit/withdrawal methods are offered and whether they suit you.
Qualifying Bets
A qualifying bet is when you have to make a single bet of a certain value in order to qualify for the bonus offer. This is how free bet bonuses are received as opposed to deposit bonuses where you just have to make a minimum deposit. Here instead you qualify to get a free bet bonus of an equal or greater amount as the bet you have made up to a certain limit. You just need to pay attention to the odds at which you are allowed to make the qualifying bet, usually Evens or greater. Also, you may not be allowed to make certain bets, for example, tote bets.
Expiry Date
You may not know, but sports betting bonuses have an expiry date. Just like food or commercial products when they expire they are unusable. Deposit bonus amounts usually have 30 days expiry date, which means you have to use up your bonus in 30 days or the bonus will be removed from your betting account. This is because deposit bonuses can be much bigger amounts than free bet bonuses, which have 7 days expiry date due to being of smaller amount. Some bookies may even offer you an incredibly big bonus amount with an expiry date of just couple of days.
Different Bonus Offers
By now you may have become aware of two standard bonus offers encountered at online sports betting sites. These types are the most widespread and most convenient for bettors both amateur and professional. When you have passed the hurdle of these two standard bonus offers and played through them, you will experience even better deals where more serious wagering action may be required. As you become a regular bettor the bookie will even give you tailored bonus offers according to your needs. But, until then, it’s good to know something more about two standard bonus offers for new players.
- Welcome Bonus – Welcome bonus offers are more characteristic for online casinos, but sports betting sites have been using the same concept to entice players into registering and becoming regular customers. Welcome bonus is exactly what it says, a one-time offer to give you a warm welcome. Whether it will be warm or not depends on the bonus offer and the wagering requirement. The welcome bonus amount is determined based on the deposit amount. Your deposit is usually matched 100% up to a certain limit, for example, for a deposit of £60, you will get £60 bonus, but you can’t get more than £200 as bonus.
- Free Bets & Bet Refunds – Another very common method especially among UK bookmakers such as William Hill is to give you a free bet bonus. Free bet bonuses are usually of smaller amount compared to welcome bonuses where your deposit can be matched up to even more than £1,000. Here instead you are given a free bet bonus up to £30, which you can use to make a free bet on the house. Just make a qualifying bet, which will be your first-ever made at certain odds, and you will receive money on the house to make another bet where you can keep the winnings without having to fulfil a wagering requirement.
Betting Promotions
The above-mentioned bonus offers are the first ones that you will encounter when you register with a sports betting site. When you are pass them an entire world of interesting promotions will be opened to you where you will be rewarded for your loyalty with special bonuses unavailable to the majority of customers at that sports betting site. These may be ongoing offers for regular bettors, special tailor made promotions for certain customers or may be even VIP bonuses. Of course, you don’t have to claim them all, but with a good choosing you can profit a lot.
- No Deposit Bonus – A no deposit bonus is probably the sweetest sports betting bonus you can receive when being part of a sports betting site. These are rare and are given to regular players that have been regular customers. Sometimes they are given as a welcome offer like, for example, with dobet where you can get £10 free just for signing up. The usual conditions that you have to fulfil with a no deposit bonus is wagering the entire no deposit bonus amount as a single bet at certain odds. Anything that you have left behind from the no deposit bonus will be voided.
- Accumulator Insurance – Accumulator insurance promos are one of the most common that you will find. These are one of the best tools in having a stress-free betting experience if you are into making accumulator bets. Under such a promotion you will be able to get a refund if just one game on at least four or five fold accumulator bet lets you down as in the case of Betway. These accumulator insurance promotions can be applied to a wide range of sports. Some bookmakers will even let you miss your bet by two or even three games, but such sites are fewer in number.
- Best Odds Guaranteed – UK betting sites have this Best Odds Guaranteed promotion where winning bets made are paid out at the bigger odds if those odds have changed in the meantime after placing the bet. For example, a 5/1 bet will be paid out as 5/2 if the odds have changed after you have placed the bet. Usually this pertains to all UK and Irish horse races, and the promotion is applied to all each-way, multiple and single bets; it does not apply to special markets, tote pools, enhanced accumulators, international races, and ante post bets.
- VIP Schemes – Almost all bookmakers offer you a chance to upgrade your membership and status by becoming an esteemed customer or a VIP. VIP members get improved offers, they unlock a myriad of new perks such as raffle prizes where you can win tickets to some big sporting event, much, much better bonus offers and practically anything unavailable to even regular customers. You also get a dedicated account manager that will replace the customer support service set up for the regular mortals. This means no more waiting to get answers, immediate help and the best treatment possible.
Safety and Security
Even though the internet has never been safer thanks to people being more educated about surfing online than before, there are still malicious sites that will try to scam you and there are still internet users that will believe anything they see. There is nothing more disappointing than some site having you for a fool, where you believe you are getting something of value in return for your money, but instead you are just saying goodbye to your hard earned currency the moment you are making the deposit.
This is why it’s very important to look only for bookmakers of the highest reputation such as those found at our site. These are renowned bookies with a long tradition in the industry, some of them even formed several decades ago as pioneers in high-street betting. Such bookmakers offer safety and security at an equal level as banks and financial institutions where they safeguard your personal and financial details with a long range of security measurements such as encryption technologies, fraud-prevention and other methods to discover foul play. All of the sports betting sites that you will find here are cooperating with big agencies that assist in providing security such as eCOGRA, GambleAware, and IBAS among the other.
Licencing
There are several licencing jurisdictions in the world of good reputation, but the most important licence for UK bettors is the one given by the Gambling Commission. The Gambling Commission is one of the strictest licencing jurisdictions that imposes strict rules by which UK operators must adhere in order to be able to provide their services to citizens in the United Kingdom. Many UK operators have lost their licences to offer legitimate online betting products because they have broken the rules, evaded taxes or have been found to be fraudulent. The last such case was the one with 666Bet in 2015.
Live Betting
Live betting or in-play betting is one of the most exciting sports betting products. With sports betting sites such as those here that have live or in-play betting platforms you can bet on games as the action unfolds. This is where your skills to predict a result or outcome come really into play. It’s also a chance to score big because odds change rapidly with each minute passed. Imagine being able to go back in time to 1999 when Manchester United won against Bayern Munich in the League of Champions final and make a live bet in the second half that Manchester would win. The odds are astronomically high in such cases when one of the teams has a lead with only a couple of minutes left in the game.
Mobile Betting
Where would the online betting industry be without the advances made in mobile betting in the last decade? Not very far compared to today. Mobile betting is an essential feature that sometimes can make or break an online bookmaker. It’s especially essential to people that spend most of their day on their smartphones or tablets that are constantly on the go and are unable to sit in front of the computer or laptop to make a bet at their favourite betting site or claim bonuses. Sometimes bookmakers offer special sports betting bonuses to customers that use their mobile device for betting.
Conclusion
If after reading through this site we have helped you realise and understand how sports betting bonuses work, what’s important about bookmakers and the types of sports betting bonuses that exist, then our mission is fulfilled. We encourage you to continue exploring these subjects so that you can become a proficient sports bettor that cannot be deceived or misguided by common marketing techniques. Always explore beyond the flashy sign and always read the fine print. Learn from experienced bettors and listen to their advice. They have gone through many bonuses and know what to look for in a sport betting bonus.