How Casino Bonuses Helped the Gambling Industry Grow

You've probably seen how big the online casino and gambling industry has become in recent years. After all, there are adverts for casinos almost everywhere in certain locations. And the locations where gambling is NOT permitted are shrinking, with new laws being passed in Federal courts to allow online gambling firms to operate more freely stateside.

A lot of this only casino growth has obviously been because of an improvement of technology. Most notably, the internet and home computing. They made it much easier to gamble remotely from the comfort of their own home. But one thing that has had a huge impact on the growth of this industry is the bonus offers used to encourage new signups. Whether you want to discover Book of Ra or play any number of online slots and games available, you could get a bonus to help you play. In this article, we're going to look at how bonuses have helped the industry grow, and how these bonuses have changed over time.

The power of bonuses

You can see how a bonus could be appealing. Many of these are offered as free money without even depositing. These are known in the trade as "no deposit" bonuses. They mean you can start playing at a number of different games without risking any real money. They're great at getting people playing who otherwise wouldn't have deposited.

If you are willing to deposit yourself, you could get an even bigger bonus. These can often be hundreds of dollars and are known as "matched bonuses" or deposit bonuses. Sometimes you might deposit $100 and get $200 more to play with. This will vary from casino to casino and offer to offer, but these big bonuses are normally only open to people who make their first deposit. Further deposit bonuses might be available as well.

Wagering requirements

You might be thinking about simply signing up and getting your bonus before withdrawing it all, right? Well this isn't really possible. All casinos will have a wagering requirement before you can convert the bonus money into withdrawable funds. Some sites might make you wager with your own money first, while others will let you use the bonus funds.

How bonuses have changed over time

Initially, you used to be able to play with your bonus on basically any casino game, and the wagering requirements were much lower. If you deposited $50, you might have had to wager $2,000 worth of bets before you could withdraw your matched bonus funds of another $50. Now that might sound like a lot of gambling. but when you use it on a game like blackjack it's actually quite achievable without losing much of your funds (hopefully). By following the optimum blackjack strategy you can basically make hundreds of bets and win nearly half of them. That will leave you with the same balance you started with but you will have wagered thousands of dollars, meeting the wagering requirement. However, online casinos soon realised they were giving away too much, and clamped down on these offers. Now you can only really use these bonuses on games like slots which are much higher risk. While some offers allow blackjack, the requirements for these bonuses are much higher, giving a much higher risk you will lose your money.

As you can see, bonuses have made a big impact on the growth of the online casino industry, but they have also changed over time. Try and find the right bonus that you can use on your favourite games before you deposit, and you could win too.

This article does not necessarily reflect the opinions of the editors or management of EconoTimes.