The wagering clause: how to read it before accepting a bonus

A bonus is a conditional credit, and the condition is the interesting part. We read the clause the way we would read any other contract term — by working out what it obliges us to do and then pricing it — and on that basis most of the attention goes to the clauses that are not the headline multiple.

Start with the multiple, and finish somewhere else

Take a £50 bonus with ten times wagering. That is £500 of stakes before the balance can be withdrawn. Whether £500 of stakes costs more than £50 depends on the game’s edge: assume for the arithmetic that you are playing something with a 3 per cent edge, and £500 of turnover has an expected cost of £15 against a £50 credit. On those terms the offer is worth taking.

Now run the same credit at the thirty-five times that older terms used to print. That is £1,750 of stakes, an expected cost of £52.50, and the bonus is already under water before any of the other clauses apply. The multiple matters, and it matters most when it is large.

For British players the ceiling is now set in the licence conditions rather than by the operator: since 19 January 2026 the Commission’s social responsibility code caps wagering requirements at ten times and forbids promotions that mix products — a single offer cannot require play across casino and betting together. If a page aimed at British customers is still printing 35x or 60x, it is quoting terms that predate that rule, which is a useful signal about the page as well as the offer. Our older guides to wagering requirements in the fine print and hidden traps in bonus terms were written before the cap and are still right about everything else.

Game weighting is the clause that does the damage

Almost every set of terms counts different games at different rates: slots at 100 per cent, table games often at 10 per cent or less, some games excluded entirely. The weighting is applied to your stake, not to the requirement, which means the requirement grows rather than shrinking.

The £500 above, cleared on a game weighted at 10 per cent, needs £5,000 of actual stakes. The multiple has not changed; the obligation is ten times larger. This is the single most common reason a bonus that looked worth taking was not, and it is two lines further down the page than the headline.

The four clauses we read in order

1. The multiple, and what it applies to. Ten times the bonus and ten times bonus-plus-deposit are different obligations — the second is twice the first on a matched offer. The phrase to find is what the multiple is a multiple of.
2. The weighting table. Which games count, at what rate, and which are excluded. An excluded game that you intended to play makes the rest of the clause irrelevant.
3. The maximum stake while the bonus is active. Usually a few pounds a spin, and usually enforced by voiding winnings rather than by blocking the bet — which is why it has a page of its own.
4. The expiry. A requirement you cannot physically complete in the time allowed is not a requirement, it is a decline. Divide the stakes needed by the stake you intend to play and check the number of spins fits the days.

The sentence worth finding in full

Somewhere in the terms is a line saying what happens to the winnings when a condition is breached. There are two versions. One removes the remaining bonus and leaves your own money alone. The other voids everything accumulated while the bonus was active. The difference between them is the entire risk of accepting the offer, and it is the sentence we would read first if we only read one. The habit generalises: our page on licences, bonuses and safe play makes the same point about every term that is written in the passive voice.