The Sportsbook Bonus System

One of the major sales tactics in the online gambling business is the bonus, where a site gives out a portion of free money in hopes of enticing more customers to use their sportsbook. However, before you start doing naked cartwheels and praising the benefits of free market competition, you may want to take a few precautionary measures before investing in a sportsbook.

Read the Sportsbook Bonus Fine Print

In Vegas, you can get comped with anything from drinks and a room to front row at the latest Celine Dion concert. Celine, baby! Yeah! And Carrot Top! Tell me you'’re not excited about that! How does that song go? Near, far, whereeeeever you are! In any case, rather than put a virtual Celine on your desktop, internet sportsbooks choose to comp their players with cold hard cash. However, all of these bonuses, and I mean all, come with their own fine print as to what conditions need to be met before they can be awarded or withdrawn. For example, a site may offer an additional 10% on all deposits, but the money you deposit has to be wagered in full before the 10% bonus is eligible. Which makes sense, otherwise people would just deposit and withdraw immediately without even betting. Some sites make you wager the amount fifteen or twenty times before you can even see the bonus. Also beware of sites that don't award bonuses right away. Anything that requires an email to somebody is already more work than should be required. After all, we use the internet because we're lazy and a good sportsbook respects that.

The best sites to use are ones that employ reload bonuses or specialty bonuses like 5% on Thursday deposits. If you're planning on gambling for the duration, you want a site that rewards you every time you deposit, not one that gives you 20% the first time and nothing after that. It's like in the movie "Clerks." Do you want a girl that brings you lasagna to work every day or one that you know is going to leave you after a few good times?

When to Avoid a Sportsbook Bonus

Anything higher than twenty percent starts getting into the "What are they doing?" territory, which brings you to the "Maybe they know exactly what they're doing" territory, which leads to the eventual "I know they know exactly what they're doing" conclusion. If you couple these impossible bonuses with crazy lines like Eagles +49 and one half against the Barcelona Dragons, you know the site is in all likelihood a scam. If you're still enamored with the possibility of such easy payouts, then try depositing a small amount of money and seeing how easy it is to withdraw. Chances are you won't see the money until the year 2092. Unless, of course, they know that you know they know exactly what you're doing. Then they're baiting you for a bigger payout. In other words, it might be wise to just stay away from those sportsbooks all together.