Best Australian Casino Welcome Bonuses
If you join a casino for the first time you will be offered an incentive to join. Many casinos offer you double, triple or even quadruple the amount of money you first deposit with. This can often be misleading and along with restrictions can become a costly mistake. At 5 Star Pokies, we have taken a look at the welcome packages and the important things to consider before claiming them.
Recommended Welcome Bonuses
Types of Bonuses
No Deposit Bonus
Players love no deposit casino welcome bonuses because they do not require any effort or deposit by the player. If it has been a while since you have last visited or played at an online casino, you could certainly expect one of these offers to hit your email soon. These no deposit casino bonuses come in the form of a small ‘donation,’ usually in an amount of say $20 to $35, to entice the player to get back into the swing of online casino gaming. Be sure to check the terms of the bonus to ensure you get the most bang for your buck when playing pokies at the online casino.
Match Deposit Bonus
Match bonuses are very popular in the Australian online casino scene. They are a type of welcome bonus offered to players who are returning or showing continued loyalty to the casino. Many Australian online casinos on our experts’ list of recommended casinos offer ‘no max’ match bonuses between 200% and 400%, with no maximum deposit limit. Therefore, if players have the cash flow available, it would be very possible for a player to deposit a large amount like $500 and receive a complimentary $2000 bonus thanks to a rewarding 400% ‘no max’ match bonus.
Free Spins
In Australia, online casinos use the free spins and welcome bonuses to promote their casino games because this welcome bonus gets players online and making bets right away. Players love to claim these bonuses because they always appear to have a high value. This is because online casinos can afford to be generous when creating these offers, as free spins can only be used on the pokies. Common free spins welcome bonuses offer players between 30 and 50 free spins for certain online pokies, or a collection of pokies that the casino is pushing at the time.
VIP Bonuses and Loyalty Programs
Just like any customer-focused industry, VIP’s or customers that show loyalty are always rewarded with better offers than those offered to the standard player base. Same is true for Australian online casinos, although typical loyalty or VIP bonuses can’t really be considered as true welcome bonuses because they are not available for every player.
Many casinos are now showing loyalty to players by offering them head starts towards their VIP and loyalty programs. This kind of casino welcome bonuses come in the form of loyalty points that ‘mature’ or become active after playing a certain amount of spins or after a predefined period. This loyalty from the casino works to keep players at the online casino for longer.
The VIP and loyalty programs provide players with bonus cash or free spins as rewards on top of the standard promotions other players are offered. For example, these offers come with higher amounts like being offered 50 free spins this month while the standard players are offered 30 free spins.
Realistically, becoming a VIP requires a real commitment from players as it does take a large volume of deposits to be included, however, an added benefit to becoming a VIP or building up loyalty points is that the bonuses you are offered, have much easier wagering requirements, qualifying terms, and overall conditions to cashing out winnings. As they say, treat those (your new online casino) like you would like to be treated – and you might just find yourself part of an exclusive club.
How to Use Your Welcome Bonus
Bonus Cash
Welcome bonuses are not only linked to playing casino games. In order to compile extra information about their players or to promote referral programs online, casinos are now offering players with welcome bonus rewards for completing alternative account-based tasks, such as:
Verifying their contact details or email address
Adding marketing information like preferred casino games
Referring to a friend that creates a player account
Meeting account milestones, like player achievements
These casino welcome bonuses are another way in which casinos can reward players that show loyalty and complete their account details.
Reward Wheel Spins
Some Australian online casinos are beginning to offer their own rewards programs that come in the shape of a spin for the reward wheel. These reward wheels are simply a game of chance with varying rewards on the wheel; the player spins the wheel and receives the reward depending on the outcome of the wheel. Many of the rewards you will likely see on these ‘newer style’ reward wheels are bonus cash.
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Important Things to Consider When Claiming Bonuses
Players like to try and score some free cash by claiming multiple welcome bonuses with multiple accounts. However, online casinos have this covered in the terms and conditions, and specifically indicate that players can only claim one player account with a welcome bonus per home address, email address, and IP address.
If you do try and be shifty with an online casino and open multiple accounts, you will always get caught out. Once you have been busted you will likely lose your bonus and any winnings that you have already earned with it. In most instances, you will also have your player account closed and be banned from creating a player account with that online casino and their affiliates. This also means that you will surrender any cash that is in your player account!
Online casino welcome bonuses are a great addition to getting you started on your casino gaming journey, but not all games are treated equally when it comes to using your bonus cash. With many casinos’ welcome bonus promotions, the differentiation between what games are eligible and what casino games are not, usually comes down to pushing eligible games as those with lower player odds – like the pokies.
You should not commence playing with your casino welcome bonus until you are sure what the eligible games are for wagering with your casino welcome bonus real money. This information can be found in the terms and conditions for the promotion. Ensure that you always play on games that are eligible for your online casino welcome bonus, as you can risk losing your bonus and the winnings you have earned if you continue to play ineligible games or play against any specific terms and conditions.
Don’t overlook this component of your casino welcome bonus, as many online casinos will determine a specific period for a player to play and meet the wagering requirements of their welcome bonus. So, if the time limit expires and you have not met any wagering requirements, you will lose your winnings, including the bonus amount itself.
As we said, Australian online casinos do not like to pay out real money to players. This means they will always have this covered or limited when it comes to players cashing out – just like how car insurance companies always try and find any insignificant loophole they can find, just to get out of paying out on a crash for their customer.
Online casinos follow a similar path to reduce the chance they have of giving many players big cash outs. Every online casino sets a maximum cash out amount clause in the terms and conditions of their casino welcome bonus. The reason behind this is obvious, online casinos place a limit on the total amount of real money that can be cashed out from the winnings earned when using an online casino welcome bonus. They do this to ensure that the bonus cash stays in the player account and is eventually lost through losing wagers with the casino.
In some circumstances, if players are lucky enough to turn a small casino welcome bonus into thousands of dollars, and provided they meet the wagering requirements – the maximum withdrawal amount is capped as per the terms and conditions, and the player’s excess winnings will be removed from the player’s account. Therefore, it is important to always check the terms and conditions first!
Remember, the key step when claiming online casino welcome bonuses is to review the terms and conditions properly first to ensure that you can take maximum advantage of any welcome bonus.
The wagering requirements around casino welcome bonuses is very important, as this is the specific part of the terms and conditions that will always have the most change from bonus to bonus.
All Australian online casino welcome bonuses in 2021 will come with wagering requirements, which are the rules that outline the minimum times that players must bet with their welcome bonus before the player is eligible to cash out winnings from their welcome bonus – the wagering requirements can easily make or break the true value of a bonus.
Wagering requirements for online casino welcome bonuses consist of two parts:
The minimum amount that the player needs to have bet with the bonus
Any specific games that need to be played to meet the wagering requirement
The minimum amount for wagering requirements is generally a times factor for the value of the welcome bonus cash. What this means is that if the wagering requirement is 10 times and the welcome bonus was $50, the player would need to have made bets totalling $500 (10 times $50), before any winnings from this welcome bonus can be cashed out.
In many circumstances, online casinos will place game weightings or percentages requirements to welcome bonuses so that players do not use the bonus on lucrative games where players can win lots like blackjack or baccarat. It is common practice for online casinos to tie in bonuses to a requirement that says 80% – 100% of the bonus must be used on casino games with higher house edge (like the pokies), to reduce the player’s chance of big winnings.