Bonus and Wagering Changes On The Horizon

Changes coming in December

For more than a year, we’ve been waiting for the results of a Gambling Commission consultation on gambling promotional offers following the publication of the Gambling White Paper all the way back in 2023. Finally, the Gambling Commission have announced the action they will be taking – and it’s going to change the face of the market in the UK.

Operators have plenty of time to prepare for this RADICAL changes as they won’t come into effect until 19th December 2025.  We expect offers to start evolving in advance of that, though.

So what’s happening?  There are two parts to the new rules:

Mixed product promotion ban

While this part of the press release is a bit ambiguously worded, the change that is going to be made to the operator LCCP (licence conditions and code of practice) is crystal clear:

“Licensees must not…include more than one type of gambling product (betting, casino, bingo and lottery) within an incentive”. So no more bonus bundles, no more adding free slot spins to sports, bingo or lottery offers and no more handing out free spins as player rewards for play on anything other than slots and casino games!

Bonus wagering requirements limited to ten

The exact wording that’s going to be in the LCCP is:

“Licensees must not….apply wagering requirements, which requires a customer to play through bonus funds, over a maximum of 10 times.  A wagering requirement is where a customer is required to make wagers totalling a particular value for funds to become withdrawable”.

What it means for players

On the face of it, the two main types of welcome offer we feature are going to be affected in different ways:

• Bingo offers are going to have to be purely for bingo and not include any other products (such as free spins), but the wagering won’t change as it’s typically nowhere near 10x.
• Casino offers will still be able to include free spins as they come under the casino umbrella, but wagering requirements will have to be drastically reduced from the current levels which are typically anything from 35x to 65x.

In practice, it certainly won’t be as simple as just removing slot spins from bingo offers and cutting the wagering on slots offers!  Here’s some of the other stuff that could happen:

Other possible consequences

• More No Wagering offers – the restriction to 10x may encourage more operators to ditch wagering requirements entirely and switch to no wagering spins offers
• More and better pure bingo offers – operators may replace the free spins in their bingo offer with a bigger bingo bonus or free bingo tickets, especially as they don’t have to reduce the current wagering requirements on those.
• Much smaller slots offers (and we’re talking about reload offers here as well as welcome offers) – operators who have to cut wagering requirements are also likely to cut bonuses, so that the 100% deposit bonuses we currently see are highly likely to find a new level that’s more like 25% or 30%.  It remains to be seen how this will go down with players as the bonuses will look a lot less attractive!
• Fewer no deposit offers – the wagering on this type of offer is normally even steeper than on deposit offers and with wagering cut to 10x, operators may consider them to be just too risky.
• Operators could switch to a different style of welcome offer whereby players aren’t required to play through bonus funds and can withdraw their winnings any time without penalty.  Instead of a welcome bonus, you get a cash reward (with no further wagering requirements) after playing through your deposit a specified number of times, whether or not you’ve made any withdrawals in the meantime.  This has been tried already by LeoVegas and a few other operators, either with the reward released in stages or all in one go at the end.  At the moment our users clearly prefer a straightforward bonus, but it could be a different story if those straightforward bonuses get much smaller and the cash reward promotions stay the same size.
• Operators could replace deposit bonus offers with cashback on losses.
• Player reward schemes will need an overhaul as lots of them use free spins as rewards based on the previous week’s play but presumably this will not be allowed unless the play was all on casino products.  Here’s a couple of examples of player rewards that will need a rethink because of product mixing:
  • The shop at 888ladies where coins can currently be redeemed for bingo bonus, bingo tickets, games bonus or slot spins.
  • The Bingo Wheel at bingo.com which awards free spins or bingo vouchers based on bingo and minigames play.
  • We would expect any player reward system changes that are needed to be phased in well in advance of the deadline.  For an example of a player reward that’s already compliant, check out the daily free game Paddy’s Cash Reel at Paddy Power Bingo. You qualify by spending £2 on bingo tickets and all of the prizes are cash.
• It’s even possible that some of the operators who currently impose high wagering requirements could decide not to bother with all this and simply exit the UK market!

Is all of this good for players or not?  It’s hard to tell at this stage.  Reducing wagering requirements sounds good, but will it result in far less player choice of welcome offer and indeed of casino? As for the no mixing products in promotions, again it sounds good as it makes it simpler and easier for those players who want to stick to just one type of product.  But again, will it result in far less player choice of promotions? Looks like we’ll have to just wait and see!