Everyone loves getting something for free. Whether it be a food sample when you’re wandering around a shop or a lucky dip when your lottery numbers don’t come up, it is human nature to enjoy getting a freebie or two. It is exactly that mindset that bookmakers tap into when they offer you a ‘free’ betting game on their site, with the specific aim of enticing you to use their services. Whilst the games are indeed technically free, there is far more to them than just being things that you can play and then forget about.
On the one hand, there’s no question that these are games that you can indeed play without having to pay for them. They take numerous different shapes and sizes, with the main constant being that you don’t even have to make a deposit in order to play them and you can win real prizes. They are specifically designed to encourage you to place bets with the company offering them, however, and if you don’t then you’ll soon find your access to such promotions limited. That begs the question, are they really free if there’s an unwritten obligation behind them?
What Sorts Of Games Are We Talking About
Head to the website of your favourite online bookmaker and you’ll soon come across a section that promises a free betting game for you to play. Perhaps you are asked to spin a wheel, with where the wheel lands dictating whether or not you actually get a prize. Maybe it will be something asking you to predict the outcome of this weekend’s football, with prizes offered for those that are able to correctly identify the results of a given number of games. Each bookie will have its own version of the same sort of thing, with its own rules.
One bookmaker has a free spin game available to customers that presents you with a spinning wheel with several options. These include moving up to the next wheel, winning £100 cash and winning nothing. The next wheel, should you go to it, has the same options in addition to moving back down to the original wheel. You need to continually play the game until it has reached some sort of conclusion, but it is entirely free to play as long as you have an account with the bookie in question, even if it has no money in it.
That is just one example of the sort of thing that we’re talking about, but if gives you a good sense of the kind of thing that you can expect from online bookmakers. As soon as the game finishes, you are encouraged to take part in one of the other slot games on offer from the bookie, but you’ll obviously need to spend your own money to do so. That is common with these games and the entire reason why they’re offered, but it confirms why it is that they tend to be free and don’t require too much from you in the way of pre-payment.
Why They Exist
Such free games exist purely to entice you into spending your actual money with the bookmaker in question. As much as human beings much like to receive something for free, bookies don’t enjoy giving things away for free if they can help it. They will, however, use what they call ‘loss leaders’ in order to encourage bettors to get involved with what they’ve got to offer. In other words, they’re happy to lose a little bit of money if it means that they can make more money in the long-run. They’ll ‘take the loss’ to make a profit.
What a bookmaker wants more than anything else is for you to continuously use their free games before going on to place a real-life bet. If they lose £100 to five people everyday, for argument’s sake, but see 20 people spend real cash in their casinos or on their sportsbook then it will absolutely have been worth it. Even if those 20 people only lose £100 each during their entire time wagering with the company, which is an extremely conservative guess when it comes to betting, then they’ll have made £2,000 and lost £500.
In reality, most people will bet and lose far more than £100 during the full period of time in which they’re signed up with a betting company. When you look at the average figures, it doesn’t matter if one person loses £10, another loses £100 and a third loses £190, given that it means that they’ve still lost an average of £100 each and the bookie has made their profit. Of course, some people will win money, but there’s a reason the phrase ‘The House always wins’ exists, which is that, over a given period of time, bookmakers and casinos always end up in profit.
Are The Actually Free?
An entirely reasonable question that you might want to ask is whether they are actually free or not. On the one hand, there’s no question that they are. You are not expected to spend any money on them in the same way as you would have to if you were playing a slot game or betting on a football match. Not only that, but you can win genuine prizes, including cash payouts. In that respect, therefore, they are absolutely free and there can be no argument to the contrary, in a literal sense of the cost to play the game.
When you remember why they exist, however, you could suggest that they are actually not free. If you have been essentially manipulated into spending money, is the thing that was used for the purpose of the manipulating actually free? It is also the case that, with the majority of bookmakers, you will be expected to have at least placed a bet with them before you’re able to play the ‘free’ game. Some might insist that you have money in your account, whilst others will only look to see whether you’ve ever placed a bet with them.
Regardless of the exact requirements, the fact that you can’t just log into your account and play one of these games for free means that it is more complicated than actually being a ‘free’ game. Indeed, if you never deposited money into your account and only ever logged in in order to be able to play the free games, you’d soon find that your bookmaker of choice limited your access to such promotional games. Does this truly mean that they are free, therefore, or are you in a situation where you’re paying, but just not up front?
Nothing Is Ever Free – But That’s Ok
Let us be brutally honest about something: nothing is ever truly free. The ‘free’ samples of food that you are given in a shop are offered in the hope that you’ll enjoy them so much that you go and buy the full product. The lucky dips that you receive when you land two numbers on the National Lottery aren’t free as you’ve only been given them because you played the Lotto in the first place and if you don’t win will probably end up buying another ticket for the next draw. You are being manipulated into thinking something’s free when it isn’t.
Whilst this might be a bit annoying and make you feel as though you’ve been cheated, the simple truth is that, for most people, this doesn’t matter. If you’re the sort of person that is going to place a bet anyway, what does it matter if that’s why a bookie has offered you a free spin or a free guess at which teams will win this weekend? It is only those that have no intention of betting that need to be aware of the trick that is being played on them. For everyone else, you’re going to bet anyway so why not take advantage of the ‘free’ thing you’re being offered?