Bookmakers and betting sites are always looking for ways of encouraging punters to sign up with them. One of the most common methods of achieving that is by offering people bonuses when they sign up. Having got people to join the company in the first place, the next job is to keep hold of them and encourage them to be loyal. Once again, bonus amounts are often promised to ensure that people keep betting with the site for as long as possible. The problem is, sometimes people want to withdraw their money before the bonuses have been settled.
The good news is that the United Kingdom Gambling Commission has made clear to gambling sites that customers should have the ability to withdraw their money whenever they wish to do so, irrespective of whether or not your bonus money has been played through.
The downside to this is that you will lose your access to the bonus that you’ve been playing with, so you will need to decide for yourself whether or not that is an acceptable compromise in order to be able to get your cash into your bank account on your own terms.
Withdrawing Your Own Money
The main thing that you need to bear in mind when using any sort of gambling site is that your money remains yours at all times, up until the point that a bet has been placed or you have lost said bet. That is to say, you could bet £5 on Manchester City winning the Premier League, but ten games in they find themselves 12 points behind Liverpool and so you think you might not win your bet. If the site that you placed your wager with allows you to, you can choose to Cash Out your bet and walk away with the £5 or however much the Cash Out offer is worth.
If, on the other hand, the site in question doesn’t allow you to Cash Out, you will have to allow the bet to ride and the £5 that you placed on your wager is no longer yours. Equally, if you lose your bet then the money isn’t yours and there’s nothing that you can do about it, presuming all was fair and valid when you placed the wager. Money that you have deposited into your account and that has not yet been used to place a bet with remains yours throughout the time that you’re with the company in question, so you can take it out if you wish to.
To put it another way, let’s imagine that you’ve seen an offer with a major bookmaker that offers to match your deposit up to a value of, say, £50. You deposited £50 into your betting account and you were given a £50 bonus fund as a result. If you decide that you no longer wish to have the money in your betting account and would make more use of it if it was in your bank account, you can withdraw your initial £50 whenever you feel like it, presuming you haven’t placed bets with it, and the company cannot refuse your reasonable request – although they may charge you a fee to withdraw if you haven’t bet with it.
You’ll Lose Any Bonus Money
The slight complication to proceedings comes when you begin to consider your bonus funds. The point of the offer is to get you to firstly make a deposit into your account and secondly spend that money with the bookmaker or betting site. They know that, over time, they will win more money off you than you’ll win off them, so they will make a profit from having persuaded you to put money into your account and then bet with it. If you choose to withdraw your money before you’ve placed any bets, you won’t get the benefits of the offer.
This means that the bonus money that you received when you made your deposit will also be removed from your account alongside the cash. You will not be able to use it to place any bets, nor will you be able to withdraw it as though it is cash. It will effectively cease to exist, simply disappearing as if it was never there. It is a shame, but it makes sense when you think about why you were offered the bonus money in the first place. Any attempt to circumnavigate the system will be swiftly rebuffed by the company in question.
Of course there is one exception here, no deposit bonuses. These are rare these days and often for low amounts but given there is no deposit required to claim them the bonus funds will remain active until you meet the wagering requirements or hit the time limit to use it.
When You Can Withdraw Bonus Funds
The obvious question to ask, then, is when it is that you are allowed to withdraw bonus funds. We know that you are entitled to take out your cash whenever you want, provided it isn’t wrapped up in placing a bet or something similar, but what about bonus winnings? The answer will be given to you in the small print of the site or company that you place your bets with. There will always be some form of criteria that you’ll need to fulfil before you can get your money out, so finding what that is is key to getting money you’re entitled to.
The terms and conditions of offers will lay out exactly what it is that you need to know in terms of completing bonus requirements. These are usually referred to as ‘wagering requirements’, especially when you’re dealing with an online casino or sportsbook.
Imagine a scenario in which the small print tells you that there is a wagering requirement of 10x attached to the bonus money that you were given when the site matched your initial deposit. This means that you need to place £500 worth of bets before you’ll be able to withdraw anything.
Once you have completed the requirement (usually in a set amount of time), you’ll be allowed to withdraw any winnings that you’ve got and the original bonus amount too.
The wagering requirement usually only applies to the bonus amount, so you don’t need to worry about playing 10x £100, or £1,000 worth of bets. One thing to remember is that some sites have a maximum withdrawal amount, so keep an eye out to make sure that you don’t go over that if you want to withdraw all of your money in one go. Some offers also limit the amount you can win overall as cash from a bonus, either as a multiple of the bonus (e.g. 10x) or a fixed amount (e.g. £500).