Offers and their terms

Reading a British welcome offer, now that the wagering is capped at ten times

A welcome offer is a sentence with a number in it, and the number is the least useful part. The four facts that decide what it is worth are the minimum deposit, the amount you must stake and how many times, the deadline, and how much of the balance you may actually withdraw.

The number in the headline is the least useful part

A «welcome offer» is a sentence with a figure in it, and the figure is the part a reader should look at last. "One hundred per cent up to two hundred pounds" describes the size of a loan rather than the value of a gift, and what decides the value is the set of conditions attached to it, which are published in a document the headline does not link to.

Four facts settle it, and we print all four or none. The minimum deposit that makes the offer live, the amount that has to be staked and how many times, the deadline by which the staking has to be finished, and the share of the balance that may actually be withdrawn at the end.

The arithmetic, with a real example

We checked a British «landing page» (the first screen a link opens) from a London connection on the seventh of November 2026, and the offer on it is a useful specimen because every figure is present. The deposit is at least ten pounds, the maximum bonus is twenty-five pounds, the «wagering» is ten times the bonus, only slots count towards it, and the «maximum stake» while «wagering» is ten per cent of the bonus or five pounds, whichever is lower.

A player depositing ten pounds and receiving the maximum bonus must therefore stake two hundred and fifty pounds in slots, at no more than two pounds fifty a spin, before anything can be withdrawn. At a published return of ninety-six per cent, two hundred and fifty pounds of stakes costs ten pounds in expectation, which is a reasonable price for a twenty-five-pound bonus and a long way from a free gift!

That calculation is the one the four facts make possible, and it is why a card without them carries no figure at all, and an offer quoted as a percentage and a ceiling, with the conditions one click away in a document nobody opens, is not an offer a reader can price.

The conditions that are not in the four facts

Three further terms change the value of an offer without appearing in any headline, and they are worth finding before depositing. Game weighting decides which games count towards the «wagering» and by how much, and a game weighted at ten per cent turns ten times into a hundred; «excluded payment methods» (the clause that decides whether an offer applies) disqualify a deposit made by some routes, and the list usually includes at least one «wallet».

The third is the maximum conversion, which is the ceiling on what the bonus can turn into regardless of what you win with it. A bonus with a conversion limit of four times its value caps a hundred-pound win at a hundred pounds, and the term is usually two sentences long and placed near the end.

Why we publish the destination rather than the sum

An offer belongs to a «landing page» (the first screen a link opens) rather than to a brand, and the same operator will run six landing pages with six different offers, one for each campaign it has bought. A card that promises a sum promises the sum of whichever page the link happened to open on the day somebody wrote the card, and nothing updates it when the campaign ends.

So the card here says what kind of page the link opens, with the date somebody followed it. It is a smaller claim, it stays true for longer, and when the four facts are available from the operator's own page they appear beside it with the date they were read.

• Every UKGC casino we listtwenty-four brands, seven licence holdersThe index, ordered by the company that holds the licence and then by name, with the account number against each one.
• What a licence actually coversthe page the rest of the site rests onA British licence is a list of activities. Four of them matter to a player, and no two of our holders carry the same four.
• Bingo, licence firstsixteen of twentyFour of the brands on this site may not run a bingo room at all, and their licence says so in two words.
• Who may take a sports bettwo brands, not sixThe entitlement for a real event is rarer than it looks, and one holder has it without using it.
• The bonus rules of January 2026ten times, and no mixingWhat the cap on wagering changed, and why a welcome offer written in 2025 no longer reads the same way.
• British gambling law, in orderthe long sectionThe Act, the Commission, the advertising rules, the reforms of 2025 and 2026, the levy, the complaints route and the tax.

Questions readers ask

What is a «wagering requirement»?

The amount a player must stake before bonus winnings become withdrawable money, expressed as a multiple of the bonus. Since 19 January 2026 a British operator may not set it above ten times the bonus, where fifty was common a year earlier.

Does the ten-times cap apply to the deposit as well as the bonus?

The cap is on the multiple an incentive may require, and the base it applies to is set out in the operator's terms. Read whether the figure is applied to the bonus alone or to the bonus plus the deposit, because the second form doubles the stakes required from the same headline.

Why do some games not count towards wagering?

Because the operator weights them. Slots usually count at the full rate, table games at a fraction, and «live dealer» games sometimes at nothing at all, which means a requirement of ten times becomes an effective hundred times if it is cleared on a game weighted at ten per cent.

Can I withdraw my own deposit while a bonus is active?

Usually, and doing so normally forfeits the bonus and anything won with it. The terms describe this as cancelling the offer, and the sequence matters: withdrawing before the wagering is finished is a decision to give up the bonus rather than a way to keep both.

By the UK Pound Casino editorial team · Last updated November 2026 · Online since 2026