Casinos and bookmakers use casino offers to entice customers to join their sites and continue playing once they’re members. 

Most of these offers have a positive expected value, meaning they’re worth doing in the long-run. 

Casino offers come in several different forms, from simple ‘bet and get’ offers to more complicated offers.

Something they all have in common is some kind of reward for completing the offer. This could be free spins or cash, but often it’s some kind of bonus. 

There are several types of bonuses, but all can be split into one of two categories: sticky bonuses and non-sticky bonuses. 

In this article, you’ll find out what sticky bonuses are, how they work, and how you can often make a profit from them.

What Are Sticky and Non-Sticky Bonuses?

A sticky bonus can be used for wagering purposes, but the bonus amount can never be withdrawn. 

Another term for a sticky bonus is a non-cashable bonus because the bonus amount itself can’t be withdrawn as cash.

If you make a withdrawal, the sticky bonus amount will be deducted from your balance whether or not you've completed the wagering requirement for an offer. 

Bookmakers and casinos probably won’t use the phrase ‘sticky bonus’, but the relevant term will be found somewhere in their terms and conditions. This is how The Sun Vegas describe their sticky bonuses:

A non-sticky bonus is also called a cashable bonus. In this case, your bonus funds can be withdrawn along with any winnings if you complete wagering. If you withdraw before completing wagering, you’ll forfeit and lose your bonus. 

Restrictions on Withdrawing Deposits and Deposit Winnings

In British-licensed online casinos and bookmakers, you won’t be restricted from withdrawing your deposit and deposit winnings.

Before 2018, online casinos and bookmakers operating in Great Britain often ran offers that restricted withdrawals of deposits and deposit winnings until the wagering requirements for the offer had been completed. 

The deposit and bonus (either sticky or non-sticky) were often combined into a single balance which was then used for wagering. 

This meant that after depositing, you’d have to get through all the required wagering to have access to your money, even if you hit a big win.

On 21st November 2017, George Lusty of the Competition and Markets Authority (CMA) gave a speech highlighting potentially unfair terms and practices in online gambling in Britain. 

Two of the CMA’s recommendations were that gambling companies should:

1. Stop offering gaming promotions that restrict the withdrawal of deposit winnings.
2. Stop imposing restrictions on withdrawing unspent deposit funds.

The day after, the Gambling Commission announced it was time to take action on the issue.

On 1st February 2018, the CMA published their Online gambling promotions: do’s and don’ts guidance about withdrawal restrictions.  

The current Gambling Commission’s guidance can be found here. It states:

“Operators must allow players to withdraw funds from their deposit balance, even if they are allocated to a bonus including when a bonus is pending or active in the account.”

For this reason, you won’t find any sticky bonus offers in British-licensed casinos or bookmakers where you’re restricted from withdrawing your deposit or deposit winnings, even if you haven’t completed wagering. 

A footnote worth mentioning is that bookmakers and casinos reserve the right to withhold your winnings and deposit if they believe you’re seriously in breach of their terms and conditions (for example, multi-accounting by opening more than one with them). However, it’s very rare for this to happen.

Are Sticky Bonuses Worthwhile?

Since sticky bonuses don’t allow the bonus to be withdrawn, it might seem like they don’t have any value. However, this isn’t the case. 

Here are a couple of reasons why there's value in sticky bonuses:

1. You have more money to bet with, making it more likely you'll complete wagering for an offer.
2. They allow you to do more spins or increase your stakes, compared to only using your own money. This makes it more likely you'll complete wagering and gives you more potential for bigger wins.
   
3. They reduce your risk. For example, if you deposit £100 for a 100% sticky bonus, you have £200 to bet with, but the most you can lose is your original £100 deposit.
4. If cash is used before bonus funds, they're a type of second chance bonus, acting as a 'safety net' and giving you a chance to complete wagering if you lose your deposit when wagering.
   

In the next section, we’ll look at an example of how you can often find value in sticky bonuses. 

Sticky Bonus Offer Example

Outplayed have a wide range of casino offers available for Diamond and Pro members. Although the bonuses offered for most offers are of the non-sticky variety, there are a couple of offers that involve sticky bonuses. 

This section will cover an example of a sign-up offer involving a sticky bonus. This is a high-risk offer, which is only suitable for those experienced with casino offers.

A substantial bankroll is also needed, to cover the inevitable large downswings in profit that come with high-risk offers. 

High-risk offers certainly aren’t something that everyone will want to do, but the good news is that Outplayed have plenty of risk-free, low-risk, and medium-risk casino offers too, in addition to Matched Betting offers and value betting tools. 

Outplayed recommend depositing £100 for the Fabulous Vegas offer. They also advise never risking more than 2% of your total bankroll on a high-risk offer, so you’d need a £5000 bankroll to attempt this offer. 

Some members prefer to be even more conservative and risk 1% of their bankroll, meaning a £10,000 bankroll would be required. 

Here’s a summary of the offer on Outplayed:

Although the expected value of £43.71 is very good, the 83.4% bust rate (the likelihood of losing your full £100 deposit and bonus funds) means it’s a high-risk offer.

Here’s Outplayed’s write-up for the offer, which gives full instructions for how to approach the sticky bonus, after depositing £100:

For this offer, the £100 deposit needs to be wagered 30 times (£3000) on eligible slots before any bonus winnings can be withdrawn. 

Outplayed recommend using a high Return To Player (RTP) slot that is also high variance, using a stake of £4, near to the maximum stake. You’ll see the impact of RTP, variance, stake, and bonus percentage in a later section. 

A suitable high variance and high RTP slot recommended by the offer is Blue Wizard (RTP 96.5%). 

Cash is used first for this offer, with both cash and bonus funds counting towards wagering. It’s a sticky bonus, so if you complete wagering without losing your deposit, you won’t convert any of the bonus to withdrawable cash. 

We’ll look at four ways the offer could play out.

Scenario 1

Let’s say you complete the wagering without touching bonus funds, ending up with £350 in total. The £100 sticky bonus will be deducted from these winnings when you withdraw. This leaves you with £250 of cash to withdraw, a profit of £150, since you initially deposited £100 in cash. 

The bonus effectively does nothing in this scenario - it’s just added to your balance at the start and taken away at the end. It’s very similar to depositing £100 without a bonus, gambling £3000 and making a £150 profit. However, there’s an important difference between the two scenarios. 

Doing the offer with the sticky bonus gives you a ‘safety net’ for those occasions when you lose your deposit. You’ll still have a chance to complete the wagering using these bonus funds and come out with a profit. Although you didn’t use the bonus in this scenario, this doesn’t mean it has no long-term value. 

Since you can’t get any benefit from the bonus if you don’t lose your initial deposit, it makes no sense to keep wagering your cash until you complete wagering. As you’ve seen in a previous section, in British-licensed casinos, you’ll always be able to withdraw your deposit and deposit winnings, even if you haven’t completed wagering. 

This is why Outplayed recommend having a target profit of £100 for the offer. If you double your cash balance from £100 to £200, before completing wagering, you should stop wagering, withdraw your money and forfeit the bonus.  

Scenario 2

This time, when you’re £2000 into wagering, you lose your deposit and start wagering the bonus. To have a chance of making a profit from this bonus, you need to wager £1000 more to complete the £3000 of wagering. 

You complete wagering with £95 of bonus funds remaining. Unfortunately, since this £95 is less than the £100 sticky bonus value, all of this amount is deducted from your bonus balance. This leaves you with nothing to convert to cash, so you end the offer £100 down. 

This is where you can see the downside of a sticky bonus, compared to a non-sticky one. Had it been a non-sticky bonus, you’d have been able to withdraw your £95 as cash.

Scenario 3

In this example, you lose your initial deposit and complete wagering using bonus funds, ending up with a £1000 balance after hitting some decent wins. 

After deducting the £100 sticky bonus, you’re left with £900 to withdraw. After deducting the £100 deposit you lost, this gives an overall profit of £800.

Scenario 4

For this final scenario, you lose your deposit and bonus before completing wagering, leaving you £100 down. 

Using a Simulator to Find the EV of the Offer

With Outplayed Diamond or Pro membership, you can access their fully-featured casino simulator, which allows the EV (Expected Value) of complicated casino offers to be worked out. 

The EV of simple ‘bet and get’ casino offers (for example ‘Wager £10 for 10 free spins’) can be calculated exactly, using Outplayed’s EV Calculator. 

However, the EV of more complicated offers that require multiple wagering of bonuses can’t be calculated exactly. The offer needs to be run through a simulator, which simulates running the offer thousands of times and works out the average EV for all those simulations. 

Here’s the simulator filled out for the above offer, using the stake, deposit amount, RTP, and variance recommended by Outplayed: 

Here’s a breakdown of the different sections:

Game 

This can also be set to blackjack or roulette. However, these are much too low variance for this offer, which is why you need to use a slot. 

Variance 

High variance slots are better for these offers with high multiple wagering requirements. Some offers might use ‘low’ or ‘medium’ variance instead. 

Return to Player 

The 96.5% RTP of the recommended slot, Blue Wizard, is entered here.

Deposit 

This is where the amount of cash deposited for the offer is entered, which is £100 for this offer.  

Bonus 

The sticky bonus amount of £100 is entered here. 

Wagering Amount 

This is the total amount of wagering required to convert bonus funds to cash. In this case, the £100 bonus needs wagering 30 times, so wagering is 30 x £100 = £3000.

Stake

The maximum stake for the offer is £5, but Outplayed recommend a stake of around £4 as a compromise between maximising EV and bringing down the bust rate.

Target Profit

With this type of offer, it’s best to set a target profit. If you reach this profit when wagering your own cash, you stop wagering, withdraw your deposit and winnings and forfeit the bonus. For this offer, Outplayed recommend playing until you double your deposit from £100 to £200, so the target profit is £100. 

Maximum Winnings

Some offers have maximum winnings, which can be entered here. The offer above doesn’t have maximum winnings, so it’s not filled in. When there are no maximum winnings, this section can either be left blank or filled in with a zero.

Number of Simulations

This tells the simulator how many times to simulate the offer. Setting it to 100,000 is normally sufficient to give a very good estimate of the offer EV. It can be set higher if you want to increase the number of simulations, but this will take longer to complete.  

Time Per Spin

You can enter the approximate average time for spin here, and the simulator tells you the average time for the offer and average cash per hour in the results section. 

Stake Limits

On 10th December 2024, the Gambling Commission amended The Gambling Act 2005 to introduce a maximum stake size for online slots in Great Britain. The maximum stake depends on the age of the individual:

• £2 limit for adults aged 18-24
• £5 limit for adults aged 25+  

The £5 limit of adults aged 25+ hasn’t affected Outplayed’s recommended approach to completing high-risk casino offers like the one we’ve looked at today, since stakes higher than £5 have never been recommended. 

However, if you’re aged from 18-24 and have the bankroll and mindset to do high-risk casino offers, you’ll be limited to maximum stakes of £2. 

This isn’t a problem, and you can just change the stake in the simulator to £2 if the recommended stake is higher than this. Using £2 stakes rather than higher stakes tends to lose you a little EV, but you’ll also have a lower bust rate.

How Different Factors Affect Sticky Bonus Value

As you’ve seen in the offer example above, there are lots of factors to take into account when completing an offer, and these affect the EV and bust rate of the offer. 

We’ll look at what impact these factors have here. In each case, the offer detailed in this article will be used. 

The changes will always be made relative to the details filled into the simulator above, so the only factor changed will be the one that’s focused on in the section.

Bonus Percentage

The Bonus Percentage is the percentage of your deposit that you’re given as a bonus. As you’d expect, the higher the bonus percentage, the higher the EV. 

The bust rate also gets higher as the bonus percentage increases, since you have more wagering to complete if you lose your deposit and start wagering the bonus. 

Slot Variance

The variance of the slot has a significant impact on the EV of offers that require multiple wagering of bonuses. 

High variance slots are needed to maximise EV and make the most long-term profits from the offers. The trade-off is that you’re more likely to bust out with any individual offer. 

Here’s a screenshot of the simulator set to low variance, to show how much lower the EV is, compared to the recommended high-variance slot:

Here’s a table showing the dramatic difference that variance has on EV:

Wagering Amount

The wagering amount is the total amount that needs to be wagered to convert bonus funds to withdrawable cash. 

Casinos often express this as a multiple of your deposit, bonus amount, or deposit + bonus.

For this offer, there’s a 30x wagering requirement on the bonus, so the simulator was adjusted accordingly to work out these EVs and bust rates.

As you’d expect, as the number of times the bonus needs wagering increases, the EV decreases and the bust rate decreases:

Obviously, the wagering amount is out of our hands, so this and the Bonus Percentage tables are included to show that some offers are better than others. 

Stake

With offers requiring multiple wagering on bonuses, higher stakes give higher EVs and higher bust rates. For offers with maximum winnings, you’ll sometimes find that increasing your stake decreases EV. 

This is because you’re more likely to bust out with higher stakes, and you don’t get the advantage of the very big wins, which will be capped at the maximum winnings. 

As mentioned previously, if you’re aged 18-24, you’ll be limited to £2 stakes, which lowers your EV and bust rate. 

You also need to watch out for maximum stakes for offers. This is often £5, which is the highest stake allowed in British-licenced casinos anyway, but it could be lower. 

Outplayed will always check the terms of an offer thoroughly and give appropriate instructions based on this, which makes it much easier and quicker to complete these offers. 

Slot Return To Player

As you’d expect, assuming they all have the same variance, higher Return to Player (RTP) slots give a higher EV for the offer, whilst reducing bust rate. 

Summary of Impact of Different Factors

Here’s a brief description of how each factor affects EV and bust rate. 

• Higher bonus percentages give higher EV and lower bust rate
• Higher variance slots give higher EV and higher bust rate
• Higher wagering amounts give higher EV and higher bust rate
• Higher stakes give higher EV and higher bust rate (winnings caps sometimes require using lower stakes)
• Higher RTP slots give higher EV and lower bust rate
  

Conclusion

In this article, you’ve seen how sticky bonuses work. Even though the bonus amount is only for wagering purposes and can’t be withdrawn, sticky bonuses have value. 

Although most offers available in the UK and Ireland don’t involve sticky bonuses, you’ll sometimes come across them, so it’s useful to know how they work and how to take advantage of them. 

Some offers with sticky bonuses have a positive expected value (EV). If you have Diamond or Pro membership with Outplayed, and the bankroll and mindset to do high-risk offers, you can make long-term profits from offers, whether they involve sticky or non-sticky bonuses. 

There’s a huge amount of value in casino offers. Outplayed list casino reload offers worth around £2000 per month, on average. This is in addition to all the casino sign-up offers, and a large number of sports sign-up and reload offers. 

If you’re interested in trying out casino offers or Matched Betting, you can do so by taking up Outplayed’s free trial. You’ll find superb guides and tools and world-class support from Outplayed’s amazing customer support team, who are on hand to answer any questions you might have.