NOTE: This does not go into detail on how to profit from bonuses, only how they work and why some aren’t worth your time. If you are looking for HOW TO MAKE MONEY bonus hunting, please see are full comprehensive guide HERE.
You may have noticed that there are a TON of HUGE bonuses out there from online sportsbooks you’ve never heard of before. these may look great at first, until you read the fine print. Many of the seedier sportsbooks however, include strict terms and conditions you must abide by in order to get the bonus, many of them make it unprofitable to do so. In this article today we will go over the good, bad and ugly of different types of bonuses.
Lets start with the good, the bread and butter of easybonushunting, the straight risk free bet. Generally speaking, these are almost always profitable. They way it works is you place a money line bet on their site, if the bet loses then you get a free bet to bet with again on their site. If your free bet wins, then you receive the winnings from the bet only.
Example, say your first bet loses and you receive a free $250 bet to use on their sportsbook. You wager that $250 on a game with 3.2 odds and win, your payout for a normal bet would be $250 X 3.2 = $800 . But with a risk free bet you do not receive the wagered amount, only the winnings. So for the same bet the payout would be $250 x 3.2 – $250 = $550, Leaving you with $550, still not bad but something that needs to be accounted for.
No need to be a math expert to go bonus hunting though. Our free bet calculator does all this math and more for you, check it out HERE
That’s just about the end of the good, onwards to the bad. We’ll start with a bonus related to the straight risk free bet, the risk free parlay. Risk free parlay’s do not work for bonus hunting simply because there are more variables, instead of needing to bet on 2 outcomes, you need to bet on 4,6,10 outcomes for a measly bonus. Risk free parlays are not worth your time.
Kicking it up a notch, we have the deceitful deposit matching bonus. These are the bonuses you’ve been seeing on all the sites you’ve never heard of, offering up to 10,000 in deposit matching, sounds great right? What you need to know is almost all deposit matching offers come with major strings attached, in the form of Rollover requirements. Rollover requirements requires you to wager a certain amount of money before you can withdraw your bonus. These requirements range from 10 to up to 35 TIMES your qualifying wager.
Example, lets say you signup and get a fancy $10k bonus, but the sportsbook has a rollover requirement of 35. This means that before you can withdraw your bonus you must place $350,000 worth of wagers.
Some sportsbooks have more reasonable terms than others but realistically most require atleast a 5x rollover, which almost always will eliminate any profits. It should be noted that there are some good guys out there, both Sugarhouse and Unibet offer deposit matching bonuses with 1x rollover requirements, meaning after your first set of wagers are placed you can withdraw after they have settled. Both these sites have made it onto our top 5 sportsbook list HERE.
Lastly, the notable mention, Draft kings. We cannot advise you use their “$5000” risk free bet signup bonus. This is the only one we have encoutered so far like this with the shady advertising. The risk free bonus is in fact UP TO $5000, but it will take you too much time and money to get there. Basically the bonus unlocks at 20 cents on the dollar of your qualifying wagers, essentially acting as a 20% risk free bet, that is not worth your time.