If you have ever signed up to a sportsbook and claimed a bonus only to find out you could not withdraw your winnings yet, you have already experienced rollover firsthand.
We learned this the hard way on one of our first ever sportsbook accounts and it is one of those things we wish someone had explained to us before we signed up.
What it means
Rollover is basically the sportsbook’s way of making sure you actually gamble with the bonus money before you can cash it out.
They are not just handing you free money to withdraw. They want you to bet with it first.
The rollover number tells you how many times over you need to wager the bonus amount.
So a $100 bonus with a 5x rollover means you have to place a total of $500 in bets before you can withdraw.
You do not need to win those bets. You just need to place them.
How we got caught out
The first bonus we ever claimed was something like a $200 deposit match. We thought we were geniuses. Free money, right?
We bet a chunk of it on a couple of NFL games that weekend, won about $350 total, and immediately tried to withdraw.
The sportsbook blocked the withdrawal and told us we had not met the rollover requirement.
Turns out there was a 10x rollover attached to that bonus which meant we needed to place $2,000 in total bets before we could touch any of it.
We had wagered maybe $400 at that point.
That is a pretty standard experience for first time bonus claimers and it is exactly why sportsbooks can afford to give away free money.
Most people either do not meet the rollover or lose the bonus balance trying to get there.
What to look for
Before you claim any sportsbook bonus go find the rollover number in the terms. We cannot stress this enough.
A 1x rollover is a no brainer because you are basically just betting the bonus once and you are done.
We have seen those and grabbed them every single time.
A 5x rollover we will usually take if we were planning to bet that weekend anyway.
Once you get above 10x we start getting skeptical because you end up forcing bets just to clear the requirement and that is when you make bad decisions.
Time limits are the other thing that catches people.
We had a bonus expire on us once because the book gave us 14 days to clear a 10x rollover and we just could not get there in time.
Check the deadline before you opt in.
Our approach now
We read the terms on every bonus before we claim it. If the rollover is reasonable and we can clear it through bets we would have been making anyway then we take it.
If clearing it means we have to start betting on random Tuesday night NBA games just to hit the number then we leave it alone.
Not every bonus is worth taking and we wish someone had told us that when we started.
