The world of promotions is vastly different between online casinos and land-based casinos with two important exceptions: the free chip promotion and the comp points promotion. You see, land-based casinos can give players actual free chips and online casinos can give free chips virtually, and both types of casinos can offer comp points.
Slots Play Casinos will talk a bit later about the great advantage players have receiving comp points at an online casino over getting comp points at a land-based casino.
Free Chips through Slots Play Casinos
Slots Play Casinos has arranged for many of their recommended casinos to offer free chips to readers of SPC. Many online casinos offer free chips and call them a no deposit bonus.
Experienced online casino gamers are aware that both free chips and no deposit bonuses are smaller than promotions with deposit bonuses and free spins.
Now we can delve a bit more deeply into why online casinos have such a wide range of promotions while land-based casinos are often relegated to for the most part giving away free alcohol, free food, sometimes free hotel accommodations, and even less often free tickets to the shows.
Online Casino Gamers are “in it” for the Long Run
There are many promotions that online casinos offer that run for a week or even longer. A casino might run a series of deposit bonuses that gamers can take as they need to. Here is where the wagering requirement puts the advantage in the online casino court and leaves land-based casinos high and dry.
What is the Wagering Requirement?
This is a factor of a deposit bonus the gamer has to bet before he or she can withdraw winnings. The reason the wagering requirement was implemented is that in the beginning online casinos were offering deposit bonuses and a number of gamers took the bonus and cashed out immediately.
Now, all deposit bonuses have a wagering requirement. Since online casinos can offer bonuses of $1000 or more, a 30x wagering requirement means that the garner has to wager $30,000 before taking winnings out.
Now, $30,000 might seem like a lot but over time it is not so difficult to do. The point is that players at land-based casinos don’t have the time to work off a wagering requirement and that means that land-based casinos cannot offer deposit bonuses to average players.
Who Can Get a Deposit Bonus at a Land-based Casino?
High rollers can because high rollers can bet $30,000 in a long weekend! Even though the average player at a land-based casino over a long weekend might bet too much in such a short period of time, they don’t usually get anywhere near to betting $30,000 over a three-day long weekend.
Online Casinos Offer Many Tournaments
This is another family of promotions that land-based casinos cannot match. Most tournaments are in slots. Here we are not talking about formal poker tournaments which work well at land-based casinos since the players all know that if they win their first table or tables they will be at the tournament for a long time and are able to plan for it.
Slots tournaments are a different animal altogether!
How are Slots Tournaments so Different?
To put it simply, land-based casinos cannot accommodate all of the players in an average slots tournament. They have space restrictions. A tournament with players at, say, 20 terminals is no real tournament!
Secondly, and more importantly, online casinos can run tournaments with low buy-in fees or no buy-in fee at all and can accommodate thousands of gamers! It costs the online casino nothing—or very, very little—to sponsor a free roll slots tournament. No land-based casino can afford to allow their valuable slots terminals to be turned over to a tournament!
Online Casinos Run New Game and Game of the Month Promotions
These usually combine a deposit bonus, or a series of deposit bonuses, with some free spins. Some casinos can give as many as 100 free spins in such a promotion.
Here we have arrived at another major benefit that obtains at online casinos. This is the “New Game”. Online casinos can bring in one or more new games, mostly slots, every month. This is because online casinos have no space restrictions. A land-based casino that wants to bring in ten terminals of a new slot has to take something out!
In this case, the casino would take out the least popular slots based on the last month’s or two month’s player activity. This means that online casinos can carry “classic” slots that just a few gamers like while land-based casinos need as many slots as possible to have high player volume!
The Main Promotions at Land-based Casinos Cost Players Dearly
These are the free alcohol and free food promotions. Almost any player who spends some time on the casino floor will be able to get a free drink. Alcohol reduces inhibitions and it also reduces one’s cognitive ability and agility.
This leads to players making poor bets at land-based casinos after they have had as few as two free drinks. Some players start to get wobbly after just one drink! Players at blackjack or video poker have to be tremendously alert at all times and alcohol makes that next to impossible.
Free food makes players tired. The free food is always at the buffet and people tend to wildly overeat at a buffet. So, a player stops to eat at the buffet and then returns to the casino floor and is too tired to make good decisions. The free food won’t put a player to sleep but it will make them drowsy as their bodies devote a lot of energy to digesting the huge meal they have just eaten!
Finally, We Can Speak about Comp Points
This is a promotion that players at both online casinos and land-based casinos receive. The difference is that online casino gamers can use the comp points in the end while land-based casino players often leave a lot of money in comp points sitting in a drawer at home!
Online casino gamers can redeem their comp points whenever the points are high enough while a land-based casino player has to actually be at the casino to redeem their comp points and many players don’t return to the same casino in a year or more.
Does anyone remember the corona virus? We wonder how many players’ cards with a lot of points accumulated on them just sat in drawers for two or more years!
Online Promotions Add a Lot to Gamers’ Fun
The main attraction and the main promotion at good online ascension is FUN in responsible moderation. After all, a gamer can always come back to the casino the next day, two days dozen, or even a week or longer. Players at land-based casinos usually play once or twice a year for three days and that’s it.
For players at land-based casinos, the requisite moderation often flies out the window which, by the way, there are none of at land-based casinos!
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