Rollover: what a wagering requirement actually asks of you

A wagering requirement is a total amount that must be staked before a bonus balance can be withdrawn. A bonus of 100 at 5x rollover requires 500 of settled stakes, not 500 of losses and not five winning bets — the same 100 recycled five times satisfies it exactly as well as five separate hundreds do, provided the bets settle.

The requirement exists because a bonus with no condition is a withdrawal with extra steps. Expressing it as turnover rather than as time or as a number of bets means the cost to the operator is bounded by their own margin: every unit staked returns them their hold, so a large enough turnover pays for the bonus out of arithmetic rather than out of hope that you lose.

It does not mean losing bets count for less. Rollover counts stakes, not results, so a losing bet contributes its full stake to the requirement — which is why the requirement is completed by people who have lost the money it was attached to. Nor does it usually count every market: minimum prices, excluded sports and reduced contribution rates are separate clauses.

What follows from that is less comfortable. The multiplier is read and the exclusions are not. A 5x requirement that only counts bets above a minimum price, at a reduced rate on some markets, and not at all on others, is arithmetically a much larger multiplier — and the number in the advert is the one nobody argues about.

What to do with it. Multiply the bonus by the rollover, multiply that by the market's margin, and subtract. If the answer is not obviously worth the constraints, the bonus is a reason to bet more rather than a reason to be better off.