“Bonus bets” are the preferred promotional currency for almost every U.S. sports betting app these days. And if you’re getting started on your North Carolina sports betting journey — which opens its pre-registration window Friday, March 1, and launches actual betting on Monday, March 11 — you may have some questions.
We don’t have all the NC offers yet, but we’ll update this piece when we do. And the mechanics of the bonus bets will function the same in North Carolina as in all other states.
What to Know About Bonus Bets
- At all sportsbooks, bonus bets are like a site credit in which you keep any profit from those wagers, but not the stake of the bet itself. So if you place a $10 bonus bet wager on North Carolina +120 against Duke, you would profit $12 if UNC wins, but you wouldn’t keep the $10 like a normal cash bet. If UNC loses, the bonus bet just goes away.
- Bonus bets can’t be withdrawn or transferred. They must be bet, and then you can withdraw the ensuing cash if your wager wins.
- They expire in seven days at most sportsbooks, but we’ll detail some specifics below.
- Bonus bets almost always appear in your betslip before submitting your bet, so when you go to place a bet, you’ll have the option to bet cash from your account, or use a bonus bet.
- They come back in different increments depending on the sportsbook, which we’ll also detail below. Most books split them up for you (at BetMGM you can back six, $25 bonus bets with their current welcome offer).
- At most sportsbooks, you can use the bonus bets on just about anything — straight bets, parlays, futures, etc. (Bally Bet in New York is one exception I know of, in which you can’t use bonus bets from your sign-up offer on parlays, only straight bets).
FanDuel’s Bonus Bets
The big advantage of FanDuel’s bonus bets is that they can be split up into any increment. So if you get $150 in bonus bets, you can make 150, $1 wagers or one, $150 wager. And everything in between.
FanDuel’s bonus bets do expire in seven days.
DraftKings
DraftKings bonus bets come back in pre-split increments — with a $200 sign-up offer, you’ll get back eight, $25 bonus bets. They also expire in seven days.
bet365
bet365’s bonus bets didn’t use to expire, but they changed it to a seven-day expiration earlier this year.
Like FanDuel, you can split the bonus bets up to any increment. So if you have $100, you can make one $5 wager, then a $10 wa♛ger, then an $85 wager.
Caesars Sportsbook
Caesars, with its national offer, has one pretty big quirk with bonus bets. If your first bet on the house loses, you’ll be refunded in one big bonus bet, equal to what you lost.
That offer is up to $1,000, so if you bet $1,000 on the Warriors +130 against the Knicks and lose, you’ll get back one $1,000 bonus bets. So you only have one chance to redeem your cash; if that second bet loses, you’re left with nothing.
You do have 14 days to use that bonus bet, though, so you have a little more room to 🅰be patie♊nt and find a bet you really like.
BetMGM
BetMGM will refund you in pre-set increments, and they eꦦxpire in seven days.
Depending on the offer, the increments may be different. When they were running a $200 bonus bet promo last year, you got back five, $40 bonus bets. For their $158 Super Bowl offer, you got three bonus bets — $50, $50 and $58.
If you do the first bet on the house and lose, your bonus bets will come back in five increments — so if you lose $500, you’ll get back five, $100 bonus bets.
