Betting Sites Bonuses Australia

Bonus bets have long been a common way for Australian betting sites to entice and retain customers. While there have been legal restrictions brought in over the past few years which regulate what kind of Australian betting promotions are allowed – with the specifics differing from state to state – bookmakers can still offer plenty of different promos for their punters. On this page, our experts at AustralianBettingSites.net.au take a look at some of the betting bonuses you’ll find with Aussie bookies, which sites offer the best selection of them, and more.

Best Betting Sites with Bonuses and Promotions 

Betting bonus offers can generally be placed into one of two categories; sports betting promotions, and horse racing promotions. In this section, we will take a look at some of the sports offers you’ll find with Australian betting sites.

Betting bonuses are constantly changing, but there are nonetheless certain promos which are very common with particular sites. Perhaps the most common sports betting promotions that you’ll come across with most Aussie bookies relate to same game multis. Though the specifics of these bonus bet offers vary, generally they will be offering money back in the form of bonus bets if you miss by a certain number of legs. For example, some betting sites might give you free bets if a three-leg multi misses by one leg, a five-leg multi misses by two legs and so on. 

Another common sports betting bonus type is the early payout. Again, the specifics of this will vary, but it will generally involve a betting site paying out head-to-head bets if a team is winning by a certain amount at any point in the match, or at half-time. For example, it might be for AFL betting that if the team you’ve bet on is up by 30 points at any point in the match, you’ll be paid out as a winner regardless of the end result, or you might be paid out if your team is leading by 12 points or more at half-time.   

Horse racing betting is obviously a major focus of many Australian betting sites, so it’s no surprise that there are plenty of horse racing promos out there. Most sites will offer some betting promos throughout the year, but come the big events there are significantly more – there are always plenty of Australian betting promotions relating to Melbourne Cup betting, for example.

Betting sites bonuses for horse racing clearly varies across different sites and at different times of the year, but easily the most common one is money back as bonus bets for finishing within the first few runners. For example, it may be that if you bet on a runner to win the race, you’ll receive your stake back as bonus bets if the runner fails to win, but finishes in the top three.

This is certainly the most common horse racing promotion, but there are others that pop up from time to time. One, for example, might see you paid out as a winner if your runner finishes within a head of the winner, while another that you could come across is known as a ‘protest payout’, which sees your bet paid out if your horse is first past the post, only to subsequently lose on a protest.

Though betting sites bonuses are continually changing, there are certain Australian bookmakers which regularly stand out as offering some of the best of them. From our research, these are the bookies with the best betting sites bonus offers.

There are various types of promos available in the Australian betting industry, and each betting site’s bonuses is different to the next. There are, however, some common bonus types, and though we can’t talk specifics, we’ve outlined some of those you may regularly come across below. 

Bet returns can come in a few different forms, but the concept is much the same. Basically, these can be sports betting bonuses or horse racing betting bonuses which see punters get their stake returned as bonus bets if their bet only just loses. For example, this may be if a runner finishes top three, or if a multi misses out by just a leg.

Odds boosts are one of the most common Australian betting promotions, and something that is relatively self-explanatory. Essentially, these see punters get higher odds for a certain market than they typically would, boosting the winning potential for the same outlay. 

A deposit bonus, as the name suggests, is when you get a bonus as a result of depositing funds with a certain betting site. For example, the promotion may be that you’ll get 50% of your next deposit as a bonus bet, so if you deposit $20 you will also get $10 in bonus bets. Some betting sites also offer no deposit bonuses, which is a similar concept but one which may be activated without the punter needing to deposit.

We mentioned odds boosts in the above section, but given they are one of the most common betting bonuses that you’ll come across, we thought it appropriate to give a little more information about how they work.

Typically, betting sites will either offer automatic odds boosts for certain markets, or they will leave it more in the hands of the punter – giving them a couple of odds boosts per day to use at their own discretion, for example.

The extent of the boost varies, but as mentioned, don’t be expecting your odds to double. Instead, you’ll receive a small percentage increase in the odds; for example, a market which was paying $2.30 might be boosted to $2.50, meaning if you bet $10 and it wins you’ll receive $25 back instead of $23.

While some betting bonuses can be beneficial to punters, there are a few rules surrounding them that it is important to be aware of. The most common of these is the turnover requirement, which can cause a surprise if you attempt to immediately withdraw winnings which came from a bonus bet.

Typically, betting sites will require that if you do win money using free bets or bonus bets, it needs to be turned over before it can be withdrawn. Essentially this means that you have to bet those winnings before you can take them out of your betting account.

No worries, you might think – I’ll just chuck it all on a $1.01 favourite and be on my way. Unfortunately, this is not usually an option. Turnover requirements differ across betting sites but there will almost always be a minimum odds requirement – if it’s $1.25, for example, that means that you need to bet your winnings from bonus bets on a market with odds of $1.25 or higher before you can withdraw those funds. This is important to know because it essentially adds another layer of security for the betting sites, and can make it that little bit harder to actually transform your bonus bets into cold hard cash.

There have been a lot of laws brought in surrounding Australian betting promotions in recent years, primarily about how they are advertised. In the past, betting sites bonuses would be blatantly promoted, but no longer are bookmakers allowed to use them as a means to entice customers to the site. What this essentially means is that you cannot go promotion-hunting, taking a look at all the different bonuses on offer with different sites and signing up with the one offering the best promos. Instead, you can only check promotions if you are a signed up, logged in customer.

Another law which has significantly changed the types of promos offered relates to the sign-up bonus. Previously, sign-up betting promotions were everywhere, with nearly all betting sites offering them – and advertising them hard. But not only are they no longer allowed to advertise these promos; betting sites are no longer even allowed to have sign-up bonuses. As we have outlined, there are still plenty of different promo types out there, but bonus bets on sign up are not one of them.

Betting Bonuses FAQs

Below, we take a look at some of the most frequently asked questions that we get about bonus bets in Australia.