vinylweatherman
You type well loads
- Joined
- Oct 14, 2004
- Location
- United Kingdom
A bonus does cost the casino money - even if you lose. Often somewhere around 10 - 20% of any bonus a casino gives to you (depending on the provider and above an agreed threshold). So if you get a bonus of 100 euros and lose, the casino has to pay a percentage of that to the games provider.
You're right about progressives of course, the progressive percentage goes into the jackpot fund and is payable to the network so that they can cover the cost of the big win.
That's the reason many casinos are (misguidedly IMO) afraid of giving decent bonuses and freebies to players.
That's ridiculous! It creates a problem for players. This should all be covered in the licensing fee for the software. What incentives individual operators give to players is none of their business. This may even fall foul of cartel and price fixing rules, as the software provider is restricting the ability of competing operators to compete through offering deposit incentives. It is possible that the EU courts will eventually get around to looking at these kinds of arrangements once they have sorted out their position on remote gambling. This is a "cookie jar" that may end up getting confiscated from the operators. Many firms, such as Apple and Microsoft, have found themselves in trouble with the EU over arrangements designed to restrict the freedoms of their product vendors to offer whatever discounts and incentives they want. Microsoft lost a case where they were requiring all PC builders to bundle Internet Explorer with every Windows OS they shipped out. Now, Microsoft have to suffer a compulsory setup option called "browser choice" that ships with every PC and forces the user to make a concious decision as to which browser they want to have installed by default.
I really fail to see why operators have to send the software provider a cut of any bonus they grant to a player. This is not revenue, such as deposits from players. If a shop gives me a free BluRay player for buying the latest Sony TV, do they have to send Sony 10% of the cost of the free BluRay player? I very much doubt it, and doubt it would even be legal under EU trade rules. It would be how competing retailers get customers to buy the TV from them, rather than their competitor.
With the above, surely an operator that gives incentives other than bonuses would save 10-20% of the costs as they would not have to pay the software vendor a cent. It would also allow them to explore a new way of attracting players than the bog standard bonus.