Blackjack Welcome Bonus at Virgin Casino

[OllieW]

LATEST NEWS AT VIRGIN GAMES - BLACKJACK, WHO WANTS TO BE A MILLIONAIRE + MONTHLY POKER PROMOTION

Hi All,
There’s loads going on at Virgin Games this week: a new Blackjack welcome bonus, Who Wants To Be A Millionaire bingo banners and a new monthly poker promotion. Take a look…

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VIRGIN CASINO NEWS

NEW BLACKJACK WELCOME BONUS

Blackjack players typically get a rough deal when it comes to incentives to play online. Well, no longer at Virgin Casino. We have introduced a tasty 50% sign up bonus up to £50 for our new blackjack players. These players will need to enter the code BLACKJACK50 upon registration.

Banners promoting this offer are currently available on the affiliate website in the casino marketing tools section.

IMPORTANT – you will need to point these banners to the blackjack splashpage so that your players can clearly see the promotional code. Select ‘Splashpage – Blackjack bonus’ on the target drop down box when picking up your code
Advanced users: Add URL=349 to the end of your standard tracking link

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VIRGIN BINGO NEWS

WHO WANTS TO BE A HAIRY BEAR

Whatever you call the hugely successful television quiz game, Virgin Bingo and Virgin Casino now serve the hugely successful Electracade Slot game "Who
Wants to be a Millionaire".

We have a range of GIF banners available in the 'Bingo Marketing Tools' > 'Banners' section. The game has a selection of special features including Wilds
and Free Spins.

VIRGIN BINGO IS BACK ON THE BOX!

Virgin Bingo is advertising on TV again. From 28/03/11 to 08/04/11. Free Bingo is available to all Virgin Bingo players during 4pm – 7pm. Traffic across all acquisition sources typically shoots up by 20% when we run TV ads, so make sure to give us prime exposure this week to enjoy the halo effect.

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VIRGIN POKER NEWS

MONTHLY CHAMPIONSHIPS OF POKER

We are delighted to announce we are running a huge monthly network
promotion which runs up to, and including, June. There is a huge €640,000
in guaranteed prize money with huge potential for overlay so this is a great
chance to pick up some more poker players.

When taking up this promotion please target your tracking links to the ‘promotions page’ in the target drop down box.

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Ollie Wilson
Casino Acquisition Manager | Virgin Games

Winner “Affiliate Program of the Year” EGR Awards 2010
Winner “Affiliate Program of the Year” EGR Awards 2009
Winner “Best Bingo Affiliate Manager” CAP Awards 2009
Winner “Best Casino and Gaming Affiliate Program” A4U Awards 2008

[Vladi]

Why even bother with a 125x deposit wagering requirement on the blackjack bonus?

That is not fun, its torture.

[KasinoKing]

Why even bother with a 125x deposit wagering requirement on the blackjack bonus?

That's INSANE!
As would be any players who claimed it...

KK

[OllieW]

Hi there,

In reply to comments about this bonus. I do see where you're coming from but giving bonuses on blackjack is a tricky one - the theoretical hold on blackjack is so small (just 0.5%) there isn't the scope to be very generous here. (Players will also accrue V*POINTS with us when playing Blackjack).

In comparison the theoretical hold on slots is typically 4-5% so clearly there's more room to play with.

We run a risk assessment on all our bonuses and looking at the maths this is a sensible bonus amount and players have started to sign up using this bonus.

Cheers
Ollie

[Vladi]

The problem is that the only people who are going to take it up are either a) stupid or b) the ones who don't read the fine print and are going to be mighty annoyed when they find out how much they have to wager (£12,500 on a £50 bonus ... come on 250x the bonus is ridiculous). No bonus whore would even touch it as its -EV as you intended.

I know my maths too and you have gone above and beyond here with 50% at 125x deposit wagering. At 99.5% return that you quoted, the breakeven point is 200x the bonus (not 250x), no matter what the bonus percentage is.

So these are all equivalent from an EV perspective:
- 10% bonus at 20x deposit required
- 25% bonus at 50x deposit
- 50% bonus at 100x deposit

I know which one sounds a whole lot more reasonable, but obviously doesn't sound as juicy to the marketing department. So again we come back round to the point ... "why bother"? Its a pointless promotion from an affiliate's point of view - at least for an affiliate that tries to give players proper information.

Why not try something a little more innovative instead of offering an unreasonable bonus like every single other casino in existence? Try doubling the comp earnings rate (or whatever is cost effective), or give them entries into a competition for every £x wagered? You're Virgin for goodness sake, I'm sure you can think of something.

[OllieW]

Hi Vladi,

Thanks for your informed views on this.

This is the very first time we’ve offered a BJ welcome bonus to cater for BJ players, we’re still testing take up and feedback on this.

Some affiliates have taken up and posted the offer already and some players have signed up with this offer, but clearly it’s your right to dislike it. In fact we’re grateful for any thoughtful feedback like this.

First cut might seem rather conservative from your perspective, but bear in mind if a player completes the maximum bonus (wagering £12,500) we would make, in theory, just £6.25 in gross revenue with over 90% of the theoretical hold going to the player in bonuses and V*POINTS and if an affiliate brought this player on they would receive around only £2.

That said if the data we gather from players using the bonus code shows there is scope to improve the offer we certainly will.

In a nutshell, it will be optimised further on down the line if needs be, but in the meantime we believe it’s still a step – not a leap - towards our goal of offering a broad range of bonuses to cater for every type of player out there.

Our promotions team would be happy to have a chat with you though, PM me if you’re interested, I’ll put you guys in touch.

Cheers
Ollie