Rollover Requirements: What Playthrough Really Costs

A rollover requirement costs you the hold on every dollar of turnover you push through the promo book, multiplied by the odds on your promo leg. The multiple itself, the 5x or the 15x in the terms, tells you how much you have to bet. It says nothing about what the betting will cost. Two deposit matches with identical rollover requirements can differ by hundreds of dollars in what actually reaches your bank account, and the difference is decided by prices, not by the offer.

Below is the arithmetic, and a calculator to run your own offer through it. Deposit matches are new customer offers, so each sportsbook is available to you once. Every figure on this page is a worked example from the inputs shown, not a typical or expected result, and the prices you find will give you different answers.

Pricing Your Playthrough

Enter the bonus you have to clear, drag the rollover multiple, and set the two prices you would use to generate the turnover. Watch the effective conversion rate at the bottom against the rate SmartStake's own Promo Recommender assumes for a deposit match. At these prices the two meet at 4x, and the bonus is entirely gone by 16x.

The defaults describe one illustrative offer, not a typical one. A 1,000 dollar bonus with a 5x rollover, cleared with a +200 leg at the promo book hedged against −220 elsewhere. The two prices add up to 102.08 percent, so the pair holds 2.08 percent, and on those inputs the whole playthrough costs about 312 dollars, leaving roughly 688 of the 1,000. Change any one of the four inputs and that figure moves a long way.

What a Rollover Requirement Is

A rollover requirement, also called playthrough or a bonus wagering requirement, is the total stake a sportsbook demands before it converts bonus funds into a withdrawable balance. It is written as a multiple of something, and the something matters.

Most books quote it against the bonus. SmartStake reads it that way too: a Promo Recommender card prints the requirement as the rollover multiplied by the promo value, so a 5x on a 1,000 dollar bonus shows up as a 5,000 dollar Rollover figure on the card. Some books instead compute it on deposit plus bonus, which on a matched 1,000 dollar deposit doubles the turnover to 10,000 and halves everything this guide calculates. Read the terms before you trust any multiple.

Here is the thing most explainers skip. A rollover is a turnover target, not a charge. Nobody deducts 5,000 dollars from you. You have to make 5,000 dollars of qualifying bets settle, and what those bets cost is entirely up to you.

Why Stake and Payout Differ

The cheapest way to move money through a book without betting on an outcome is to back both sides of the same market at two different books, at prices that barely overlap. That is low hold betting, and the gap between the two prices is the hold.

Hold is a share of the payout. If two prices have implied probabilities summing to 102 percent, the pair costs 2 percent of what it pays out. The rollover clock, though, counts the stake you placed at the promo book, and payout is stake multiplied by decimal odds. So the cost of one qualifying dollar is not the hold. It is the hold multiplied by the promo leg odds:

cost per qualifying dollar = hold × promo leg decimal odds

Run the default numbers. A 2.08 percent hold at decimal 3.00 gives 6.25 cents per qualifying dollar. Check it the long way: stake 100 at +200, hedge 206.25 at −220, and whichever side wins the payout is 300. You put up 306.25 and get back 300. The 6.25 dollars you lost is 6.25 percent of the 100 that counted toward the rollover.

That one multiplication is the whole article. Everything below follows from it.

The Cost of Longer Odds

Because the promo leg odds sit in that formula, the same hold gets steadily more expensive as the promo leg lengthens. This table holds the cost fixed at 2.5 cents per qualifying dollar and asks what hold you would need at each price to hit it:

A 0.83 percent two way hold is rare. A 1.67 percent hold is ordinary. So the same requirement that is routine to clear at −200 becomes a hunt at +400, and the offer never changed.

This is worth pausing on, because it runs opposite to the advice for a different promo type. Converting a stake-not-returned free bet rewards long odds, since you keep more of the face value the longer the price. Clearing a playthrough rewards short odds, since the clock counts stake and the hold scales with payout. Use the free bet converter logic on a free bet and this logic on a rollover, and do not mix them up.

The Assumed Conversion Rate

SmartStake carries an opinion about all this in code. Its promo type table assigns a deposit match a conversion multiplier of 0.75, and that number drives the expected value the Promo Recommender prints on every deposit match card. The product is asserting that a typical deposit match returns about 75 cents on the bonus dollar.

Turn that into a constraint. If you retain a fraction of the bonus equal to one minus the total cost, and the total cost is the rollover multiple times the cost per qualifying dollar, then:

retained = 1 − (rollover × cost per qualifying dollar)

For that to equal 0.75, the product of the rollover and your per dollar cost has to be 0.25. So the 75 percent is not a constant at all. It is a bet on a product of two numbers, and it holds in a band:

Drag the calculator to 4x and the effective rate lands on 75.0 percent exactly, because 4 multiplied by 6.25 cents is the 25 cents the assumption spends. That is the offer the product has in mind.

At 5x you still have room. At 25x you need a 1 percent cost per qualifying dollar, which at −110 means finding roughly a 0.5 percent hold on every pair, repeatedly. The assumption is generous at low multiples and optimistic at high ones. Treat the expected value on a card as a starting estimate for the offer class, then price your specific offer with the calculator above.

Where the Bonus Runs Out

There is a rollover multiple at which the playthrough costs the entire bonus. Set retained to zero and it falls straight out:

break even rollover = 1 ÷ cost per qualifying dollar

At the default 6.25 cents that is 16x. Past 16x, at those prices, the turnover costs more than the bonus is worth and the offer is not worth taking on the terms you can actually execute. At a tighter 2 percent cost per dollar the same break even moves out past 50x, and almost any offer clears.

That single division is the fastest triage available on a promo. Price one representative pair, divide 1 by the cost, and compare against the multiple in the terms. If the terms are close to your break even, the offer is decoration.

Where the Model Breaks

The arithmetic above is clean because it assumes a clean world. Four things bend it, and being honest about them is what makes the estimate usable.

Bonus funds are not cash. Many deposit matches release site credit that drains as you bet it, rather than sitting behind a pure cash turnover counter. SmartStake's own promo guide reflects this: its deposit match flow tells you to repeat the low hold bet until either the bonus balance is zero or the rollover is met, which are two different exit conditions. Whichever fires first ends the job.

Minimum odds restrict your choices. A term requiring −200 or longer on qualifying bets removes the cheapest short priced legs from the table, and that is precisely where playthrough is cheapest. Check the minimum odds on the card before pricing the offer.

Turnover may count the deposit too. As above, a requirement computed on deposit plus bonus doubles the work on a full match.

Execution can fail. A limited or rejected stake, a suspended market, a voided leg or a push all break the pairing, and an account limit can end the workflow entirely partway through a large playthrough. Matched bets are never truly without risk, and a bonus with an expiry date adds time pressure to all of it.

Clearing It in Practice

The workflow is short once the pricing is settled.

1. Price the offer first. Use the calculator above, or the low hold calculator for a single pair, before you deposit anything.
2. Check the multiple against your break even. One divided by your realistic cost per qualifying dollar. If the terms are near it, skip the offer.
3. Pick a hedge book that will take the other side. Which book you use is a real decision, covered in choosing a hedge book.
4. Generate turnover in short priced pairs. The Promo Converter at /app/promo-converter surfaces the low hold pairs, and the same line shopping habit that finds a best price finds a tight pair.
5. Track what it cost. Log the pairs so the realised cost per qualifying dollar can be compared against the estimate on the next offer.

The step by step version, screenshots included, is in how to convert deposit match promotions. The Promo Recommender walkthrough covers where the Rollover figure on each card comes from, and sportsbook sign up promotions 101 covers the offer types.

Frequently Asked Questions

What is a rollover requirement? A rollover requirement is the total amount you have to wager before a sportsbook lets you withdraw bonus funds. It is quoted as a multiple, so a 5x rollover on a 1,000 dollar bonus means 5,000 dollars of qualifying bets have to settle before the money unlocks. It is a turnover target, not a fee, which is why the multiple alone tells you nothing about what clearing it costs.

How much does a rollover requirement cost to clear? The cost is the hold on each pair of bets you use, multiplied by the odds on the leg at the promo book, multiplied by the total turnover required. At a 2 percent hold with a +200 promo leg, every dollar of qualifying turnover costs about 6.25 cents, so a 5x rollover on a 1,000 dollar bonus costs roughly 312 dollars of the 1,000 to clear. Different prices give a very different answer.

Why do longer odds make a rollover more expensive? The rollover clock counts the stake you place at the promo book, while the hold is a share of the payout. Payout is stake multiplied by the decimal odds, so the same hold costs more per dollar of qualifying turnover as the odds get longer. A 2 percent hold costs about 3.8 cents per qualifying dollar at −110 and about 6 cents at +200. Short promo legs clear playthrough more cheaply.

Is a deposit match worth taking with a high rollover? It depends entirely on the rollover multiple and the hold you can find, not on the size of the bonus. Divide 1 by your cost per dollar of qualifying turnover to get the rollover multiple at which the playthrough consumes the whole bonus. At 6.25 cents per dollar that break even sits near 16x, so a 20x offer at those prices is worth less than nothing while a 5x offer at the same prices keeps most of the bonus.

What does playthrough betting mean? Playthrough betting is placing the bets that satisfy a bonus wagering requirement. The aim is not to win those bets. The aim is to move money through the promo book as cheaply as possible, which usually means backing both sides of a market at two books so the outcome barely matters and only the small gap between the two prices is spent.

The Bottom Line

A rollover requirement is a turnover target whose price you set yourself. Multiply the hold on your pairs by the odds on your promo leg to get the cost of one qualifying dollar, multiply that by the required turnover, and subtract it from the bonus. Divide 1 by that same per dollar cost and you have the multiple at which the offer stops being worth taking.

Price the offer before you deposit. Run yours through the calculator at the top of this page, then open the low hold calculator to check the pairs you plan to clear it with.