Game Weighting: Why £10 on Blackjack Clears £1 of Wagering

How a contribution rate works

A wagering requirement is cleared by qualifying turnover, and each game category carries a percentage that says how much of a stake placed on it counts towards that turnover. A game contributing at 100 per cent passes every pound of stake through to the requirement. One contributing at 10 per cent passes ten pence of each pound. One contributing at zero passes nothing at all, and may also be an excluded game, which is a different thing again — an excluded game can breach the terms rather than merely fail to progress them.

The arithmetic is the headline multiple divided by the contribution rate. At a requirement of ten times a £50 bonus, the qualifying turnover is £500. Placed on a category contributing in full, that is £500 of stakes. Placed on a category contributing at 10 per cent, the same requirement needs £5,000 of stakes to clear, because only a tenth of each stake counts. The requirement did not change; the turnover behind it multiplied by ten.

Those rates are illustrative, not standard. Contribution tables are set by each operator for each offer, categories are drawn differently between licensees, and a figure quoted on a comparison page is a snapshot of one offer's terms. There is no industry table to consult.

Where the percentages are published, and why they have to be

Contribution is part of the terms of the incentive, and the terms of an incentive are regulated. Social responsibility code provision 5.1.1 of the Licence Conditions and Codes of Practice requires a licensee to set out terms and conditions in relation to an incentive which are clear, transparent, fair and readily accessible. The same provision caps wagering requirements at ten times the bonus funds, in force from 19 January 2026.

The Commission's treatment of significant terms is the more specific part. Significant terms and conditions are the key restrictions applying to a promotion, and the Commission's list of them includes who is excluded from the offer, time limitations, how to qualify, maximum stake size and the wagering requirement. The expectation goes directly to the subject of this page: operators are expected to explain that some games do not qualify for a bonus, and that contributions to wagering requirements vary between games, with a clear link to the details.

So the contribution table is not optional small print the operator may bury. It is the detail the significant terms are required to point at. Where it is genuinely hard to find, that is a failure against the accessibility requirement in 5.1.1 and against the transparency requirement in licence condition 7.1.1, which requires the terms on which gambling is offered to be transparent within the meaning of the Consumer Rights Act 2015 and available in an easily accessible way.

Reading a table properly

Four things in a contribution table change the answer, and three of them are easy to miss.

• The category boundaries. Whether live dealer sits with table games or in a category of its own, and whether jackpot slots are separated from the rest, changes the rate that applies to the same evening of play.
• Excluded games. A zero contribution and an exclusion look similar in a table and behave very differently. Playing a zero-rated game typically makes no progress; playing an excluded game can void the bonus under the terms.
• The maximum stake while a requirement is live. A cap on the stake per spin during wagering is a separate term, and it determines how long a given turnover takes to place.
• The expiry period. Turnover that has to be placed inside a fixed window interacts with everything above: a high turnover requirement at a low contribution rate and a short expiry can be arithmetically out of reach.

Why the capped multiple made the table more important, not less

Before January 2026 the multiple itself was the dominant variable, and a figure of 35 or 65 told most of the story. With the ceiling at ten, the spread between offers has moved into the contribution rates, the excluded lists and the stake caps. Two offers can now both advertise the same permitted multiple and ask for turnover that differs by an order of magnitude. The multiple is no longer the comparison; the table is.