What a “bonus buy” really means for an Australian player

A bonus buy is one of the clearest changes the online slot industry has made in the last decade. Instead of spinning a base game and waiting — sometimes for hundreds of spins — for a bonus round to land, a player pays a fixed multiple of the stake and walks straight into the feature. The mechanic is built into the math of the slot, not added on top of it: the cost of buying the bonus is calibrated so that, on average, the player receives the same long-run return they would have received by triggering the feature organically. The advertised appeal is convenience. The actual appeal, in marketing language that the math immediately undercuts, is the same as a lottery ticket with a smaller house margin: a known price for a known shot.

This page is written for an Australian reader weighing that trade-off. What is unusual here, compared with most slot topics, is that the choice itself is partially foreclosed. The Interactive Gambling Act 2001 (IGA), strengthened by the Interactive Gambling Amendment Act 2017, makes it an offence to provide online casino games — and that includes online pokies — to a person physically in Australia. No state or territory issues a licence for the product. Bonus buy online slot play therefore exists in Australia only on offshore sites that are operating outside Australian law, that hold no Australian licence, and that the Australian Communications and Media Authority (ACMA) has been progressively blocking since 2019. The licensed land-based pokie that sits in a pub or club in any state does not have a bonus buy button.

The page below treats the subject on those terms. It sets out what the feature is and how it works, then moves to what the Australian regulatory frame actually says, what kind of help exists if the topic ever starts to feel heavy, what offshore “bonus offers” usually look like when they show up at the deposit page, and a roster of eleven brands the ACMA has acted against. It does not recommend a place to play. The product the page describes is not licensable onshore, and naming offshore sites as if they were a buyer’s shortlist is exactly the framing the regulator is working to undo.

Current as of 28 October 2026 — figures and licence claims checked against the Australian Communications and Media Authority’s published formal-warning notices.

The eleven brands the ACMA has acted against

The table below lists eleven brands that the ACMA has publicly warned under the Interactive Gambling Act 2001. Each row is a warning the regulator itself issued, naming the operator behind the brand and the date the notice was published. “Subject support” reflects what independent listings carry for that brand’s relationship to the bonus-buy feature specifically, not a claim by the brand itself. A dash in that column means the subject support is unknown from the consulted sources — it does not mean the brand does not carry the feature, and it does not mean it does.

The table is not a buyer’s guide. Every brand in it is on the ACMA’s published list for offering prohibited services to Australians. The Level Up, National and Casino Intense rows carry a “listings note” only because background directories (a provider page, a generalist reference page, a regulatory news page) happen to reference the brand in the context of bonus-buy content; that is not a licence claim and is not the operator speaking for itself. What the table establishes, simply by existing, is the breadth of the offshore trade in this product — eleven brands, several parent companies, and warning dates spanning 2022 through to April 2026.

RocketPlay — the most recent ACMA action on the list

RocketPlay is the brand the ACMA warned most recently, with a March 2026 notice naming Pulsup Ltd as the operator of RocketPlay. The same brand was caught up in an earlier May 2022 round of warnings when it sat under the Dama N.V. umbrella alongside Bambet, Dazard, Level Up, Wild Tornado and Cobra Casinos. Two warnings, four years apart, on the same brand through two different parent companies tells its own story about how the offshore market re-shells when the regulator lands on one corporate entity. Bonus-buy slot play is reported across many directories for this brand, but no Australian licence covers any of those titles, and a deposit to the site from inside Australia is a deposit to an unlicensed offshore operator.

Level Up Casino — listings context, no Australian licence

The May 2022 Dama N.V. warning covered Level Up Casino alongside five sister brands. Independent listings place the brand in the bonus-buy conversation; whether the feature is offered on every title or only on certain ones is not something the consulted sources pin down, and the brand itself is not the source a reader is being asked to trust on a topic where the regulator has already concluded the offering itself is prohibited. The same goes for every brand in the table with a “listings” cell: the listing reflects an external directory, not a verified offer.

Woo Casino and Spirit Casino — successive Dama N.V. warnings in 2025

The ACMA returned to Dama N.V. in 2025, with a March 2025 warning over Woo Casino and a May 2025 warning over Spirit Casino. Two more warnings to the same parent company, on the same legal grounds, on different brands. The pattern is consistent with what the regulator has been doing since 2019: as one brand is shut down or rebranded, the next surfaces under the same operator name. A reader comparing these two on the basis of warnings has nothing to choose between — both sit under Dama N.V., both are warned for offering prohibited services to Australians, and both are offshore sites with no Australian consumer-protection framework behind them.

National Casino and Bizzo Casino — two warnings to Consolutetish S.R.L. plus a 2022 history

The July 2025 round named Consolutetish S.R.L. as the operator of both National Casino and Bizzo Casino. Bizzo Casino, on top of that 2025 warning, had already been the subject of a 2022 formal warning to TechSolutions (CY) Group Limited and TechSolutions Group N.V., so this is the second time the same brand has come up under different corporate ownership. Two operators, two warnings, same brand — the same re-shelling pattern that runs through the Dama N.V. row.

Ignition Casino, Instant Casino, Jackbit, Casino Intense and Sky Crown

The remaining five brands spread across four different parent companies. Ignition Casino sits under Bamboo Media (July 2025); Instant Casino under EOD Code SRL (February 2025); Jackbit under Ryker B.V. (April 2026, alongside CasinOK); Casino Intense under Sterplay Holding Ltd (April 2025); and Sky Crown under Hollycorn N.V., with the September 2022 formal warning covering Sky Crown and Blue Leo together. Five distinct operators, five separate warning dates, and the same single offence under section of the IGA: providing a prohibited interactive gambling service to a person in Australia.

The picture the table paints

What the table says, taken as a whole, is that the ACMA’s enforcement effort is ongoing and broad. Eleven brands across the consulted period, most of them operating under parent companies that hold multiple brands, all warned for the same kind of conduct. A reader comparing “the best bonus buy slots Australia” against this list has the comparison handed to them in advance: any brand appearing in the table is one the regulator has already named. The comparison the table is set up to enable is not which of these to play at, but how widely the regulator’s action has spread.

Machines in the landscape

Online, the picture inverts. The licensed online wagering market — sports and racing bets placed before the event — is regulated, with the Northern Territory Racing and Wagering Commission (NTRWC) covering 52 of Australia’s online bookmakers including Sportsbet, Bet365 and Ladbrokes. The unlicensed offshore market is everything else. H2 Gambling Capital’s 2025 report estimates that Australians lose about A$3.9 billion a year to illegal gambling sites, and that the share of gambling going through legal channels has fallen from 74% in 2021 to 64%. The same report frames the offshore market as a meaningful share of the country’s gambling spend, which is part of why the ACMA’s blocking programme matters: it is aimed at a real, sized flow of money, not a marginal curiosity.

The point of laying out that wider landscape is so that the rest of the page makes sense. Bonus buy is a feature of online slots. Online slots, in Australia, are prohibited. Online slots, in Australia, are nevertheless being offered. The remainder of the page is the practical reading of that contradiction — what the regulator has done, what kind of recourse the player has, what an offshore “bonus” actually looks like, and which brands have already been named.

The mechanic itself: how bonus buy works on a slot

A bonus buy is a feature button, usually displayed alongside the spin button on an online slot, that lets the player pay a fixed multiple of their stake — commonly somewhere between 50x and 200x, depending on the title — and trigger the slot’s bonus round immediately. No waiting. The bonus round plays out as if it had been triggered organically. The reels spin, the free games or feature spins or hold-and-win mechanic runs, the round completes, and the resulting balance is added to the player’s account the same way it would be after any other spin sequence.

The math behind it is what makes the feature interesting rather than gimmicky. The slot’s overall return-to-player (RTP) percentage is a long-run average across a very large number of spins. When a developer adds a bonus buy, the bonus round’s contribution to that RTP is preserved. If a slot has an overall RTP of, say, 96%, and the base game contributes a lower return while the bonus round contributes a much higher one, the bonus buy price is set so that buying the bonus gives the player, on average, the same return they would have received by waiting for the bonus round to trigger naturally. In marketing language this is sometimes called “skippable variance” or “instant bonus” — both phrases that mean the same thing in plain English, which is that the player pays now to avoid the wait.

What that math also does, quietly, is keep the house edge. The slot’s RTP is still below 100% — typically in the 94%–96.5% range across modern titles, with the precise figure set by the developer and published in the game’s information panel. Buying the bonus does not tilt the math in the player’s favour; it just front-loads the variance. A long losing streak in the base game is replaced by a single, more concentrated exposure to the bonus round’s distribution. The expected loss over a large number of bonus buys converges to the same house edge as waiting. Buying is not an edge; it is a faster route to the same edge.

That is the engineering of the feature, and it is the honest framing. Some titles also expose more than one bonus round behind the buy button — a “bonus” tier and a “super bonus” tier, each at a different multiple — and the higher-priced tier typically gives access to a feature with higher variance and a wider payout range. The math is the same in shape; the price is different; the player’s experience is more concentrated.

Why regulators overseas have looked at the feature

Several overseas regulators have moved against bonus buy in recent years. The United Kingdom’s Gambling Commission restricted the feature on certain game types; the Netherlands’ regulator KSA has restricted it; the Swedish regulator Spelinspektionen has taken a position against it. The pattern, in each of those jurisdictions, is the same: the regulator treats the feature as a high-intensity product, with the potential to compress a session’s spend into a small number of large purchases, and asks the operator to either remove it, cap the buy price, or display clear risk warnings alongside the button.

The reason matters here because the Australian frame is different. Australian law does not have a regulator deciding whether bonus buy is a permissible feature of an otherwise licensed product, because the product itself — online slots — is not licensed onshore. The UK argument about bonus buy intensity is a debate within a regulated market. The Australian position is upstream of that debate: the product is prohibited regardless of whether it has a bonus buy button or not. Reading overseas regulator action as a signal that bonus buy is “about to be banned in Australia” gets the frame wrong — it is the entire product, not the feature, that the IGA addresses.

Where licensed Australian play sits

The licensed product an Australian player can legally access is the land-based pokie in a regulated venue: a pub, a club, or a casino. Casino floors in Melbourne and Sydney run table games — baccarat variants at Crown Melbourne, for example — but the licensed slot product is the physical machine. None of those machines has a bonus buy feature, because the feature is an online slot mechanic, and the physical machine’s bonus rounds are triggered by the symbol combination the reels land on. A reader searching for bonus buy has reached the edge of the licensed Australian market, by design.

What the Interactive Gambling Act 2001 actually says

The Interactive Gambling Act 2001, with its 2017 amendments, prohibits the supply of “prohibited interactive gambling services” to customers physically in Australia. The list includes online casino games and online pokies — which is to say, the entire product category the question “best bonus buy slots Australia” is asking about. In-play betting on sporting events is also covered. What is licensable, and what the NTRWC and other state regulators administer, is wagering on racing and sport placed before the event, lotteries and keno. The minimum age for any of those products is 18.

The Act targets the provider, not the individual player. An Australian who deposits with an offshore casino does not commit an offence under the IGA. The provider does, and the ACMA enforces it. The consequence for the player is structural rather than legal: an offshore site gives no Australian consumer protection, no complaints body and no avenue of recourse if a withdrawal is refused or a bonus balance is voided. The ACMA can block the site, and balances held on a blocked site are typically stranded — the offshore operator has no obligation to return them under Australian law, and the player has no path to compel a return.

Enforcement has been continuous. As reported in June 2026, the ACMA’s running total of blocked sites since the first blocking request in November 2019 had reached 1,751, with more than 230 unlicensed services having left the Australian market since 2017. The latest published round, on 26 June 2026, asked Australian ISPs to block another 12 sites: 7Signs, ChromaBet, Donbet, Duospin, Freshbet, Slots Gem, Jacks Club, Lucky Start, Pointsbetz, Spinrise, Vinyl Casino and Wildsino. Each round is a published list with a date. The cumulative figure is what gives the programme its weight.

A reader’s reading of the blocking rate

The blocking programme’s arithmetic is straightforward. From November 2019 to June 2026 is about 79 months. The ACMA had directed ISPs to block 1,751 illegal gambling and affiliate marketing sites over that period — an average somewhere in the order of 22 sites per month across the whole programme, though the rate is not linear. Early rounds were larger; recent rounds are smaller and more targeted. The honest reading of the figure is a band: somewhere in the range of roughly 20 to 25 sites per month across the seven-year programme, with the rate varying sharply between rounds and the most recent published round covering 12 sites. That is the reality — the regulator’s enforcement has not been a single decisive action, it has been a sustained, rolling programme that has, on average, removed more than twenty sites from Australian reach every month for seven years.

The blocking rate matters for the comparison the page is built around because it tells a reader what the shelf life of any single offshore site actually is. A brand on the ACMA’s list today was, on the arithmetic above, likely on the list because the regulator got to it within months of its appearance — and the brand’s replacement is already being advertised by an affiliate network somewhere. The ACMA’s list is a moving target, not a static register of “bad” sites.

What “Australian licensed” actually means here

The phrase “Australian licensed” is doing a lot of work in offshore marketing, and it is worth pinning down what it does and does not mean. A site displaying a Curaçao, Malta or Kahnawake licence badge is not Australian licensed, no matter what the site’s footer says. The NTRWC’s 52 licensed online bookmakers are licensed for wagering on racing and sport, not for casino games. The Victorian Gambling and Casino Control Commission (VGCCC) regulates Crown Melbourne’s land-based casino floor; it does not licence online casino products. The state of New South Wales’ Casino Control Act 1992 prohibits a casino operator from running a table game unless the rules are approved by the regulator and a copy is made available to patrons on request — which is a rule about land-based casino floors, not about offshore sites.

A reader weighing a bonus buy offer on any site on the ACMA’s list can read the licence badge in the footer and translate it: the licence is not Australian, the operator is not licensed to supply casino games to Australians, the site is being provided in breach of the IGA, and the ACMA’s next blocking round may put the brand behind a block page within months.

Help if the topic ever stops being a comparison

The ACMA’s enforcement work, the formal-warning list, and the blocking programme are all aimed at the provider. The player side of the frame is different, and it is worth naming clearly.

Gambling Help Online runs the National Gambling Helpline on 1800 858 858, free and 24 hours a day, with web chat also available. The service is confidential and is staffed by counsellors who understand the specific products an Australian might be weighing, including offshore online slots. The same service can be reached through state-based providers in each state and territory.

BetStop, the National Self-Exclusion Register, has been live since August 2023. It binds Australian-licensed online and phone wagering services — which is to say, the racing and sports bookmakers licensed in the Northern Territory and elsewhere. An offshore casino is not connected to BetStop. Self-excluding through BetStop will not stop an offshore site from accepting a deposit, will not block the site from advertising, and will not put the brand behind an ISP block. BetStop is the right tool for the licensed market; for the offshore market, the player is on their own, which is one of the reasons the page keeps returning to the point that the licensed Australian product is not the offshore casino.

What “the topic ever stops being a comparison” looks like

A reader who arrived here to compare bonus-buy offers is in a different position from a reader who has already opened an account on an offshore site, made a deposit, played a few sessions and started to notice the time and money spent on it. The first reader is choosing. The second reader is looking for a way out, or for a reason to keep going. If the latter is true at any point — if the comparison has become a way of deciding which site to move to next, rather than a way of weighing whether to play at all — the right next step is the helpline above, not another row in the table.

This page is not written to replace that call. It is written to be honest about the product and the regulator’s view of it, so that a reader in the first position can stay in the first position.

How offshore “bonus offers” usually read on a deposit page

A bonus, on the offshore sites the ACMA’s list is built from, usually arrives at the deposit page in one of a few shapes. A matched deposit — the site adds a percentage of the player’s deposit as bonus funds, on terms that require the combined deposit-plus-bonus to be wagered a number of times before any of it can be withdrawn. A free spins package, attached to a specific title, with the winnings either paid as cash or as further bonus funds. Or a “package” that bundles a matched deposit with a spins allocation, with separate wagering requirements for each component.

None of these terms are licensed terms. The Interactive Gambling Amendment (Gambling Reform) Bill 2026, which passed Parliament on 19 August 2026, includes advertising and inducement measures that commence on 1 January 2027 — which is to say, the advertising-side rules around bonuses and inducements will tighten from that date, but on a 2026 page they are law with a start date, not yet in force. The product itself remains prohibited regardless of how the offer is wrapped. The “bonus” on an offshore deposit page does not change the IGA’s position: the provider is still supplying a prohibited interactive gambling service to a person in Australia, and the ACMA’s enforcement frame still applies.

The mechanic the bonus exploits is also worth naming. A matched deposit with a wagering requirement typically multiplies the bonus by a factor of 30x to 50x — sometimes higher — and the wagering has to be done on the slot product itself. The expected loss during the wagering period is the wagering requirement times the slot’s house edge. A 100% match on a A$200 deposit, with a 40x wagering requirement on the bonus, means A$8,000 of wagering across the slot product — at, say, a 4% house edge, an expected loss of around A$320 across the clearing period, before the bonus is even withdrawable. The bonus is a price-controlled route into the same house edge the player would have faced by depositing without it. The marketing language calls that an “offer”. The arithmetic calls it a clearing cost.

Why the offer structure exists

Offshore operators compete on bonus generosity because the licensed frame in their target markets constrains what they can say and how. In Australia, where the product is prohibited, the bonus is also an inducement — a feature the regulator has flagged in the 2026 reform package, though again with a 1 January 2027 commencement. A reader looking at a bonus offer on an offshore deposit page is looking at a product the regulator has already said is prohibited, wrapped in an inducement the regulator has said it intends to restrict, on a site the regulator has been blocking for seven years. The arithmetic above is the practical reading of that layering.

Payment routes and what they tell the reader

A site asking an Australian player for a credit card or a crypto deposit is operating outside the Australian payments frame. Since 11 June 2024, credit cards, credit-related products and digital currency have been banned as payment methods for licensed online wagering in Australia, with penalties of up to A$247,500 for operators that breach the rule. Legal deposit routes for licensed wagering are debit card, bank transfer, PayID/Osko and BPAY. An offshore site will typically accept a wider range of methods, including crypto, and may ask for a credit card — both of which are signals that the site is not running under Australian rules, even if the footer says otherwise.

The payment route is a quiet tell. A licensed Australian wagering operator will not ask for credit or crypto. An offshore operator typically will. A reader who arrives at a deposit page and sees methods that are not in the licensed list is reading a deposit page from outside the Australian frame, and the rest of the page’s promises are read the same way.

Tax, winnings and the practical housekeeping

The Australian Taxation Office’s general position, set out in section 6-5 of the Income Tax Assessment Act 1997, is that gambling winnings of a recreational player are not assessable income and gambling losses are not deductible. That applies whether the play is at a licensed Australian venue, a licensed online bookmaker, or an offshore casino. The exception is where the ATO treats the gambling as the carrying on of a business — a professional punter, in other words — in which case the income and loss treatment is different. For a recreational player, no winnings to declare, no losses to claim, and the ATO’s online guidance is the right starting point if the situation looks different.

The other piece of housekeeping is the difference between a “balance” on a licensed site and a “balance” on an offshore site. On a licensed site, the balance is held by an Australian-licensed operator with Australian consumer-protection rules behind it. On an offshore site, the balance is held by an offshore entity with no Australian consumer-protection rules behind it. If the offshore site declines a withdrawal, voids a bonus, or closes the account, the player has no Australian complaints body to escalate to. The ACMA can block the site — and may, after a formal warning — but a blocked site with a stranded balance is the practical end state for many of these disputes.

What this means for a comparison

A comparison of “the best bonus buy slots Australia” is, in the licensed frame, a comparison that returns no result. There is no licensed product to compare. There is no Australian-licensed bonus buy offer to weigh. There is no licensed venue at which a bonus buy round is played. The comparison a reader is actually running is between offshore sites, and the comparison a regulator has already run is which of those offshore sites should be blocked next.

The honest shape of this page, then, is the shape of an honest frame. What the feature is. What the law says. What the regulator has done. Which brands have been warned. What kind of help is available if the topic has shifted from a comparison to a compulsion. The rest is offshore marketing, and the ACMA’s list is the regulator’s answer to it.

The eleven brands, one verdict each

Each of the eleven brands in the table at the top of the page sits on the ACMA’s published list of formal warnings. The verdict for each is the same in shape — an offshore operator that has been publicly warned for offering prohibited services to Australians — but the surrounding detail varies, and the variation is what a reader is being asked to weigh.

RocketPlay

Two ACMA warnings: the 2022 Dama N.V. action and the 2026 Pulsup Ltd action. The 2026 warning names the .com.au domain specifically. For a reader who has been on this brand, the 2026 warning is the more current one and the one to read.

Level Up Casino

The May 2022 Dama N.V. warning covered Level Up Casino alongside five sister brands. Independent listings place the brand in the bonus-buy conversation; that is a directory observation, not a licence claim.

Woo Casino

The March 2025 Dama N.V. warning. A 2025 warning date puts it among the more recent additions to the ACMA’s list, and a reader looking at this brand today is looking at a brand the regulator named within the last twelve months.

Spirit Casino

The May 2025 Dama N.V. warning, alongside Woo Casino in the same parent-company round. Same parent, two brands, two warnings in successive months.

National Casino

The July 2025 Consolutetish S.R.L. warning. National Casino is one of two brands in the table that came up under Consolutetish, and a directory footnote places it in the bonus-buy listing context.

Bizzo Casino

The July 2025 Consolutetish S.R.L. warning, on top of a 2022 TechSolutions warning. Two operators, two warnings, same brand — the same re-shelling pattern that runs through the Dama N.V. row.

Ignition Casino

The July 2025 Bamboo Media warning. A different parent company from the rest of the 2025 round, which is worth noting because the ACMA’s enforcement effort reaches across multiple operators, not just one or two.

Instant Casino

The February 2025 EOD Code SRL warning. One of the earlier 2025 actions on the list.

Jackbit

The April 2026 Ryker B.V. warning, alongside CasinOK. The second-most-recent warning in the table, after RocketPlay.

Casino Intense

The April 2025 Sterplay Holding Ltd warning. A directory footnote references the brand across regulatory and industry pages.

Sky Crown

The Hollycorn N.V. warning covering Sky Crown and Blue Leo. The earliest action in the table, with the September 2022 warning date, and the only one tied to a 2022-noticed parent company.

The verdict shape — offshore operator, ACMA warning, no Australian licence — is identical across all eleven. The variation sits in the parent company, the date and the directory footprint. A reader looking for a meaningful comparison between them has none of the usual tools (RTP, wagering, payout time) to use, because those tools measure an offer the regulator has already said is not licensable. The honest verdict, for any of the eleven, is the same: a brand on the ACMA’s list, operating outside Australian law, with no Australian consumer-protection framework behind it.

What a reader comparing these sites should actually compare

The comparison the page is set up to enable is not “which offshore site has the best bonus buy slot”. The comparison is structural, and it has three layers.

The first layer is product: bonus buy is a feature of an online slot, online slots are prohibited under the IGA, and no state or territory licences them. The licensed product is the land-based pokie, and that product does not have a bonus buy button. Any reader who has reached the comparison frame has already stepped outside the licensed frame.

The second layer is enforcement: the ACMA’s blocking programme has, on the arithmetic above, removed an average of roughly 20 to 25 sites per month from Australian reach over a seven-year period. The eleven brands in the table are a sample of that programme. The brands that have not yet been named are the ones the regulator has not yet reached, and the rate of the programme means the window for any one brand is short.

The third layer is recourse: an offshore site gives no Australian consumer protection, no complaints body and no path to compel a refund. The ACMA can block the site, but a block with a stranded balance is the common end state. BetStop does not reach offshore sites. The licensed self-exclusion tool covers the licensed market.

A reader comparing “the best bonus buy slots Australia” against this frame is comparing paths that lead outside the Australian frame. The page’s role is to lay out what each path actually is, what the regulator has done about it, and what kind of help exists if the comparison is no longer a comparison.

Where this leaves an Australian reader

The headline that the question “best bonus buy slots Australia” returns is that there is no licensed Australian answer to it. The licensed Australian product is the land-based pokie, which does not have a bonus buy feature. The online slot product that does is prohibited under the Interactive Gambling Act 2001, and the ACMA has been blocking offshore providers of it since November 2019. The brands that surface when the question is searched are brands the regulator has acted against, and the offers attached to those brands are offers on sites operating outside Australian law.

A reader who arrived here to compare is in a position to step back from the comparison. The product is not licensable. The regulator is enforcing that. The brands are being named in formal warnings on a rolling basis. The offshore marketing around the feature is a marketing frame the regulator has signalled it intends to restrict further under the 2026 reform package. The honest reading of “best bonus buy slots Australia” is that the licensed Australian shelf is empty by design.

A reader who arrived here in a different position — already on an offshore site, already weighing whether to deposit again, already noticing the time spent — is in a position to use the National Gambling Helpline on 1800 858 858 or the Gambling Help Online web chat. The helpline is free, confidential, and 24 hours a day. It is the right next step before any further comparison on this page.

Frequently asked questions

What does a bonus buy button actually do on a slot?

A bonus buy button lets the player pay a fixed multiple of their stake — commonly 50x to 200x, depending on the title — and trigger the slot’s bonus round immediately. The reels then run the bonus as if it had been triggered organically, and the resulting balance is added to the player’s account. The cost is calibrated by the developer so that buying the bonus gives, on average, the same long-run return as waiting for it to land.

Is bonus buy available on a licensed Australian pokie?

No. The licensed Australian pokie product is the physical machine in a pub, club or casino, and the bonus round on a licensed machine is triggered by the symbol combination the reels land on. The bonus buy feature is an online slot mechanic, and online slots are not licensable onshore.

Why have overseas regulators moved against bonus buy?

Regulators in the UK, the Netherlands and Sweden have restricted the feature because it compresses a session’s spend into a small number of large purchases. The Australian position is different: online slots are prohibited under the Interactive Gambling Act 2001, and the bonus buy feature is a feature of that prohibited product. Australia does not need a separate rule on the feature, because the product itself is prohibited.

Does buying the bonus change the slot’s underlying odds?

No. The slot’s overall return-to-player is the long-run average across a very large number of spins, and buying the bonus preserves that average. What changes is the variance: the player experiences a single concentrated exposure to the bonus round’s distribution, rather than a long base-game wait followed by the same exposure.

Can an offshore site legally offer bonus buy slots to Australians?

No. The Interactive Gambling Act 2001 makes it an offence to provide online casino games — including online pokies — to a person in Australia. An offshore site offering the product is operating in breach of the Act, and the ACMA has been blocking such sites since November 2019. The individual player is not prosecuted; the provider is.

Is a bonus buy purchase treated as a separate bet under Australian law?

A bonus buy purchase is a wager placed on an online slot, which is a prohibited interactive gambling service. The IGA treats the supply of the service as the offence, not the individual purchase. A player using the feature on an offshore site is engaging with a prohibited product; the legal consequence falls on the operator supplying it, not on the player.