What sort of payout limits do sites you work with have in place?

[MichaelCorfman]

Several years ago very few online gaming sites had payout limitations. You could withdraw your outstanding balance at any time. But, increasingly, many online gaming sites limit the amount that can be withdrawn in a given time period, typically per week or per month. With smaller wins that will be paid out fairly quickly, this can be a nuisance, but not a huge problem. But with bigger wins the impact can be significant. As an extreme example, if you had a jackpot win of $4,000,000, and a weekly withdrawal limit of $5,000, then it would take 15 years to collect your winnings. And a smaller but still very significant win of $75,000 with a $5,000 per month payout limit would take 15 months to collect.

Now in the lottery arena, this sort of extended payout period for jackpots is very common. Many regulated lotteries pay large jackpots out over a period of 20 or 30 years. In that case you've really won an annuity that is worth perhaps half of the dollar amount of the published amount won.

For this week's poll question I ask if you have researched payout limits for the sites you work with or promote or not, and if you work with some sites that you know have payout limits or not.

Besides voting in the poll, share your opinion about the philosophy you feel is appropriate for your site to follow in this area, and what work you feel you need to undertake to follow that philosophy if you are not following it today.

Michael

[edgarf76]

I have to find this information out, It could be a great selling point for some casinos/sportsbooks.

[slotplayer]

There is no comparision as far as lotteries go, its only the mega jackpots and you can take a cash option or the annuity. Lotteries and land casinos will pay $50K, $75K, $100K in single shot.

I asked that question over at casinomeister in response to post yesterday but had no answer yet. Are payout limits due to cash flow or just so players drop it back? I can see limits being in place for USA players but not where its 100% legal.

As far as the question goes, I added all my programs long ago where there where no payout limits or I was unaware of them.

[-Shay-]

In my opinion, if there is a payment limit is less than the maximum transaction for a given payment vehicle - I have to take a really hard look at the program to determine why they won't pay out what I feel is "properly". If they are a micro stakes outfit, then fine.

However, if they're trying to attract the ballers and they have payment limits that belong in the kiddy pool, then there are likely other things one should be concerned about.

In summary, the answer is "it depends" on the rest of the site's terms and conditions as well as their exact payout policy.

To answer more specifically in reference to Michael's example - there's no way in hell I'd promote Club Gold Casino with their $5k withdrawal limits (which includes both stakes and winnings).
#betweenthelines

[p.arena]

A lot of places have these limits in place. I noticed even on America's Got Talent, though it is a $1 million prize, the small print at the end of the show mentions that it is paid out at $25,000/yr for 40 years. But like Michael said inflation becomes an issue with such long payouts, because 40 years from now $25,000 wont be worth as much as it is today.

[MichaelCorfman]

Are payout limits due to cash flow or just so players drop it back? I can see limits being in place for USA players but not where its 100% legal.

Personally, I expect both of those are factors, plus other items as well.

I know some payment processors hold back funds owed to gaming sites to cover potential chargebacks, so there can be issues for an operator around managing outgoing payments when receipt of inbound funds does not happen right away. As I understand it, the fact that a gaming site lets you wager deposited money does not necessarily mean they have actually received it into their bank account at the time.

Also, gaming sites can incur pretty significant payment processing fees (an expense land-based casinos generally don't have to absorb the way they do business). Since payment and withdrawal transactions generally cost real money for online gaming sites, it is pretty reasonable for them to try to prevent too much churning of larger volumes of funds. And certainly with US players where fees tend to be higher, and payment more problematic, minimizing churn and total dollar amounts of transactions can be an even stronger business imperative.

But there is certainly no denying that money left in an account is much more likely to be gambled again than money paid out of an account, so both from a future revenue perspective and from a cash flow perspective it certainly works to an operator's benefit to hold the money longer, as long as the operator's policies in that regard are not inconsistent with the site's marketing message and don't make the site enough less competitive to offset the benefit.

Personally, I posed this question largely to raise awareness of the fact that the situation has changed over time, and that webmasters can do a service for their visitors by researching and being aware of payment policies, and making sure their visitors understand the pluses and minuses associated with particular sites so they are able to make more informed decisions.

It used to be that on our Casino City site we would simply not promote any site that had payout limitations. But as the marketplace evolved, we came to believe there were sites that were reasonable for players to play at that had limitations. However, I also know that in our case we've not done the job I think we should of gathering and publishing that type of information for players to consider. And I know the same is true of many others as well. And I always think it is good to ask poll questions that make folks think about the practices they follow, particularly if the result is to stimulate change.

Michael

[Christiaan]

Good question Michael. I didn't know that there are sites who have a payout limit. It is something interesting that I'm gonna try to find out.
As I'm mostly focused on the legal Belgian market I'm gonna check if there are rules about the payouts in the gambling law.