Buy The Bonus Round?
What Are Bonus Buy Slots?
In a “Buy the bonus round” slot game, you can choose to pay a multiple of your stake (100x is common) to skip straight to the bonus round.
Buy the bonus round games as such are not allowed at UK facing casinos, but there are many ways in which slot game providers have managed to give UK players a similar experience to bonus buy slots while staying within the rules.
Big Time Gaming’s Big Idea
It all started in November 2017 when Big Time Gaming released a game with a new feature that would change the face of online slots. That game was White Rabbit and the feature was Feature Drop™ – aka buying the bonus round. BTG were already well known for producing slots with insane bonus rounds but, as is the way with high variance slots, players were having to wait a long, long time to play them. White Rabbit short circuited that by providing a means for players to go straight to the bonus round for 100x stake. In the original version of he game you also collected BTG coins as you played which gradually reduced the cost of buying the bonus round (eventually to zero).
Big Time Gaming weren’t just catering to impatient players by making it possible to buy the bonus round – they were also getting themselves masses of free publicity. Their earlier games Bonanza and Danger High Voltage had already established the idea of high variance slots as a spectator sport on the Twitch live streaming platform (back before Twitch cracked down on gambling content). Feature Drop™ meant that the streamers could make things much more exciting for their audience by missing out all that boring waiting for the bonus round – and it also meant that by buying the bonus round multiple times, they could get a REALLY good bonus round to post on YouTube without too much time and effort (just lots of money). The number of bonus buy videos that showed up on YouTube after that is a testament to the brilliance of the idea.
Just like BTG’s other big idea Megaways, Feature Drop™ was swiftly copied by other game providers. Blueprint really went to town with it on many of their Megaways games and there were also bonus buy slots like Foxium’s The Great Albini that looked nothing like a BTG game.
It was Big Time Gaming again that took the idea even further in April 2018. In the Extra Chilli slot game, not only could a player instantly buy the bonus round, but they could then gamble the bonus round to try and get a better bonus round – not just once, but multiple times all the way from the basic 8 free spins up to 24 free spins. Lost the gamble and ended up wth nothing? Never mind, you could try again right away! Other game providers very swiftly copied this idea too.
Gambling Commission Action on Bonus Buy
The combination of buying the bonus round and gambling the bonus round enabled a huge amount of money to be gambled (and potentially lost) in a very short space of time. Even at the minimum spin value of 20p, the bonus round in Extra Chilli cost £10 to buy and because of the gamble facility, the £10 could be instantly lost and another £10 spent right away; at the top spin value of £40, that’s a huge £2000 that could be lost in less than a minute.
In October 2019 the UK Gambling Commission decided that enough was enough and wrote to game providers asking them to remove the feature from the UK market on the grounds that buying the bonus round is just too dangerous for players.
The Ones That Got Away
In the UK, then, you can no longer straightforwardly buy the bonus round (as this would open the door to being able to buy multiple bonus rounds in a short space of time and potentially losing lurid amounts of money).
You can still play many of the games involved, but in special UK versions without the bonus buy button; game providers have had to produce special UK versions of games anyway for a few years now, because of having to remove the autoplay button, so it’s no big deal to take the bonus buy button off as well.
Of course, games that are designed to have bonus buy can be very boring to play without it as all the exciting stuff tends to be saved for the bonus round. For example, the UK version of Starburst XXXtreme does not include the XXXtreme Spins button which would guarantee one or more wilds on every spin, and because in this game wilds have random multipliers attached they show up a lot less frequently than in original Starburst (to keep the RTP similar).
There are, however, a number of strategies that inventive slot game providers have been using since the ban to provide a similar player experience to UK players in other slot games. Some of these have in turn been banned….
Gamble the bonus round
OK, so you have to wait until the bonus round is triggered before you can do anything. But then, you can gamble it in the hope of getting a better bonus round – and indeed, in BTG’s Who Wants To Be A Millionaire slot game gambling the bonus round is absolutely integral to the gameplay, from the initial 8 spins all of the way up to 50 spins. As in most games where you can gamble the bonus round and in the TV show the game is based on, there are safety nets so that once you’ve passed 10 spins (and later 20 spins) that’s the minimum you can be left with.
Collect coins or tokens in game to trigger or buy the bonus round
This is still allowed and means that eventually you WILL get to play the bonus round but it could be a long time coming. Perhaps the most innovative use of this type of feature is in Playtech’s Kingdoms Rise slot games, where you can save up coins through playing any or all of the games then spend them on a bonus round of your choice, potentially from a completely different game.
Exchange part or all of a win for the bonus round
Big Time Gaming’s latest (2024) invention Win Exchange is seen in games like Golden Goose Megaways. Quite simply, when you get a win of more than 80x stake it lets you trade the 80x in to buy the bonus round. Because you have to wait for a sizeable win first, there’s no danger of repeat bonus round buying.
Pay extra per spin for an increased chance of triggering the bonus round
Sweet Bonanza and any number of other Pragmatic Play games have this option
Pay extra per spin to increase the potential of the bonus round if you do trigger it
This is seen in NetEnt’s Hotline slot, where betting on the extra Hotlines massively increases the chances of filling the reels with expanding wilds in the bonus round as well as enhancing the base game.
Pay extra per spin to apply a bonus round feature to the base game
In Fishin’ Frenzy Fortune Play you pay 20x stake, not to trigger the bonus round, but to play one spin on four sets of reels at the same time with the Fisherman bonus round feature active – so something that is very like a bonus round but isn’t actually one.
Pay extra for an enhanced base game feature or spin that has triggering the bonus round as one of its possible outcomes
The Big Bet option on various Barcrest games worked like this. As long as the bonus round being triggered was a possible rather than a current outcome it was permissible, but now the stake required would be too big to be allowed in the UK.
Pay to respin an individual reel or reels to improve a win
This can include a respin to try and get that third scatter you need to trigger the bonus round. Games with this feature include Rebets Splendour, Goldaur Guardians and Break Da Bank Again Respin. These games have all had the respin feature removed in the UK now.
Slingo
In slot game themed Slingo games where all the prizes are bonus rounds, you can effectively buy a bonus round by buying extra spins until you complete enough Slingos. For Slingo games available in the UK, if you play at the lowest stake level, the price of each extra spin will never exceed £5.
Unlock a special bonus round game
In Pirots 5, you progress through three different worlds. Once you’ve collected the nine special items (three from each) you unlock a special game where it’s all about triggering an enhanced bonus round. This is a long term endeavour as the second world only unlocks a month after you start playing and the third world a month after that.
Maximum Stake Rules
Apart from gambling the bonus round and collecting coins to trigger the bonus round, most of these game mechanics have been affected by the slot game maximum stake rules that were enacted some in 2025. This restricts UK players to a maximum £5 per spin when playing online slot games (including Slingo), with a lower maximum spin value of £2 for those under 25.
In the case of paying extra per spin to increase the chance or potential of the bonus round or apply a bonus round feature to the base game, it’s fairly straightforward – the option has to be disabled for any base spin values that are so close to the limit that activating the bonus bet option would exceed the limit. Here’s how that works (assuming you’re over 25):
- In Sweet Bonanza, you can up your bet by 25% to double the chance of triggering the bonus round, so the highest base spin value that this would be possible for is £4
- In Hotline, choosing one extra Hotline doubles your bet and choosing two extra Hotlines triples it, so the highest base spin value that this would be possible for is £1.50
- In Fishin’ Frenzy Fortune Play, the Fortune Play option is 20x bet, so the highest base spin value that this would be possible for is 25p
Slot game providers can either set the maximum base spin value in the UK feed of games like these low enough so the extra bet option is always allowed, or set it at £5 (£2 for under 25s) and disable the extra bet option at some spin values.
Paying to respin individual reels is much more problematic and anything you stake in this way would be counted as part of maximum spin value as it’s part of a single game cycle. Game providers responded by disabling the function for UK players; for example, the game loading screen for Break da Bank Again Respin includes a notice that the Hyperspins (respin) feature is not available in all regions (and that includes the UK). Basically, it was far easier for game providers simply to disable the feature in the UK feed rather than set a ceiling on respins that depends on initial spin value.
As for Big Bet, that was toast at its then price point (£20 – £50). Light & Wonder have replaced many of the Big Bet options in their games with Premium Play which is a multiple of the minimum spin value. The £10 option still had to go, but the other two options were priced just right for under and over 25s!
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