who holds it Who owns the award. Forms 01 and 02 put money where the reader already controls it. Forms 03 to 08 put value somewhere else - in a shop's balance sheet, in an object, in a diary, in a product's ledger - and that somewhere else is where it can be lost, delayed, expired or spent on terms the reader does not set.
Prize Form / The forms
Form 01-08
Eight ways a win can arrive
A prize is not one product. It is eight, and the form decides everything that follows: whether a tax line applies to a number the reader never holds, whether a second-hand market sets the price, whether a condition can expire before the value exists, and whether the award can be turned back into money at all.
Claim stub
- Form
- 01 - 08
- Cash already
- 2 forms
- Depends on a buyer
- 3 forms
- Cannot be money
- 3 forms
Money2 forms: a credit to a balance, a payment to an account in your name
A buyer3 forms: a voucher, a thing with a market, a personalised thing with none
Attendance1 form: an experience that can only be attended, on a date
A condition2 forms: credit behind a condition, points locked to a product
Direct answerEight forms cover almost every non-cash win: a credit to the balance; a payment to a bank account; a voucher for named retailers; a thing with a second-hand market; a personalised thing with none; an experience that can only be attended; free plays or bonus credit carrying a wagering condition; and points or tokens locked inside the product. Two are money, three depend on a buyer, and three cannot become money at all.
Two forms: money alreadyThree: a buyer decidesOne: attendance onlyTwo: a condition decides
The eight, in order of distance from cash
01 · Cash credited to the balance
Money that is already where the reader can see it. Its value is the announced value, and the only thing that can reduce it is a stated deduction - a fee, a tax withheld at source, or a condition the promotion attached to the credit itself. This is the form the other seven are measured against.
02 · A payment to a bank account
Still money, one step out: the promotion pays an account in the reader's name. The step introduces a delay and an identity check rather than a discount. Where a promotion offers a choice between this and credit to a gambling balance, the two are not equal - see the cash alternative page for why a credit is worth less to the reader than a payment of the same number.
03 · A voucher for named retailers
Money that only spends at a list of shops. It is not withdrawable, it usually carries an expiry, and its value to a reader who does not shop there is the resale percentage - often well below the face value. A voucher is the form most often described as cash-equivalent in an announcement, and it is not a cash equivalent.
04 · A thing with a second-hand market
A console, a watch, a phone, a car. The list value is the promoter's recommended figure; the realised value is what a buyer pays, which is a discount to that figure because the item is no longer new, is out of retail protection, and may carry no warranty. The discount is the price of having the money in a different form.
05 · A personalised thing with no market
The same object, made unsaleable: engraved, embroidered, sized for one person, or tied to an event or a season. Nothing may be wrong with it, but no buyer exists, so its realised value is zero even though its list value is real. This is the form where a reader who would rather have had money is most exposed.
06 · An experience that can only be attended
A trip, hospitality, a meet-and-greet, a night in a specific place on a specific date. Its list value is genuine, and the promotion usually carries the cost of it. It is not transferable in practice, so a change of circumstances - illness, work, a date that moves - consumes the value rather than converting it.
07 · Free plays or credit behind a condition
Credit that exists inside the product and becomes money only if a condition is met, usually a wagering requirement that must be turned over before anything can be withdrawn. The value is not the announced number: it is the expected amount that survives the condition, which is a probability rather than a figure. The bonus-terms desk next door works through the arithmetic of a condition.
08 · Points or tokens locked to the product
A balance inside a closed economy with no sale price and no redemption route in money. It is a prize in the sense that the promotion granted it; it is not a prize in the sense that it can be spent outside the product. The play-coin desk explains the closed-economy form in full.
What the form actually decides
Four things follow from the form, and none of them is a matter of taste.
form 1
form 2
what sets the price The market, not the announcement. Forms 04 and 05 have two prices, the list value and the resale value, and the second is the one that can be turned into money. The value page separates them with the arithmetic shown.
form 3
what a change costs Whether circumstances can consume it. An experience is the only form that can lose its whole value because the reader's week changed. Objects can be sold, vouchers can be resold at a discount, credit can be turned over; an experience that does not happen is simply gone.
form 4
what the condition is worth Whether value exists before a condition is met. Forms 07 and 08 are announced in a currency that is not money and do not become money without an action the reader has to perform, usually by staking more. A promotion that announces credit is announcing a chance, and the arithmetic of the chance belongs to the condition, not to the prize.
Worked example - the distance from a bank account, in steps (illustrative)
Steps between the award and money the reader controls, per form:
cash credited to the balance: 0 steps
payment to a bank account in the reader's name: 0 steps (a delay, not a discount)
named-retailer voucher: 1 step (a buyer, or shopping where the voucher applies)
thing with a second-hand market: 1 step (a buyer, at a discount)
personalised thing with no market: unreachable (no buyer exists)
an experience that can only be attended: unreachable (not transferable in practice)
credit behind a wagering condition: 1 step and a condition
points locked to the product: 1 step and a closed economy
Of eight forms, 2 need nothing to work, 3 need a buyer, and 3 need either a buyer in a market that may not exist or an event that has to happen. The average is not the point; the point is that six of the eight are not money until something else happens, and the promotion's headline does not say so.
Why the split is asserted, not asserted about
The counts on this page - two, three, one, two - are the same counts the ladder on the front page renders, and they are checked when the site is built. That matters because the desk's whole argument is a proportion, and a proportion that can drift is an opinion. If a row moved from the cash column to the locked column, the argument on this page would be wrong, and the build would fail rather than publish.