Online casinos offer self contained wagering environments but the players cannot be isolated from what is happening around them. Therefore online casinos use externally occurring events to base their promotions on. This gives the promotion a theme and allows for variety and ultimately results in more traffic to the online casino. There are certain kinds of external events that are more often used as concepts for promotions and this article describes the most popular of them.

Most online casino promotions are based on festival holidays. As such the holidays occur around the year, but certain festivals have traditionally become more popular at online casinos. They are Valentine's Day, St. Patrick's Day, Easter, Halloween, Thanksgiving Day and Christmas. All people are in a mood to splurge and therefore online casinos try and get players to wager more during these times by offering them bonuses and other incentives. Also because of the holiday the players have more time on their hand and online casinos vie for that time. Many online gaming software developers have slots games based on the different festivals and often these become the basis of the promotions. Many promotions offer freeroll tournaments or wagering contests formulated in text and graphics built around these festivals. Last month the online casinos of the English Harbour group had a large prize pool freeroll tournament on a Halloween themed slot game. This month Sloto' Cash Casino is offering special bonuses to new and existing players on Thanksgiving Day.

International sporting events are another big source for online casino promotions. The World Cup Football, which is the greatest sporting spectacle in the world, was held earlier this year. Online casino promotions offered jerseys of the player's favorite team. InterCasino even sent players to South Africa to watch some of the games from the stadiums. In some of the online casino promotions the fate of the player was not linked to his wagering alone but also to the performance of the team he backed. The Football World Cup and the Olympics take place every four years and ____________ are totally exploited for their brand value by online casinos. Then there are annual sporting events of a lesser magnitude but equally popular at online casinos. Some of these are football events like English Premier League and European Club Football. American sporting leagues featuring football, basketball and baseball are equally popular.

Events in the entertainment industry also form a basis for online casino promotions. One of the most popular of these is the Oscar Awards, especially because there are so many movie themed slot games. One promotion held at Ruby Royal online casino this year was linked to players predicting winners in certain awards categories. Sometimes a movie having great expected impact is released and becomes a focal point for online casino promotions. Earlier this year Alice in Wonderland was released in 3D format and starred Johnny Depp as the Mad Hatter. Virgin Casino took advantage of the hype and created a promotion around Alice's Wonderland slot game. American Idol is one of the most popular reality shows. Villento Casino powered by Microgaming runs a promotion with a similar structure. The promotion starts with a number of popular Microgaming slots and each week the slot game that had the least wagering gets eliminated. Players win prizes depending on their choice of slot game and amount of wagering done.

Christmas is round the corner and it is bonanza season for online casinos. Some of the most innovative and extravagant promotions will be on offer then.