Lucky Bay Casino

Lucky Bay Casino Review

In its tab description, Lucky Bay Casino calls itself the “best online casino” – a claim we’ve seen many, many times before. More often than not, it’s little more than hot air puffed up by casinos that clearly can’t back their quality with anything other than empty words. Considering the fact that Lucky Bay is operated by Placebo NV, a company whose sites we haven’t exactly infatuated us before, we have a suspicion that this site isn’t any different.

Still, we at casinoaustraliaonline.net are professionals, and we won’t let our preconceptions taint our objective view of the casino! We will form an opinion not based on first impression, but on thorough research into the site’s bonuses, games, extra features, safety, payment options, and all the other things that our readers expect to know about!

So, will Lucky Bay Casino truly prove itself worthy of the “best online casino” moniker, or is it yet another casino site with a mouth bigger than its head?

Bonuses

No Deposit Bonus – 125 Free Spins

There is no easier and faster way to make us soften up on an online casino than for it to offer a no deposit bonus! This type of offering, once so common, is now all but lost in a sea of casinos that want you to spend money before you can spin even once. Lucky Bay Casino, on the other hand, will reward you with a whopping 125 free spins right off the bat just for opening your account!

Of course, like most no deposit bonuses, this one comes with a few stipulations. For starters, while you can play through your free spins, you won’t actually be able to touch your winnings until you make a deposit of at least AU$30 – which we honestly believe is fair. To make up for it, once you do make your deposit, your free spins winning have a chance to be multiplied by up to x40, giving you even more bonus funds to play around with. We were told by the casino’s staff that the chance of getting that multiplier (and how big it’s going to be) is completely random.

Of course, more money means more wagering, and to withdraw your no deposit bonus you’ll have to play through your winnings x25 times. This isn’t too bad, considering the fact that most online casinos will hit you with a wagering requirement of about x35. Overall, this is a pretty good welcome bonus and a solid start to your casino journey! Even if you don’t snatch up any multiplier, you’re still getting some extra money to play around with, and we can’t complain here.

Welcome Bonus – 300% Match up to AU$12,000 + 200 Free Spins

Wow! And we thought that the no deposit bonus was generous! When you actually deposit your money, not only are you going to claim the winnings from your no deposit bonus, but also a staggering 300% match up to AU$12,000. We don’t need to tell you that this is an incredibly generous bonus that is bound to please nearly everyone, whether they’re a high roller or a more cautious player.

On top of that, you will get an additional 200 free spins to play around with. To sum up, this means that you’ll get a grand total of 325 free spins just for a minimum deposit of AU$30, which is a pretty damn good deal no matter how you slice it. With that said, the wagering requirements for the welcome bonus are a bit loftier than the no deposit bonus’, as you’ll have to wager both your free spins winnings and your match bonus x40 times before you can withdraw them. This has to be done within 7 days of activation, after which any non-wagered bonuses are voided.

Additional Welcome Bonuses – Up to AU$24,000 + 200 Free Spins

One thing that’s a little bit disappointing about Lucky Bay Casino is that it doesn’t offer any reload promotions. This means that, once you make full use of the welcome bonus, you won’t be able to claim any more promos. Considering the fact that there isn’t a VIP program either, this can certainly sting a bit.

As if to make up for that, Lucky Bay Casino are offering players two very generous bonuses as part of the welcome package, in addition to the ones we described above. Both your second and third deposits will grant you up to AU$12,000, as well as 100 free spins. The only difference between them is the match percentage, as the second bonus will net you 150%, while the third, only 100%.

These bonus offerings come with the same fine text as the first: you’ll have 7 days from claiming the bonus to wager both the free spins winnings and the match bonus x40 times. Frankly, even if you don’t plan on withdrawing them, these bonuses are still worth claiming, as the 200 free spins you’ll snatch from them are nothing to scoff at.

Games

One of the negative things we can say about Lucky Bay Casino is that it doesn’t really offer a lot of diversity when it comes to its casino games. Its focus very clearly falls on pokies, which are numerous and come from dozens of different providers – we’ll touch upon them in a bit. Beyond that, though, don’t expect to find much here.

That’s not to say that there isn’t anything at all, since you’ll still find a small quantity of table games and live casino games… It’s just clear that the casino hasn’t placed much stock in them. Hell, you won’t even find a dedicated tab just for table games, you’ll need to use the site’s own search engine to find them. On top of that, you also won’t find any extra features, such as sports betting, lotteries, bingo, skill-based pokies, etc. It’s a very bare-bones casino, quite frankly.

Pokies

As mentioned earlier, the pokies are the main attraction here, and while there aren’t a whole ton of them in comparison to other online casinos, you’ll still have access to well over 1,500 games from dozens of different providers. As you can imagine, most of the providers aren’t what we would call good or well-known, and it’s clear that Lucky Bay Casino only added them to beef up their portfolio rather than because they were essential for the average pokie spinner.

With that said, there are still a few very decent providers, including BGaming, Booming Games, and Mascot Gaming. One thing that we really liked about the casino is that there aren’t any unavailable games, everything you’ll see as an Australian player is available to play in Australia, which isn’t something that a lot of online casinos tend to do. While the layout may be a bit confusing, since there aren’t a lot of ways to filter out the pokies (besides by provider), the collection should still be easy enough to navigate even for newer players.

Live casino

While we were generally okay with Lucky Bay Casino’s pokies section, the same absolutely can not be said about their live dealer offerings. For starters, you can’t even see them! At least while we tested the site, the button for “Live Casino” in the header of the casino didn’t really seem to work. Clicking it just brought us back to the main page.

Instead, we had to use the search engine to find the games, and, to Lucky Bay’s credit, it’s not the worst selection. Most titles are offered by LuckyStreak, with a few offerings here and there by smaller providers (like Betterlive and KAGaming). You’ll also find a few of the more niche games, such as Dragon Tiger, but again, you’ll have to know to search for them. The whole state of table games at Lucky Bay Casino is sad, and a major downside to the otherwise satisfactory games selection.

Deposits & Withdrawals

It’s impossible to mince words here: Lucky Bay Casino just straight up does not have a lot of payment options available. In fact, it barely has any at all! In Australia, you’ll only be able to deposit via credit card, as well as a few crypto currencies (including most of the major ones). E-wallets and pre-paid solutions are completely missing.

This is bound to alienate many players who are used to using Neosurf or Jeton for their casino deposits in the interest of safety or convenience, and we don’t need to tell you that alienating players before they’ve placed their first deposit is hardly a winning strategy. At the very least, one thing we can praise are the low minimum deposit and withdrawal amounts, as you can deposit as little as AU$15 to play (though that won’t qualify you for any of the bonuses).

Withdrawal time

As of the time of writing, you can withdraw via all available deposit methods (card or crypto), as well as bank transfer. While the addition of bank transfer may sound alluring to many, we would recommend keeping it as a last resort, as it will take the longest to process your payment: up to 10 business days! You could probably win an extra AU$30 and initiate a second withdrawal in that time!

Out of the remaining payment options, crypto will be by far the fastest. Free from those pesky bank oversights, it’ll process your transaction much more quickly, and you’ll have your money in your Bitcoin wallet within an hour or two. Card withdrawals are another good option, as they offer the best of both worlds: the security of bank transfers alongside the speed of crypto withdrawals (it’ll only take about 2-3 days for your transaction to be processed).

VIP Program

Unfortunately, Lucky Bay Casino does not currently offer a VIP program, at least not one that we could find – and trust us, this is a major issue. As we pointed out when speaking about the Lucky Bay Casino bonuses, the casino doesn’t have any reload promotions that you can claim, either. This means that the bonuses end the very second you exhaust your welcome package.

It’s really no secret that online casinos rely on bonuses in order to both attract and retain players. After all, everyone wnats to feel appreciated, and like they’re gaining more out of an online casino than they’re putting in. Sadly, this just isn’t the case at Lucky Bay Casino, and we can certainly imagine that plenty of players will leave the moment they run out of bonuses.

Tournaments

Just like with the VIP program, Lucky Bay Casino doesn’t offer any tournaments, either. This is yet another baffling choice on the casino’s part, as it’s not exactly difficult to implement tournaments on your platform – doubly so when you already have so many different pokies on display. Given Lucky Bay’s focus on reels and spins, tournaments would be a no-brainer!

Alas, this feature is not currently here, which means that players that aren’t fans of pokies usually, but like to spin them in a competitive setting, won’t find much of value on this site. If that describes you, then we recommend looking for tournaments elsewhere.

Verification

Lucky Bay is a legal online casino that accepts payments from major providers (namely Visa and MasterCard, and as such needs to verify the identity of its players before allowing them to withdraw. This process is known as verification, or KYC (know your customer), and is absolutely mandatory at the vast majority of online casinos you’ll encounter.

If you’ve never heard the term before, don’t worry, it’s not scary. The first time you request a withdrawal from the casino, your account will be temporarily restricted from placing bets until you provide a few documents to the casino proving your identity. These will include a form of photo ID (like your ID card or passport) and a document with your name and address on it (like a utility bill).

In addition, if you deposited via card instead of crypto, you’ll need to take a picture of that (with some numbers censored) – crypto deposits aren’t verified. Lucky Bay Casino themselves may request extra documents, but this is rare and usually only happens when there is some kind of inconsistency in the ones you already provided. Either way, once your identity is verified, your restrictions will be lifted and you can enjoy those sweet winnings!

Is Lucky Bay Casino Legit & safe?

At first glance, Lucky Bay Casino certainly looks quite shady, especially since its front page is adorned by a very ‘bootleg’ picture of Super Mario from the eponymous video game. However, sometimes things aren’t very cut and dry, and unfortunately, we found plenty of evidence suggesting that the site is illegitimate, as well as some that it isn’t.

For starters, it’s worth noting that Lucky Bay Casino is operated by Placebo N.V., a company with many other online casinos on the market (some of which we’ve reviewed). The site proudly displays the number of a license in its footer, so at first glance, it appears to be legitimate. However, licenses aren’t always the easiest to verify, and in this case, we were simply unable to do so.

Under normal circumstances, casinos possessing a 365/JAZ license (issued by Curacao Gaming N.V.) need to provide a direct link to their license hosted on the Curacao website – that is the only way they can be reliably verified. Lucky Bay hasn’t done that, which could mean that it’s lying and doesn’t have a license at all, or that it simply didn’t bother to put the link. As for which one is true, we leave up to you and trust that you’ll use your judgment.

Customer support

There are currently only two ways to reach out to Lucky Bay Casino’s support team in case you need help with some issue, or simply have questions that we didn’t answer in our review. You can write them via live chat or through e-mail, and for the purposes of our review, we used the live chat function. The results are… Mixed.

To start off with the good, the representatives that we were connected with were very polite, and they genuinely did their best to answer our questions. We have encountered support teams that will genuinely refuse to tell us anything, and this isn’t the case here. They will try to be helpful, and honestly, that deserves praise (even though it’s literally their job).

On the flipside, the emphasis in the last sentence falls on “try”. It took us nearly an hour to get an answer to all the questions we had, and it wasn’t because they were many. The support representatives didn’t seem to be awfully knowledgeable about the site, often giving us conflicting information only to then correct themselves a moment later. It almost felt like speaking to an AI, though we know it was a human because they often took over 10 minutes to reply. Not the best look, even though their heart is in the right place.

Mobile casino

The best thing we can say about the Lucky Bay Casino mobile site is that it’s functional. Ultimately, it’s the same as the desktop version, and it’s even accessed in the same way (opened through a web browser rather than via its dedicated app). What is present works well on a mobile device, you won’t find any missing games in comparison to the desktop version or anything like that.

However, the desktop site already has plenty of issues all its own, and those have carried over into its mobile counterpart. You still won’t be able to access the live casino section, and the overall layout will still be a little clunky. If you were already troubled by these when you first signed up, those issues will not be fixed by playing on mobile.