which number is which Turnover and gross win are not the same number, and neither is a deposit. A deposit is the player's own money sitting as a balance; turnover is what that balance is used for; gross win is the share of turnover the operator keeps. The two numbers page separates them.
Hold Desk / Overview
The hold, and the lines behind it
A casino keeps a share of turnover, and most of that share is spent before it is profit
An operator’s own reporting is built from a handful of figures: the amount staked, the amount returned as winnings, the difference between them, the number of customers it was earned from, and the lines that consume most of it before anything is left. This desk takes those figures apart one at a time, so that a claim about how much a casino "keeps" can be checked rather than believed. Nothing here quotes a real company, and no operator is rated or recommended.
Figure stub
- Sheet
- HD-58-01
- Subject
- The figure an operator reports
- Sample used throughout
- £100,000,000 staked
- Gross win in the sample
- £4,000,000 (4.0%)
gross winWhat was kept: everything staked minus everything returned to players
the holdThe gross win divided by turnover, measured over a period and a whole book of play
net revenueWhat survives the bonus line, and the definition a reader should check first
Direct answerAn operator reports the amount staked (turnover) and the amount kept (gross gaming revenue, or gross win), and the ratio between them is the hold. The hold is an average over a whole month and every product, not the edge on one game. Most of the hold is then consumed by bonus cost, marketing, duties and operating costs, and the share that reaches profit is the last line rather than the first.
Turnover is what is stakedThe hold is turnover minus winningsThe hold is not the edgeMost of it is spent again
Why a desk about an operator's numbers exists at all
The other desks in this series read one mechanism each: the rail a deposit travels on, the condition a bonus carries, the maths inside a slot, the pool that pays a dividend on a race, the custody of a balance, the interface that frames a play. This one reads the measurement layer that sits above all of them - the figures an operator publishes about itself, and what each one is made of. It is the layer a reader meets every time a headline says a company "made" a sum of money, or that a market "kept" a percentage of what was staked.
It matters because the words are used loosely and the arithmetic is unusually checkable. A hold is a subtraction. Revenue per customer is a division. The months it takes a customer to repay what it cost to acquire them is a division again. Where a reader can re-derive a claim, a desk should show the arithmetic rather than assert the number - which is the whole point of the hold page.
The three figures everything else is built on
Almost every figure in an operator's reporting is one of these three, or a ratio between two of them. The strip under the header carries the same three labels.
turnover What was staked
Every stake placed, added up, including stakes re-staked from winnings. It is a measure of activity rather than of money brought in: the same £100 deposit can generate several hundred pounds of turnover if it is played and replayed.
gross win What was kept
Turnover minus everything returned to players as winnings. This is the industry's gross gaming revenue, and the hold is this figure divided by turnover. A bonus granted and later lost is not a cash cost until it is withdrawn, which is the trap on the bonus line.
net revenue What survives the bonuses
Gross win minus the bonus and free-play cost actually realised. This is the figure that behaves most like revenue in an ordinary business, and the definition a reader has to check first, because companies differ on whether they deduct bonuses, duties, or both.
What the four lines decide
Four consequences follow from this vocabulary, and each one is a page in this desk.
figure 1
figure 2
the average, not the game The hold is measured over a period and a book of play. A game with a 3% edge can produce a hold of 1% on a small sample and 5% on another, because on a small sample variance dominates. The edge page shows where the two figures stop agreeing.
figure 3
the customer in the denominator Revenue per customer is gross win divided by active customers. What counts as "active" differs between companies - a login, a stake, or a deposit - so the same word can describe different populations. The customer page is about that denominator.
figure 4
most of it is spent The share that reaches profit is small and comes last. Bonus cost, marketing, duties and running costs are taken out of the gross win in order, and the remainder is the operating profit. The pound-of-stakes page follows one pound through every line.
Worked example - the sample operator used throughout this desk (illustrative)
Staked by customers in the month (turnover): 100,000,000.00
Returned to players as winnings: - 96,000,000.00
GROSS WIN (the hold, 4.0% of turnover): 4,000,000.00
less bonus and free play realised: - 600,000.00
NET REVENUE (3.4% of turnover): 3,400,000.00
less marketing and acquisition: - 1,100,000.00
less duties on the gross win: - 800,000.00
less platform, staff, payments, licence: - 900,000.00
OPERATING PROFIT: 600,000.00
Four figures decide every number in this desk: the turnover, the hold (4.0%), the customer count
(500,000 active) and the cost of acquiring one (55.00). Every other number here is derived.
The same month, as proportional bars
The bar is this desk's design unit: its width is the share it stands for, so the shape of a claim can be seen before the number beside it is read. The first bar is a whole pound of stakes; the four after it are slices of the four pounds per hundred that the operator kept, which is the relationship the whole desk turns on.
Returned to players
Bonus, of the gross win
Marketing, of the gross win
Duties, of the gross win
Platform and running
Operating profit
returned to players bonus marketing duties running costs operating profit
Read the two scales separately. The first bar answers "where did the stakes go". The other five divide only the 4.0% that was kept, and they are the reason a hold of 4.0% is not a profit margin of 4.0%: of each £4.00 kept in this sample, £0.60 reaches operating profit.
How to read the split of a pound of stakes
The first signature component on this page follows one £100 of stakes through every line it leaves on, with a bar beside each row so the proportions are visible as well as stated. The uncomfortable figure sits at the top of it: £96.00 of the £100.00 goes back to players, which is what makes a 96% return the same statement as a 4% hold.
Read the rows in order. The winnings line is set by the games and the results. The bonus line is money the operator gives back to acquire and retain - and, as the bonus page shows, only the converted part of it is ever a real cost. Marketing buys customers, duties are levied by governments on the gross win rather than on stakes, and the running line pays for the platform, the staff, the payment fees and the licence. Only the last line is profit.
What the customer ledger shows
The second signature component at the foot of this page turns the same month into a per-customer question, because a total is not a decision: what it cost to acquire one customer, what that customer contributes in a month, and how many months of contribution it takes to repay the acquisition. In the sample the answer is just under twelve months of average life, and the retention a business needs to deliver that is the number that decides whether the whole exercise works.
That is the honest shape of the industry's economics. A customer is bought before they are known, the contribution per month is a few pounds, and the payback is therefore measured in months of life rather than in a single transaction. No promotion changes the arithmetic; it moves one of its lines.
Where the numbers in this desk come from. Every turnover, gross win, hold, customer count, bonus cost, acquisition cost and month of retention here is labelled illustrative and shows its arithmetic, so it can be re-derived, and no real company's figures are quoted anywhere on this site. Real operators differ in their definitions, their periods, their product mix and their markets, and they change. What does not change is the structure: a stake that is returned or kept, a ratio between them, a customer count in the denominator, and a set of cost lines between the gross win and the profit.
If you only read one page
The hold page is the one to read first: it defines the only ratio most reporting turns on, and shows why it is an average and not an edge. The edge page is the one that stops the two being confused, and the checklist reduces the whole desk to eight questions to ask of any published figure before believing it.
| The line | Per 100.00 staked | Share | What it is |
|---|---|---|---|
| Returned to players as winnings | 96.00 | 96.0% | what is staked, minus what is returned, is the only figure the operator keeps |
| Bonus and free play realised | 0.60 | 15.0% | only the granted credit that is wagered through and withdrawn is a cost |
| Marketing and acquisition | 1.10 | 27.5% | advertising, partner commission and the realised cost of offers |
| Duties on the gross win | 0.80 | 20.0% | levied on the gross win, not on stakes, which is why the base matters |
| Platform, staff, payments, licence | 0.90 | 22.5% | the running cost of the product itself |
| Operating profit | 0.60 | 15.0% | the only line that is neither a return to a player nor a cost |
| Everything staked | 100.00 | 4.00 kept | The first row is 96.00 of the whole 100.00 staked; the five rows after it are slices of the 4.00 that was kept, and they sum to it exactly. |
96.00 returned, 4.00 kept, 0.60 reaching profit. The first row is the whole of what was staked, so 4.0% is kept - and of each 4.00 kept, bonus cost, marketing, duties and running costs take 3.40, leaving 0.60 of operating profit. That is 15% of what was kept and 0.6% of what was staked, and the gap between those two percentages is the difference between a hold and a margin.
| The line | Amount | Basis | What it is |
|---|---|---|---|
| Active customers in the month | 500,000 | the count | a login, a stake or a deposit - the definition decides the figure |
| Gross win per active customer | 8.00 | per active customer | 4,000,000.00 of gross win divided by 500,000 active customers |
| Less bonus per active customer | -1.20 | per active customer | 600,000.00 of realised bonus cost divided by the same count |
| Less marketing per active customer | -2.20 | per active customer | 1,100,000.00 of marketing, including spend on the existing base |
| Contribution per customer per month | 4.60 | per active customer | 8.00 less 1.20 less 2.20: what a month of one customer is worth |
| Cost to acquire one customer | 55.00 | 11.96 months | 55.00 divided by the 4.60 of monthly contribution is 11.96 months, so an average customer has to stay about a year - which needs monthly retention of 91.6%, because average life is 1 / (1 - retention). |
8.00 of gross win, 4.60 of contribution, 55.00 to buy. The acquisition cost divided by the monthly contribution is 11.96 months. At 85% retention the average customer lives 6.67 months and contributes 30.67 against the 55.00 spent, a shortfall of 24.33; the retention that breaks even is 91.6%.