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Hold Desk / Questions
Figure 13

The questions, in full

Ten direct answers about the figures in an operator’s own reporting: what each number counts, why the hold is not the edge, what a customer is worth, what a bonus really costs, and where any of it can be checked.

Open the partner accountStart with the hold
Figure stub
Sheet
HD-58-14
Subject
Questions and answers
Answers
ten
Figures
all illustrative
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 answerThese ten answers cover the definitions a reader needs: turnover against gross win, the hold against the edge, revenue per customer, acquisition cost, the realised cost of a bonus, the product mix, and how to check any published figure before comparing it with another.
Ten answersOne sample businessEvery figure illustrativeNo operator named or rated

Ten questions, answered directly

The same answers appear as structured data on this page, generated from the list below, so the markup cannot describe an answer that is not shown here.

Where the numbers come from. Every figure in the answers below is labelled illustrative and is the same sample used across the site: £100,000,000 staked, £4,000,000 of gross win, 500,000 active customers and a £55.00 acquisition cost. No real operator's figures are quoted anywhere on this site.
The hold

The definition most of these questions turn on.

A pound of stakes

The lines between the hold and the profit.

Read the figures

The eight questions to ask of a published number.

About this project

What this desk is, how it is funded, and what it declines to do.

The questions, in full

q01

What is a casino’s hold?

The hold is gross win divided by turnover over a period: the share of everything staked that the operator kept. In the sample, £100,000,000 staked and £96,000,000 returned leaves £4,000,000 kept, a hold of 4.0%. It is an average across every product and customer in the period, not a property of a single game.

q02

How is gross gaming revenue worked out?

Gross gaming revenue, or gross win, is everything staked in a period minus everything returned to players as winnings. It is the figure most gambling duties are levied on and the base the hold and the revenue-per-customer measures are built from. It is not profit: no cost has been deducted from it yet.

q03

Is gross gaming revenue the same as profit?

No. In the sample, £4,000,000 of gross win is followed by £600,000 of bonus cost, £1,100,000 of marketing, £800,000 of duty and £900,000 of running costs, leaving £600,000 of operating profit. That is 15% of what was kept and 0.6% of what was staked, which is why a hold of 4% is not a margin of 4%.

q04

Why is the hold not the same as the house edge?

The edge is arithmetic fixed by a game design and applies to every stake. The hold is what was actually retained in a period, so on a small sample it is dominated by which way the large results fell and can be negative. The two converge as the sample grows; over a year a hold has to sit near the edge, and over a day it can be anything.

q05

What does ARPU mean in gambling?

ARPU is revenue per active customer for a period, usually a month: gross win divided by the customers counted as active. Because a login, a stake and a deposit give three different counts, the same £4,000,000 of gross win is 8.00, 10.53 or 21.05 per customer depending on what the word active was defined to mean.

q06

How much does it cost an operator to acquire a customer?

Acquisition cost per customer is the period’s marketing and inducement spend divided by the customers acquired in it. In the sample, £1,100,000 across 20,000 new customers is £55.00 each. That figure includes advertising, partner commission and the realised cost of the welcome offer, which is why it is larger than an advertising budget alone.

q07

Do operators really lose money on bonuses?

They give up part of the gross win, not the advertised value. In the sample, £720,000.00 of bonus credit was granted and £252,000.00 was realised as a cost, because only the share that is wagered through and withdrawn becomes cash. The other 65% is breakage: credit that is never converted, which is why an offer can be advertised far above what it costs.

q08

Why do different products have different holds?

A reported hold is a weighted average of products with different economics. In the sample, games produce a 3.50% hold on £40,000,000 of turnover, table and live 1.60%, sports 5.00% on £47,000,000, and bingo and poker 3.00%. The total is the total gross win over the total turnover, not the average of the four rates, which would be wrong.

q09

Where can I find an operator’s real figures?

Three places: a listed operator’s annual and interim reports, a regulator’s published market returns, and market studies that assemble both. Before comparing any two of them, check the definition of the base, the period, the legal entity, the currency and whether the figure is gross or net of bonus and duty. This site quotes no operator’s figures.

q10

Does a higher hold mean worse value for the player?

Not on its own. A hold is an aggregate across products and customers, so it measures a business rather than a game. What matters to a player’s expected result is the edge on the game they are playing and the conditions attached to any bonus, and this site makes no recommendation about either and rates no operator.