it sizes the contribution It is the monthly contribution of an average customer. In the sample it is £8.00 of gross win, or £6.80 after the bonus line. That is the number an acquisition cost has to be repaid out of, which is the payback page.
Hold Desk / The customer
Figure 04
The same revenue is a different figure per customer, depending on who is counted
A total says little unless it is divided by something. Gambling operators divide revenue by their active customers, and the meaning of the result depends entirely on what that denominator counted: everyone who logged in, everyone who staked, or everyone who deposited. The words look interchangeable and the ratios they produce are not.
Figure stub
- Sheet
- HD-58-05
- Subject
- The denominator
- In the sample
- 500,000 active
- Gross win per customer
- £8.00 a month
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 answerRevenue per customer is gross win divided by the customers counted in the period, usually per month. Because operators define "active" differently - a login, a stake, or a deposit - the same gross win yields different per-customer figures from the same customer base. A reader has to check the definition before comparing two of them.
The denominator is a choiceDefinitions differMonthly is the usual periodIt is not a spend per person
How the figure is built
- Take a period. Per-customer figures are usually monthly, which means the denominator is a count of customers active during that month - not the number who have ever registered.
- Define active. A login-based count is the widest and produces the lowest figure per customer. A stake-based count is narrower. A deposit-based count is the narrowest of the three and produces the highest figure per customer.
- Divide the gross win, or the net revenue. The numerator matters as much as the denominator: a per-customer figure built on gross win is higher than one built on revenue after bonuses.
- Decide whether to average or to split. A single average across all customers describes none of them precisely. Operators often present both an average and a split of their customer base by value, which is where the honest caveats sit.
Worked example - one gross win, three denominators (illustrative)
Gross win for the month: 4,000,000.00
Customers who logged in: 500,000 -> 4,000,000 / 500,000 = 8.00 each
Customers who staked: 380,000 -> 4,000,000 / 380,000 = 10.53 each
Customers who deposited: 190,000 -> 4,000,000 / 190,000 = 21.05 each
Same revenue, same period, one operator. The reported "revenue per customer" is 8.00 or 10.53 or
21.05 depending only on what the word active was defined to mean - a range of 2.6 times.
What a per-customer figure tells you, and what it does not
one
two
it is an average of averages An average across a customer base is not a typical customer. Spending in a gambling population is heavily skewed: a minority of customers generate a large share of the revenue, so the mean sits well above the median and describes almost nobody exactly.
three
it is not a cost to a person It is not a statement about what any individual lost. Gross win per customer includes the results of occasional customers, of trial customers and of customers playing on bonus funds, and it includes the operator's own margin - it is an account of a business, not of a household.
Why the definition is worth checking rather than assuming
If the count is a login
Every dormant curiosity is included. The figure is low, the denominator is wide, and a business can raise its reported per-customer revenue simply by making its "active" test narrower.
If the count is a deposit
Only paying customers are included. The figure is high, and it is closer to a measure of revenue per payer than of engagement across a customer base.
Neither is dishonest, and neither is comparable with the other without the definition. This is why the mix page and the checklist both begin with a definition: everything downstream of a per-customer figure inherits whatever the denominator decided.
The honest version of the claim. "The average customer is worth £8 a month" means the gross win of one month divided by the number of customers the operator counted as active in it. Change the definition and the number changes without a single customer behaving differently. It is a business measure with a stated base, not an observation about people.