Gambling Industry Glossary: GGR, NGR, Handle & More

The total amount players stake, minus the winnings paid back to them, before any other costs are deducted. It's the industry's standard measure of what an operator actually keeps from gambling activity, before tax, marketing, or bonus costs are taken out.

In the UK, the regulator calls this "Gross Gambling Yield" (GGY) and defines it formally by statute as stakes received, plus other gambling-related income, minus prizes and winnings paid out. GGR/GGY is the figure most commonly used to describe the overall size of a gambling market.

Source: UK Gambling Commission, "Definitions of terms"

Gross Gaming Revenue minus the cost of bonuses, promotional free bets or credits, and, depending on the jurisdiction, certain further deductions such as payment-processing costs. It is always equal to or lower than GGR for the same period.

NGR is the figure most online operators report to investors, since it reflects revenue after the cost of acquiring and retaining players through promotions, a cost that doesn't appear in GGR at all.

Source: industry-standard usage; not a term with a single statutory definition, unlike GGR in the UK.

The total amount of money wagered on a bet or event before any winnings are paid out (sometimes called "turnover" in other gambling verticals). Handle and revenue are reported separately because a sportsbook can post enormous handle in a month while keeping only a small percentage of it.

US state gaming regulators publish monthly handle figures alongside revenue and hold percentage for licensed sports betting operators, making handle one of the most consistently reported figures in the industry.

Source: state monthly gaming revenue reports (e.g. New Jersey, Nevada); aggregated industry-wide by the American Gaming Association's revenue tracker

The percentage of handle an operator keeps after paying out winnings, calculated as (handle minus payouts) divided by handle. It functions as the sportsbook or casino's win rate against total money wagered.

Hold varies significantly by bet type: same-game parlays and multi-leg bets typically carry a much higher hold for the operator than straight single-game bets, since they're harder for bettors to price accurately.

Source: standard terminology in state gaming regulator monthly reports.

The total net revenue an operator expects to generate from a single player across the full span of their relationship with the brand. It's the number that determines how much can be profitably spent acquiring that player in the first place.

Because LTV depends on assumptions about how long a player stays active and how much they wager, it's typically modeled rather than measured directly, and it's the figure most affiliate and marketing deals are priced against.

Source: standard industry and marketing-analytics usage.

Total revenue over a period divided by the number of active users in that period: a standard measure of how much each player is worth to an operator on average.

ARPU is a period-based snapshot (monthly or quarterly), unlike LTV, which projects value across a player's entire relationship with the brand. The two metrics are complementary, not interchangeable.

Source: standard business and industry-analytics usage.

The percentage of previously active players who stop playing (depositing or wagering) within a given period, used to measure how well an operator retains its player base.

A high churn rate forces an operator to keep spending on new player acquisition just to maintain revenue, which is why retention tools (loyalty programs, personalized bonusing) are treated as commercially important as acquisition marketing.

Source: standard business and industry-analytics usage.

The commission a sportsbook builds into its odds so that it profits regardless of which side of a bet wins, most visible in point-spread and moneyline pricing, where both sides are priced slightly worse than a true 50/50 split. Also called "juice."

A standard "-110" price on each side of a point spread bet reflects roughly 4.5% vig, meaning a bettor must risk $110 to win $100, with the extra $10 representing the sportsbook's built-in margin.

Source: standard sports betting terminology.

The percentage of all money wagered on a game that is returned to players as winnings over a very large number of plays, a theoretical long-run average, not a guarantee for any individual session.

Several regulators set minimum RTP requirements for licensed games. Malta's Gaming Authority, for example, has adjusted its minimum RTP threshold for remote gaming products via regulatory amendment, applying the same minimum across both remote and land-based sectors.

Source: Malta Gaming Authority

The statistical advantage built into a casino game's rules and payout structure, expressed as a percentage of each bet the casino expects to keep over time.

For most slot machines, house edge is the mathematical complement of RTP (a game with a 96% RTP carries roughly a 4% house edge), though the two aren't always calculated identically across every game type (table games with skill elements, for instance, can have a house edge that shifts with player strategy).

Source: standard gaming mathematics terminology.

The certified software component that determines outcomes in digital casino games, independently tested and certified by approved testing labs to ensure statistical randomness and fairness before a game can be licensed.

Regulators typically require RNG certification from an accredited independent testing lab as a condition of licensing a game, and require periodic re-certification rather than a one-time check.

Source: standard gaming-technology and testing-lab terminology.

The authorization issued by a regulator (such as the UK Gambling Commission, Malta Gaming Authority, or an individual US state's gaming commission) permitting an operator to offer gambling products within that jurisdiction.

Licenses typically come with ongoing obligations, not just a one-time approval: technical standards, financial reporting, player-protection requirements, and anti-money-laundering controls all continue to apply for as long as the license is held.

Source: standard regulatory terminology, consistent across major licensing bodies.

A gambling tax charged based on where the customer is located, rather than where the operator is licensed or based, meaning an offshore operator serving a given market still owes that market's tax on relevant revenue.

The UK introduced this model in 2014, shifting from taxing at the "place of supply" to the "place of consumption," with remote gaming duty, general betting duty, and pool betting duty all set at 15% of relevant revenue from UK customers.

Source: UK Government (gov.uk)

In the US, an agreement, often with a tribal or land-based casino operator holding the underlying gaming license, under which a separate sportsbook or platform brand pays for the right to legally operate in that state.

Because many US states cap the number of licenses available or reserve them for existing land-based/tribal operators, market access deals are frequently the only route for a national sportsbook brand to enter a new state.

Source: standard US sports-betting industry and legal terminology.

A market where online gambling is neither explicitly licensed and regulated nor explicitly prohibited, allowing operators to serve customers without a local license under legally ambiguous conditions.

Grey markets sit between fully regulated markets and black markets: operators serving them face lower legal risk than in an outright black market, but no local consumer protections apply to players there either.

Source: standard regulatory-affairs terminology.

A market where gambling is offered in violation of local law, without any license, making the activity illegal for the operator, and often for the player as well depending on the jurisdiction.

Regulators frequently cite the size of the black market serving their jurisdiction as justification for the tax rate and product restrictions they set on the licensed, regulated market.

Source: standard regulatory-affairs terminology.

A regulatory requirement, most common in online poker, that a licensed operator's player pool in one regulated market must remain separate from players in other jurisdictions rather than being pooled together.

The opposite arrangement, known as "shared liquidity," requires a specific agreement between regulators to legally pool player pools across borders, which several European regulators and, more recently, some US states and Canadian provinces have begun negotiating.

Source: standard poker-industry and regulatory terminology.

The process of verifying a customer's identity, age, and location before or shortly after they can deposit or withdraw funds, required by regulators to prevent underage gambling, fraud, and money laundering.

KYC checks typically verify identity documents, proof of address, and sometimes source-of-funds information, and are a licensing condition rather than an optional operator practice.

Source: standard financial-services and gambling-compliance terminology.

The controls an operator must have in place to detect and prevent the use of gambling products to disguise the origin of illegally obtained money, including customer due diligence and monitoring for unusual transaction patterns.

The UK Gambling Commission publishes detailed customer due diligence guidance setting out when standard, simplified, or enhanced checks apply based on a customer's assessed risk level.

Source: UK Gambling Commission, customer due diligence guidance

The features a licensed operator must offer players to manage or limit their gambling, such as deposit limits, time-outs, reality checks, and self-exclusion.

Most regulated jurisdictions require these tools to be available and easy to find, not buried in account settings, and self-exclusion in particular is often linked to a national or state-wide scheme rather than being limited to a single operator.

Source: standard player-protection terminology used across major regulators.

A 9-item screening questionnaire that scores a person's gambling behavior on a continuum, based on their answers about a set reference period, most often the past 12 months. It's the instrument most widely used in national population surveys to estimate problem and at-risk gambling.

PGSI scores run from 0 to 27 and are conventionally grouped into bands: non-problem (0), low-risk (1-2), moderate-risk (3-7), and problem gambling (8+). Countries don't always use the same cutoff for their headline "problem gambling" figure, though: Great Britain's Gambling Commission uses a score of 8 or higher, while the most-cited Swedish figure uses a score of 3 or higher, a band Great Britain's own classification would call "moderate risk." PGSI was developed from the earlier Canadian Problem Gambling Index (CPGI), and some national surveys use a translated or adapted version of that earlier instrument, such as France's ICJE, rather than PGSI itself.

Source: Ferris, J. & Wynne, H. (2001), The Canadian Problem Gambling Index: Final Report, Canadian Centre on Substance Abuse. greo.ca

The multiple of a bonus (or bonus plus deposit) amount a player must wager before any winnings from that bonus can be withdrawn. For example, a 20x wagering requirement on a $50 bonus means $1,000 must be wagered before withdrawal is possible.

Wagering requirements are the main mechanism operators use to prevent bonus funds from being withdrawn immediately after being credited, and they vary widely between operators and bonus types.

Source: standard online casino bonus terminology.

Exploiting promotional offers in ways that violate their intended terms, such as opening multiple accounts to repeatedly claim the same welcome bonus, in order to extract value without genuine play.

Operators use device fingerprinting, identity verification, and payment-method matching to detect bonus abuse, since it directly erodes the margin that promotional offers are budgeted against.

Source: standard fraud-prevention and gambling-industry terminology.