Operator P&L and game math

GGR (Gross Gaming Revenue)
Turnover multiplied by house edge, aggregated across players — the top line of the gaming P&L, before bonus cost, payment fees, gaming duty or affiliate share are deducted. iGaming basics.
NGR (Net Gaming Revenue)
GGR minus bonus cost, payment processing fees, gaming duty and affiliate revenue share — the real bottom line. A campaign that looks positive on GGR can still be NGR-negative once bonus cost is subtracted. iGaming basics.
Hold
The share of money wagered that an operator keeps, measured over a stated period — the realised, period-specific counterpart to a game’s long-run theoretical edge, and the two will not match exactly over any finite window.
RTP (Return to Player)
The long-run share of turnover a game pays back out, as a percentage. A 96% RTP means the operator keeps 4% of everything wagered over the long run — it is a limit a real session approaches, not a property any single session actually has. RTP and volatility.
House edge
e = 1 − RTP. The operator’s structural margin on every unit staked, expressed as a fraction, and the multiplier in every expected-loss and expected-cost calculation. RTP and volatility.
Turnover / handle
The total amount staked across a session, including money re-wagered out of previous wins — not the amount deposited. This is the base every expected-loss and wagering-requirement calculation is built on, and the term most CRM copy gets wrong by substituting "deposit" for it. iGaming basics.
Expected loss
A function of turnover, not deposit: expected loss = turnover × house edge. A small deposit that gets re-wagered many times over can represent a far larger expected-loss event than its face value suggests. iGaming basics.
Bonus cost
What a bonus offer actually pays out in expectation once wagering, caps and player busts are accounted for — not its face value. The number a campaign P&L should be built on instead of the headline bonus amount credited. Bonus conversion math.

Bonus terms

Wagering requirement (WR)
The turnover multiple a player must clear on a bonus, or on bonus plus deposit, before it converts to cash. One of several dials operators hold — basis, weighting and the cashout cap all move the real cost of clearing it further. Bonus conversion math.
Wagering basis (bonus-only vs deposit+bonus)
Whether the wagering multiple applies to the bonus alone or to deposit plus bonus combined. The lower the match percentage, the more punishing a deposit+bonus basis becomes relative to its headline multiple — a distinction most operators do not price explicitly. Bonus conversion math.
Game weighting
What fraction of a stake on a given game counts toward clearing a wagering requirement. Real completability tracks weighting more than the WR figure itself — a low weighting can turn an offer that looks easy into one that is arithmetically almost impossible to clear. Bonus conversion math.
Max cashout / conversion cap
The ceiling on what a player can actually withdraw from a bonus once its wagering is cleared. It does not change how likely a player is to complete the wagering — only what completing it pays — which is a distinction operators frequently conflate with the wagering requirement itself. Bonus Conversion Simulator.
Grind ratio
The expected cost of the required turnover divided by the player’s starting balance. Below 1, the average path completes the wagering; above 1, the average path busts before completing, and only a run above expectation finishes. Bonus conversion math.
Sticky vs non-sticky bonus
A sticky bonus is never itself withdrawable and only unlocks winnings generated while wagering it off; a non-sticky bonus is added to the withdrawable balance directly once cleared. The distinction changes how a player experiences a cashout even when the wagering math behind it is identical.
Free spins value
The gap between a free-spins grant’s notional face value (spin count × spin value) and its true expected cost once the winnings-only wagering requirement and the cap are applied. The true cost typically runs well under the notional figure, which is why booking spins at face value overstates campaign cost. Bonus conversion math.

Lifecycle and value

FTD (First-Time Deposit)
The first successful deposit-to-play event on an account. The boundary that ends the registration stage and starts early life, because an account with no deposit carries no play data to design CRM against. Player lifecycle stages.
NDC (Net Depositing Customers)
The count of unique customers who made at least one deposit in a given period. A volume metric, distinct from GGR or NGR, that a CRM team tracks alongside them to separate "more players depositing" from "existing players depositing more."
Conversion rate
The share of players who complete a defined next step — most commonly registration to first deposit, but the same idea applies to any funnel stage a CRM team defines, such as offer-to-redemption. Player lifecycle stages.
D7 / D30 retention
The share of a cohort still depositing 7 or 30 days after first deposit. A standard early-life health metric, used to judge whether an onboarding journey is actually stabilising behaviour rather than just generating a first deposit. Player lifecycle stages.
Churn
A player crossing from active or at-risk into lapsed, under whatever explicit, per-vertical definition an operator uses. The definition itself matters more than the churn rate it produces — too aggressive a definition wastes reactivation budget on players who were never really gone. Player lifecycle stages.
Reactivation
A lapsed player re-engaging with an offer or journey and, ideally, re-stabilising into repeat play. Offer uptake alone is not reactivation — a player who takes a reactivation bonus, plays it through and never returns has been given one more bonus, not reactivated. Player lifecycle stages.
ARPU / ARPPU
Average revenue per user and average revenue per paying user — the same revenue figure divided by two different denominators (the whole base versus only depositors). The gap between them is itself a useful signal of what share of the base is actually monetising. Player lifecycle stages.
LTV (Lifetime Value)
The total NGR a player is expected to generate across their relationship with an operator. Used to set acquisition and early-life bonus budgets — spending more to acquire or convert a player than their expected LTV justifies is a common way acquisition economics quietly go negative.
Cohort
A group of players who share a starting event, usually the same FTD period, tracked together over time. Cohort analysis is how a team separates a genuine trend in player behaviour from a seasonal or one-off swing in the aggregate numbers. CRM segmentation for online casino.
Segment
A group of players sharing behavioural characteristics relevant to a CRM decision — a frequency tier, a value tier, or a combination of both. The operating unit of established-stage CRM, and one that needs periodic re-measurement rather than a one-time build. CRM segmentation for online casino.
RFM (Recency, Frequency, Monetary)
A segmentation framework that scores players on how recently they played, how often, and how much they spend, then combines the three into a segment. A widely used starting point precisely because it is built entirely from data every operator already has. CRM segmentation for online casino.
VIP tier
A value-based tier that can apply to a player at any lifecycle stage, not a stage of its own — a player can enter or leave a VIP tier during early life, established play, or after reactivation. Player lifecycle stages.

CRM operations

Journey / automation
A pre-built sequence of messages and actions triggered by player behaviour or a schedule, run without a human deciding each send. The design work — which segments get which journeys, and under what contact rules — is where most of the CRM value actually sits. Lifecycle & retention strategy.
Trigger
An event-based condition that starts a journey or sends a message — a deposit, a session end, a balance crossing a threshold — as distinct from a scheduled send that fires on a calendar regardless of what the player just did.
Orchestration
Coordinating which channel, message and timing a player actually receives across email, SMS, push and on-site messaging at once, so campaigns from different teams don’t collide or duplicate for the same player. iGaming CRM platforms compared.
Control group and uplift
A held-out group of otherwise-eligible players who do not receive a given campaign, used to measure uplift — the incremental revenue the campaign actually caused, as opposed to revenue from players who would have played anyway. CRM campaign ROI measurement guide.
Suppression list
A list of players deliberately excluded from a campaign or journey — for opt-out, frequency, eligibility or compliance reasons — checked before a send goes out rather than relied on after the fact.
Frequency cap
A limit on how many messages or offers a player can receive within a given period, applied across campaigns and channels rather than per campaign, so no single player is over-contacted by the combined output of several teams working independently.
Deliverability
Whether a sent message actually reaches a player’s inbox or device rather than being filtered, bounced or blocked. A campaign with strong targeting and a well-priced offer still fails if the message never arrives, which makes deliverability a CRM metric in its own right, not purely an IT concern.

Compliance and player protection

KYC (Know Your Customer)
Identity verification an operator must complete before or shortly after a player starts playing. Each verification step sitting between registration and first deposit is also a conversion event with its own measurable drop-off, not only a compliance checkpoint. Player lifecycle stages.
AML (Anti-Money Laundering)
Controls and monitoring aimed at detecting and preventing the use of gambling accounts to move illicit funds — a risk and compliance function that CRM teams interact with mainly through the account restrictions and holds it can trigger.
Affordability check
A review of whether a player’s spending is sustainable relative to their financial circumstances. The same decline-against-baseline signal a CRM team uses for at-risk detection is directly relevant here — the two processes are often built from overlapping data without talking to each other. Player lifecycle stages.
Self-exclusion
A player-initiated block on their own account (and, in some schemes, across operators) for a defined or indefinite period. A hard stop that any CRM journey or offer must respect immediately and without exception once it is in place.
Deposit limit
A player- or operator-set ceiling on how much can be deposited over a given period. CRM offers and journeys need to be designed around existing limits, not around encouraging a player to raise one.
Responsible-gambling interaction
A direct, individual check-in with a player triggered by a play-behaviour signal — distinct from a generic RG message sent to the whole base. The same behavioural-decline signals this glossary’s lifecycle terms describe are often the trigger for one. Player lifecycle stages.