iGaming Marketing Metrics: FTD, GGR, NGR, CPA

iGaming Marketing Metrics. Payback & Counterparts

Every iGaming number has a counterpart that keeps it honest. Read them in pairs and they answer the question finance asks about every campaign: when does a depositor pay back?

< FTD > is a player's first real-money deposit.

< GGR > is what players lose: stakes minus winnings.

< NGR > is GGR after bonuses, taxes, fees, and other agreed deductions.

< CPA > is what you paid to acquire a single depositor, and payback is the month when that depositor's NGR finally covers it.

Those definitions fit in a paragraph. The trouble starts when a number travels without its counterpart.

• Michigan shows how far apart a pair can sit. In 2025 the state's online sportsbooks reported $671.3m in gross receipts but only $435.9m in adjusted gross receipts, according to the Michigan Gaming Control Board's 2025 annual report.
• The difference, $235.4m or 35% of GGR, was free play wagered by bettors and deducted before tax. And that is before a single payment fee or affiliate commission.

So when a sportsbook deck quotes GGR, it is quoting a figure at least 54% larger than the NGR that revenue share and payback are calculated on.

Key Takeaways

• Read every metric in pairs. FTD with FTD quality, handle with GGR, GGR with NGR, CPA with fully loaded CAC and NGR with the payback month.
• Free play eats a large share of sportsbook GGR. Michigan's online sportsbooks deducted 35% of 2025 gross receipts as free play, before any other cost.
• CPA understates acquisition cost. The welcome bonus lands in revenue rather than the marketing budget, so the invoice misses part of what a depositor cost.
• Sportsbook cohorts need a hold adjustment. DraftKings' sports margin moved from 8.7% to 6.8% in a single quarter on results and promotions.
• Price payback months instead of LTV:CAC ratios. In UK account data the top 5% of customers produced 66.9% of operator revenue, so lifetime averages flatter.
• Crypto casino GGR is almost always an estimate. Analysts infer it from on-chain deposits at roughly 25 to 50 cents of GGR per dollar deposited.

What FTD, GGR, NGR and CPA Mean

FTD, GGR, NGR and CPA are the 4 numbers most iGaming marketing reports are built on. Each has a simple formula and a counterpart that tells you whether the formula is flattering you. Here they are with the supporting metrics that sit between them.

The formulas are rarely where disputes start. Disputes start in the deductions and the denominators: which costs come off GGR and whether NGR is divided by every depositor or only by those still playing.

Scale puts the first pair in context. US commercial sportsbooks took $166.94bn in bets in 2025 and kept $16.96bn, a hold of about 10.2%, while online casino revenue rose 27.6% to $10.74bn, according to the American Gaming Association's 2025 revenue release. A sportsbook reporting handle is reporting a number roughly 10x its revenue.

The Payback Pairs: How to Read iGaming Metrics Together

The Payback Pairs is AP Collective's framework for iGaming reporting: 5 metric pairs, read in the order the money moves, where the second number in each pair keeps the first one honest.

1. FTD count and FTD quality. How many people deposited and how many will deposit again.
2. Handle and GGR. How much was staked and how much of it players lost.
3. GGR and NGR. What players lost and what the operator kept after deductions.
4. CPA and fully loaded CAC. What the invoice says a depositor cost and what they cost in full.
5. NGR per FTD and the payback month. What each depositor earns and when those earnings cover their cost.

The Payback Pairs framework showing 5 iGaming metric pairs from FTD count to payback month

Ordering logic, stated plainly: the pairs follow the money, from the first deposit to the month that deposit pays back. They are not ranked by importance. A report that shows the first number of a pair without the second is a claim; with both, it is a result.

Why bother with pairs when a single headline number is easier to present?

Because a headline number can move in the opposite direction to the value it is meant to represent.

• Gambling.com Group, a listed affiliate, delivered more than 101,000 new depositing customers in Q3 2025, down from 116,000 a year earlier, while its marketing services revenue held level at $29.8m, according to its Q3 2025 results filed with the SEC. Fewer depositors, same money. Count and value parted ways inside a single quarter, and only the pair shows it.

Pair 1: Why FTD Counts Overstate Your Player Base

An FTD count overstates your player base because it counts every first deposit equally, and most first depositors never become regular players. FTD, or first-time deposit, is the moment a registered user funds a real-money account for the first time. Listed affiliates call the same event an NDC, a new depositing customer. It triggers most CPA payouts. It is also one of the easiest numbers in the funnel to game, because a first deposit can be as small as the cashier minimum and still count in full.

Most depositors stay small. In the Patterns of Play study of about 140,000 British online gambling accounts, 85% of betting accounts spent less than £200 on betting across a full year, as iGaming Business reported from the GambleAware-commissioned research. An FTD count adds a £10 depositor and a £10,000 depositor together and calls the result 2.

So pair the count with quality counterparts, each read at a fixed point after the deposit:

• Median first deposit, day 1. Use the median, never the mean, so a single large deposit cannot hide 500 minimum ones.
• Second deposit within 7 days. The fastest early signal that a depositor is turning into a player.
• Withdrawal within 14 days. A high early withdrawal rate usually means bonus hunters cashing out.
• Day-30 active rate. The share still playing once the welcome offer has run out.
• NGR per FTD at day 30. Early value per depositor, calculated across every FTD in the cohort.
• Device and wallet clustering, days 1 to 7. Several "new" depositors sharing a device or a payment wallet points to multi-accounting.

The question that sorts good acquisition from bad fastest is also the one most dashboards cannot answer: how many of last month's FTDs made a second deposit?

Crypto operators need an extra rule. A crypto FTD is usually the first on-chain deposit to a player's assigned address, often in USDT, and minimums can be tiny. Set a qualifying floor in US dollars, valued at the time of deposit, or a creator campaign can post hundreds of FTDs that together would not cover a single CPA fee.

Pair 2: Handle vs GGR and the Problem With Wagered Volume

Handle is the total amount staked and GGR is the part of it players lose, so a sportsbook's GGR is usually around a tenth of its handle and a casino's is a far smaller share of its turnover. Hold is the counterpart that converts one into the other: GGR divided by handle.

US commercial sportsbooks held about 10.2% in 2025 on the AGA figures. Michigan's online sportsbooks held 12.4% of their $5.4bn handle before deductions and about 8.1% after them, our calculation from the Michigan Gaming Control Board's December 2025 revenue release and its annual report. Always ask whether a hold figure is gross or adjusted.

Handle can rise while revenue falls, and 2026 produced a clean public example. DraftKings grew Sports Consumer Volume, its name for handle, 14.5% to $13.14bn in Q2 2026. Its sports revenue fell 10.6% to $891.9m over the same period, and its sports net revenue margin dropped from 8.7% to 6.8%, according to DraftKings' Q2 2026 results filed with the SEC. Customer-friendly results and new customer promotions did the damage.

DraftKings Q2 2026 sports handle rose 14.5% while sports revenue fell 10.6% year over year

Crypto casinos have a harsher version of the same problem. Many publish total wagered as their headline growth figure, and wagered volume is the easiest number in iGaming to inflate, because bonus funds and rakeback both get staked again. A game with a 1% house edge turns $1bn wagered into roughly $10m of GGR before a single deduction.

Our advice: take wagered volume out of growth reports. Report deposits and GGR instead, with hold alongside. Wagered volume can climb for months while the operator loses money on the players generating it, and a board that sees it next to acquisition spend will draw the wrong conclusion every time.

Pair 3: GGR vs NGR and Where the Deductions Go

NGR is GGR minus the costs of producing it: usually bonuses and free bets, gaming tax, payment fees, chargebacks, provider fees and jackpot contributions, in whatever combination the contract or the regulator specifies.

How big the gap gets depends on the product and on the rulebook. From the MGCB's 2025 annual report, Michigan's online sportsbooks deducted $235.4m of $671.3m in gross receipts before tax, 35.1%, and under the Lawful Sports Betting Act that deduction is the free play bettors wagered.

Online casinos deducted about $189m of $3.09bn, 6.1%. That figure reflects the law more than the promotions. The Lawful Internet Gaming Act caps the casino free play deduction: for operators that launched in 2021 the limit was 6% of gross receipts in 2025, falls to 4% in 2026 and disappears from 2027. In each month of 2025 we checked, from March to December, the casino deduction sat between 5.5% and 6.1% of gross receipts. The cap is doing the work. These are our own calculations from published MGCB figures (gross receipts minus adjusted gross receipts, divided by gross receipts), and we have not seen the split published elsewhere.

Michigan 2025 online sportsbooks deducted 35% of gross receipts versus 6% for online casinos

The comparison teaches 2 things. First, sportsbooks really do run on free bets: 35% of Michigan's online sportsbook GGR went back out as free play, so any revenue share or payback model built on sportsbook GGR inherits a large error. Second, a regulator's adjusted figure is a tax construct. The casino line stops at the legal cap while the casino's real bonus cost keeps going, so neither line is NGR.

Listed operators add a twist of their own. DraftKings records incentive awards as a reduction of revenue rather than as a marketing expense, per its 2025 annual report on Form 10-K. Its reported revenue already sits closer to NGR than to GGR, which matters the moment you benchmark a partner's NGR statement against a public company's numbers.

NGR has no single legal definition in affiliate contracts, so the deduction list is the formula. This is the list worth agreeing in writing before any revenue share starts.

• A worked example shows how quickly the lines add up. Take an illustrative casino cohort with $100,000 of GGR. Subtract $22,000 of bonus cost, $12,000 of gaming tax, $4,000 of payment fees, $9,000 of provider fees and $1,000 of chargebacks, and NGR ends at $52,000. That is 48% of the gross gone before a revenue share rate is even applied.
• One ratio turns all of this into a number you can track every week: NGR divided by GGR, the gross-to-net ratio. On Michigan's tax-base figures it was about 65% for online sportsbooks in 2025, and true NGR after the other deductions sits lower still. Track it by partner. A creator or affiliate whose players convert GGR to NGR well below your average is usually sending bonus-driven traffic, and the ratio shows it weeks before the payback curve does.

Pair 4: CPA vs Fully Loaded CAC and the Cost Hiding in Revenue

CPA is the fee on the invoice for a qualified depositor, while fully loaded CAC is every cost of acquiring that depositor, including the welcome bonus that never appears on a marketing invoice. CPA, or cost per acquisition, is how affiliate and creator deals are priced. CAC, customer acquisition cost, is the operator's view: all acquisition spend divided by the depositors it produced.

Here is how an illustrative $200 CPA becomes a $360 CAC.

Illustrative iGaming acquisition cost showing a $200 CPA growing to a $360 fully loaded CAC

The $90 bonus line is the one teams forget, because it never touches the marketing budget. It arrives as lower revenue instead.

• DraftKings' second quarter of 2026 shows the pattern at scale. Monthly unique payers rose about 9% to 3.6m and sales and marketing spend rose 38% to $322.5m, yet revenue fell 4.6% to $1.44bn. The company put the decline mainly down to customer-friendly sport outcomes and "increased promotional reinvestment associated with new customer acquisition", per the same Q2 2026 filing. Average revenue per monthly unique payer fell $19 to $132. Acquisition cost landed twice. A CPA-only report would have caught the marketing line and missed the revenue line.
• The affiliate side has its own counterpart to CPA: revenue per new depositor delivered. Gambling.com Group's marketing services revenue divided by the NDCs it reported comes to roughly $222 per NDC in Q1 2025, $274 in Q2 and $295 in Q3, our arithmetic from its Q1, Q2 and Q3 releases. Treat those figures as a blended market price that mixes CPA fees with revenue share from older players. Use them as a benchmark only.

The same fully loaded logic applies when you weigh creators against paid media, which we set out in our breakdown of crypto KOLs versus paid ads.

Pair 5: How to Calculate CPA Payback for a Casino or Sportsbook

CPA payback is the first month in which a cohort's cumulative NGR per original depositor, after any revenue share, equals or exceeds its fully loaded CAC. Written as a formula:

Payback month = the first month m in which the sum of NGR per original FTD from month 1 to m, multiplied by (1 minus the revenue share rate), is at least CAC.

The answer is only honest if you get 2 details right.

• Divide by every FTD in the cohort, not only by active players. Averaging NGR over the survivors makes payback look months shorter than it is.
• Keep the welcome bonus out of NGR if it already sits in CAC. Counting it in both places charges the same cost twice.

Expect some months to go negative. When a cohort's players win more than they lose, NGR per FTD drops below zero and the payback line steps backwards. Under revenue share, the contract's carryover clause then decides whether that loss is netted against the partner's future commission, which our guide to how negative carryover works in affiliate deals covers.

Here is an illustrative crypto casino cohort built on the $360 CAC above. NGR per active player rises as casual depositors leave, but the active share falls faster.

The same cohort pays back at very different speeds depending on how the partner is paid. We modelled 3 deal structures with non-CPA costs held at $160 per FTD and added a downside case in which retention is 20% worse in every month after the first.

Illustrative CPA payback curves for pure CPA, hybrid and revenue share iGaming affiliate deals

In the base case all 3 structures finish within $9 of each other at month 24. What changes is when the cash comes back and who carries the loss if the cohort churns faster than planned. Pure CPA only wins if retention beats the forecast. The model also has a limit worth naming: it holds player quality constant, which real deals do not, since revenue share partners tend to send players who stay. That is the strongest argument for them.

Public operators can run long payback windows because their balance sheets allow it. DraftKings' chief executive told analysts the company decides acquisition spend "based on our three-year payback rule", on its Q2 2024 earnings call. Few crypto casinos can wait that long. If you fund growth from operating cash, set the payback ceiling first, let it decide the CPA you can afford, then build the budget backwards from it, as in our guide to structuring a crypto marketing budget.

Running the formula backwards gives you that CPA ceiling. Take the running NGR per depositor at your payback ceiling, take off any revenue share and the non-CPA costs, and what is left is the most a CPA can be. On the illustrative cohort with a 12-month ceiling, $395 of cumulative NGR minus $160 of non-CPA costs leaves a maximum pure CPA of about $235.

Why Sportsbook Payback Needs a Hold Adjustment

Sportsbook payback needs a hold adjustment because sportsbook NGR swings with results as well as with player behaviour, so a cohort can look like a failure or a success on the strength of a few weekends.

DraftKings shows the effect across 2 time frames in the same filing. Its sports net revenue margin fell from 8.7% to 6.8% between Q2 2025 and Q2 2026, yet across the first half of each year it barely moved, from 7.4% to 7.3%, per the Q2 2026 results. Michigan's monthly figures swing harder. Online sportsbook adjusted gross receipts fell to $14.6m in March 2025 and reached $64.7m in November, according to the MGCB's March and November releases.

A cohort acquired while bettors' favourite picks keep landing will look like a bad cohort. It may simply be a good cohort that met bad luck early.

So for sportsbook cohorts:

• Model payback on expected hold. Apply the operator's long-run margin to the cohort's handle, and show realised NGR as a separate line.
• Judge over at least 2 quarters. DraftKings' margin moved almost 2 points in a single quarter on outcomes and promotions.
• Separate results from promotions. Book free bets as a cost you chose and results as variance, on separate lines.
• Keep casino cohorts on realised NGR. Casino games carry a fixed house edge, so realised GGR settles on expected GGR much faster, jackpots aside.

Worked Example: Reading 2 Creator Campaigns With The Payback Pairs

Reading a campaign through The Payback Pairs often reverses the verdict of an FTD report, and a side-by-side comparison of 2 creators shows how. The numbers below are illustrative. A crypto sportsbook runs 2 creators over the same 30 days, with non-CPA costs of $160 per FTD for both. Creator A is a large casino and sports streamer paid a $150 CPA, while Creator B runs a smaller Telegram tipster community, charges $280 and sends far fewer depositors.

On the FTD report, Creator A wins 1,000 to 300 at barely half the CPA. Every counterpart points the other way. By day 90, Creator B's 300 depositors have produced $64,500 of NGR against $58,000 from Creator A's 1,000, on 43% of the spend. And Creator A's weak average still leans on its top 5% for 71% of NGR, so even the $58 is fragile.

Creator A's profile is what broad audiences tend to produce. In the Patterns of Play account sample, 85% of betting accounts spent less than £200 across a whole year, per iGaming Business, so a big FTD number from a general audience usually means a big number of small players.

The right move is rarely to drop Creator A outright. Put A on a qualifying deposit floor or a hybrid deal that shares the downside, and move the next tranche of budget to B. That decision is invisible in a report that stops at FTDs.

When to Judge an iGaming Campaign: Day 1 to Month 12

You can judge an iGaming campaign's player quality within 30 days and its economics within about 90, but you cannot confirm payback until the cohort actually crosses its CAC. Most budget mistakes come from asking a later checkpoint's question at an earlier checkpoint.

In the illustrative cohort above, the first 90 days delivered 27% of the NGR the cohort produced over 24 months. That is enough to see the trajectory, which is why day 90 is the first checkpoint worth a structural decision. It is still too early to call payback. Listed operators make the point for us: DraftKings works to the 3-year payback rule described on its Q2 2024 earnings call, so month 12 is only a checkpoint for them.

Why We Price Payback Months, Not LTV:CAC Ratios

LTV:CAC ratios mislead in iGaming because lifetime value is an average of an extremely uneven distribution, so a handful of high-value players can make a cohort look profitable while most of it never pays back.

The usual advice borrows a 3:1 LTV to CAC target from subscription software, where customers pay similar amounts every month. Gambling revenue does not behave like that. In the Patterns of Play account study of British online gambling, the top 1% of customers by stakes produced 37.4% of operator revenue, the top 5% produced 66.9% and the top 20% produced 89.2%, according to Forrest and McHale's analysis in the Journal of Gambling Studies of 139,152 accounts from 7 operators.

The top 5% of online gambling accounts generated 66.9% of operator revenue in UK data

With that shape, a cohort average can clear 3:1 on the strength of a few players while 9 in 10 depositors never cover their own CAC. So instead of the ratio we report 4 numbers for every cohort:

1. The payback month, calculated per original FTD.
2. The share of FTDs that have individually paid back by that month.
3. The share of cohort NGR from its top 5% of players.
4. The payback month with the top 5% removed. If payback disappears without them, the channel is a bet on finding high rollers.

Now the inconvenient part. The concentration that breaks LTV averages is also where gambling harm concentrates. In the same Patterns of Play data, customers who both bet and played casino games held 25% of accounts but delivered 55% of operator GGY, and breadth of gambling is an established predictor of problem gambling, per NatCen's summary report. A payback model that only works because of the top 1% is a compliance exposure as well as a forecasting one.

GGR vs GGY vs AGR: The Same Metrics Under Different Names

GGR, GGY and AGR describe closely related numbers, and many iGaming reporting disputes are really 2 teams using 2 names for 1 metric or 1 name for 2. Regulators and listed operators each have their own vocabulary, and affiliate contracts add another layer.

The UK Gambling Commission, for instance, asks licensees for gross gambling yield and states in its regulatory returns guidance that operators must report GGY figures "not GGR". The same guidance says loyalty cashback is not deducted from GGY, which is the opposite of how many crypto casino contracts treat rakeback in NGR.

Agree the dictionary before the dashboard: 1 name and 1 formula per metric, written into every partner contract. It is the cheapest fix in this guide.

Which iGaming Metrics to Report to Whom

Each audience for an iGaming report needs a different lead metric, but every audience should see that metric's counterpart on the same page.

Most teams skip the last row. Revenue concentration is a commercial risk and a regulatory one at the same time, and regulators already watch the player-protection side. Michigan's regulator received 573 player complaints in 2025 and collected more than $325,000 in fines across 8 violations, with letting players exceed their own wagering limits among the most common breaches, per its 2025 annual report. A marketing report that shows which channels bring in the heaviest-losing accounts is the cheapest way to see that exposure early.

The Crypto Counterparts: FTD, GGR, NGR and CPA On-Chain

Crypto casinos and sportsbooks run on the same economics as licensed operators, but the observable numbers differ: on-chain deposits stand in for reported GGR, and rakeback does the job welcome bonuses do elsewhere.

Few crypto operators publish GGR, so the market estimates it from deposits. A July 2026 Gambling Insider investigation using public blockchain data counted $22.7bn of 2025 deposits into 12 crypto casinos across Ethereum, BNB Chain and Tron, with Stake alone taking $15.2bn. Most of it arrived as stablecoins. Tron carried more of Stake's money than Ethereum did. The industry convention of about 37 cents of GGR per deposited dollar, tested across a range of 25 to 50 cents, puts those 12 casinos at $5.7bn to $11.4bn of GGR.

Nobody has a better number, including us. The same investigation set Yield Sec's widely cited $81.4bn estimate of 2024 crypto gambling GGR against Tanzanite's figure of roughly $10bn to $11bn, an 8x gap. It also noted that Tanzanite consults for the operators it measures while Yield Sec sells monitoring to governments. Treat every crypto GGR figure, an operator's own included, as an estimate with a method attached.

For a single operator the conversion works the same way. At 37 cents per dollar, $1m of monthly on-chain deposits implies roughly $370,000 of GGR before rakeback and token rewards come off. Move the ratio to 25 or 50 cents and the same deposits imply $250,000 or $500,000, which is why a crypto payback model should always be run at both ends of the range.

Crypto counterparts for FTD, GGR, NGR and CPA across casinos, exchanges and prediction markets

The Payback Pairs still apply on-chain, with 4 adjustments:

• Chargebacks shrink and other fraud grows. On-chain deposits cannot be reversed like card payments, but multi-accounting and bonus abuse fill the gap.
• Rakeback has to come off NGR. Crypto casinos compete by returning part of the house edge to players, and reading NGR before rakeback makes payback look months shorter than it is.
• Currency moves the numbers. A deposit in BTC or ETH changes value in dollars between deposit and play, so value every FTD and NGR line in USD at the time of the transaction.
• Exchanges already run the same funnel. Crypto exchanges track first deposits and pay affiliates on trading fees, which is why exchange acquisition transfers so directly to crypto iGaming. AP Collective runs micro-influencer and UGC acquisition for MEXC, with 380+ creators activated, per our MEXC case study.

Prediction markets are the newest counterpart. DraftKings launched its Predictions product in December 2025 under CFTC oversight and now counts those trades inside Sports Consumer Volume, per its Q2 2026 filing. For teams building in that category, our prediction markets growth playbook covers the acquisition side.

Before You Approve the Next CPA Invoice: 8 Checks

Run these 8 checks before paying a CPA or revenue share invoice, because each one ties a line on the invoice to the counterpart that proves it. Together they apply The Payback Pairs to a single payment decision.

1. Qualification. Does every invoiced FTD meet the contract's qualifying rules, and what is the median first deposit?
2. Second deposits. What share of these FTDs deposited again within 7 days?
3. Early withdrawals. How many withdrew most of their balance within 14 days of depositing?
4. NGR formula. Which deductions were applied, and do they match the contract line by line?
5. Bonus cost. Where did this cohort's welcome bonus cost land, and is it inside your CAC?
6. Payback position. How far has the cohort's running NGR per depositor climbed towards its CAC?
7. Concentration. What share of the cohort's NGR comes from its top 5% of players?
8. Crypto valuation. Were crypto deposits valued in USD at the time of deposit, and which chains were counted?

Check 4 usually carries the most money. On Michigan's online sportsbooks, free play alone moved 35% of gross receipts in 2025, per the MGCB annual report.

6 Reporting Habits That Hide a Losing Cohort

Most losing iGaming cohorts looked healthy in the report that approved them because it showed only the first number of each pair and skipped the second. The habits are expensive at scale: reading gross instead of adjusted revenue would have overstated Michigan's 2025 online sportsbook revenue by $235.4m, per the MGCB annual report.

The same discipline applies to any campaign proof you are shown, whether it comes from an agency or a creator. Our guide to reading crypto marketing case studies applies that test to published results.

How AP Collective Reports iGaming Growth

AP Collective reports iGaming work on payback rather than FTD volume: every creator and affiliate is read through The Payback Pairs before more budget moves to it.

That standard comes from running acquisition across 600+ campaigns and 100M+ users reached, including 5,000+ KOL activations across 100+ projects since 2023. It also comes from exchange programmes such as MEXC's creator network, where the funnel runs on first deposits exactly as a casino's does. For an iGaming client it means:

• A metric dictionary agreed before launch, with the NGR deduction list written down.
• Cohort reporting by creator and channel, divided across every depositor acquired.
• A payback ceiling set before any CPA is negotiated.
• Concentration and compliance checks on every cohort, so growth never rests on a handful of accounts.

The honest limit: this approach is slower to produce a headline. If you want a spike of cheap FTDs for a launch announcement, we are the wrong partner.

Frequently Asked Questions (FAQs)

Final Takeaway

Any single iGaming metric can be made to look good. Its counterpart is much harder to fake. Report FTDs next to second deposits, handle next to GGR, GGR next to NGR, CPA next to fully loaded CAC and NGR next to the payback month, and the report finally shows whether acquisition made money.

About the Author

David is the Head of Operations at AP Collective. Harvard Business School-certified in Leadership, he has 5+ years of experience in project management and business operations and has led the delivery of over 600 campaigns for 100+ crypto brands since joining AP Collective in 2023. See all our authors here.

Reviewed periodically. If you spot something outdated, write to info@apcollective.io.

Disclaimer

This article is educational and does not constitute legal, financial, investment or gambling advice. iGaming is regulated real-money gambling, and operators and their partners must follow the licensing, advertising and responsible gambling rules of every market they serve. Figures marked illustrative are models built for this article, not benchmarks or quotes. Public figures reflect the linked sources as of September 2026. Nothing here promotes gambling to underage or self-excluded people. Gamble responsibly, and market responsibly.

Related Reading

• iGaming Influencer Marketing: Creators, Streamers and Attribution in 2026
• Top 10 iGaming Marketing Firms for Casinos and Sports in 2026
• Crypto KOLs vs Paid Ads
• How to Structure a Crypto Marketing Budget

Sources

• Michigan Gaming Control Board, 2025 annual report (gross and adjusted gross receipts): michigan.gov
• Michigan Gaming Control Board, December 2025 revenue release (2025 handle): michigan.gov
• Michigan Gaming Control Board, March and November 2025 revenue releases (monthly receipts): March, November
• Michigan Lawful Sports Betting Act, definitions (MCL 432.403): legislature.mi.gov
• Michigan Lawful Internet Gaming Act, definitions (MCL 432.303): legislature.mi.gov
• American Gaming Association, 2025 commercial gaming revenue release: prnewswire.com
• DraftKings, Q2 2026 results on Form 8-K: sec.gov
• DraftKings, 2025 annual report on Form 10-K (incentives as a reduction of revenue): sec.gov
• DraftKings, Q2 2024 earnings call transcript (3-year payback rule): investing.com
• Gambling.com Group, Q1, Q2 and Q3 2025 results (NDCs and marketing services revenue): Q1, Q2, Q3
• Forrest and McHale, The Dependence of Online Gambling Businesses on High-Spending Customers, Journal of Gambling Studies: springer.com
• NatCen, Patterns of Play summary report: natcen.ac.uk
• iGaming Business, coverage of the Patterns of Play account data: igamingbusiness.com
• UK Gambling Commission, how to calculate GGY for regulatory returns: gamblingcommission.gov.uk
• Gambling Insider, crypto casino investigation using on-chain deposit data: gamblinginsider.com
• AP Collective, MEXC case study: apcollective.io