iGaming glossary

The vocabulary operators, regulators, and platform vendors actually use. Tight definitions, no marketing fluff. Updated as new terms become standard.

Last updated: 2026-04-27 · 47 terms across 7 categories

Operations & metrics

The numbers operator boards actually look at. Most are revenue-side; LTV/CAC are the growth-side counterparts.

GGRGross Gaming Revenue#: Total stakes minus winnings paid out to players, before bonus costs or operational expenses. The top-line number every casino reports first.
NGRNet Gaming Revenue#: GGR minus bonus costs, taxes, and provider fees. Closer to what actually lands on the operator's P&L.
HoldHouse edge#: The percentage of total stakes the operator keeps on average after paying winnings. Slot hold runs 3–8%; sportsbook hold 5–12% depending on margin discipline.
RTPReturn to Player#: The inverse of hold — the long-run percentage of stakes returned to players as winnings. A 96% RTP slot has a 4% hold.
LTVLifetime Value#: Average net revenue per player over their full active lifetime with the brand. The metric that justifies acquisition spend.
CACCustomer Acquisition Cost#: Total marketing + affiliate spend divided by new active depositing players acquired in the period. LTV ÷ CAC > 3 is the typical operator unit-economics benchmark.
Churn#: The rate at which active players stop depositing. Retention CRM exists to lower this number; high churn kills LTV regardless of how strong acquisition is.
FTDFirst-Time Deposit#: The conversion event from registration to depositing player. The funnel step paid acquisition optimizes for.

Compliance & licensing

What operators owe regulators, KYC vendors, and players. Skipping any of this is how brands lose licenses and get processors revoked.

KYCKnow Your Customer#: Identity verification against government-issued documents — required before withdrawals in nearly every regulated jurisdiction. Tiered KYC raises the bar for higher-volume players.
AMLAnti-Money Laundering#: Transaction-monitoring rules and reporting obligations under jurisdictional frameworks (FATF, 6AMLD, BSA). Operators flag suspicious patterns and file SARs.
PEPPolitically Exposed Person#: A player flagged as a current or former public official, family member, or close associate. PEP status triggers enhanced due diligence under most AML regimes.
SoWSource of Wealth#: Documentation a player provides to justify large deposits — payslips, tax returns, business records. Required at high-roller volumes and during enhanced due diligence.
RNGRandom Number Generator#: The cryptographic source of game outcomes. Regulated RNGs are independently certified (eCOGRA, GLI, BMM) and audited annually.
Provably Fair#: A cryptographic protocol that lets players verify each game outcome was generated from a pre-committed seed they couldn't predict and the operator can't retroactively change. Common in crypto casinos.
MGAMalta Gaming Authority#: EU-tier license — high credibility with payment processors and EEA payment rails, but slow and expensive to obtain.
Curaçao eGaming#: Most common offshore license — fast and cheap to obtain, broad acceptance, but lower credibility with banks. Now consolidated under the new LOK regime.
Anjouan#: Comoros-based offshore license that became popular post-2023 as Curaçao tightened. Faster + cheaper, but with similar bank-acceptance trade-offs.
UKGCUK Gambling Commission#: Strictest of the major Western licensing regimes. Required to operate in the UK, with stringent affordability and self-exclusion rules.
Responsible Gambling#: Self-exclusion (GAMSTOP, BetBlocker), deposit limits, reality checks, and cool-off periods. Default-on under most regulated jurisdictions.

Platform types

How operators acquire the technology stack. The choice between these is the single biggest cost-and-control decision before launch.

White Label#: An operator runs a brand on a vendor's license + infrastructure, paying a rev-share. Fastest path to launch but the operator never owns the underlying license or player data.
Turnkey#: The operator buys the platform under their own license. Higher up-front cost than white label, but the operator owns the brand, the player base, and the long-term margin.
iGaming Platform#: The unified backend (PAM — Player Account Management) that runs registration, KYC, wallets, bonusing, CRM, reporting, and game integrations. The operator's core system.
Game Aggregator#: A single API that exposes hundreds of game studios. Operators integrate once with the aggregator instead of contracting and integrating each studio individually.
PAMPlayer Account Management#: The system of record for every player — KYC status, wallet balance, bonus history, RG flags. The PAM is the single point all other systems read from.
Multi-brand#: Running multiple operator-facing brands on the same backend. Liquidity, KYC, and CRM data can be shared (or strictly segmented per regulator).

Game mechanics

How the games inside a casino actually work — math model, volatility, and the marketing terms that wrap them.

Volatility#: How frequently and how large a slot pays out. High-volatility slots pay rarely but big; low-volatility slots pay often but small. Player demographic targeting often segments by volatility preference.
Megaways#: Patented slot mechanic by Big Time Gaming where the number of symbols on each reel changes per spin, producing 117,649 possible ways to win. Licensed by most major studios.
Live Dealer#: Casino games (blackjack, roulette, baccarat, game shows) streamed from a real human dealer in a studio. Higher operator margin and longer session times than slots.
Bonus WageringWagering Requirement#: The number of times a bonus must be re-bet before withdrawal — typically 30–40× for deposit bonuses. The math by which bonuses become accretive to GGR.
Bonus Abuse#: Players exploiting bonus terms via collusion, multiple accounts, or low-variance betting patterns to extract value. Detection-and-block is a core CRM responsibility.
Cashback#: A retention bonus that returns a percentage of net losses over a period. Lower wagering than deposit bonuses; common in VIP segments.

Sportsbook

Concepts unique to sports betting (vs. casino). Margin, market depth, and live-betting tooling are where sportsbook operators win or lose.

Pre-match odds#: Markets and prices set before an event starts. The largest volume of bets globally, especially on football/soccer.
In-Play / Live Betting#: Markets that update during the event itself — score, time remaining, live momentum. Higher operator margin than pre-match because of price latency.
Cash-out#: A feature that lets bettors close an open bet before the event finishes for a partial settlement based on current odds. Increases engagement and operator hold.
Margin / Overround#: The implicit operator edge baked into odds. A 5% overround means the implied probabilities of all outcomes sum to 105% — that 5% is the long-run hold.
Bookmaker / Sportsbook Engine#: The platform that runs odds compilation, risk management, and bet settlement. Often white-labeled from specialist vendors (BetRadar, OddsMatrix, RunningBall).

Payments

How money moves in and out. The payment stack is often the biggest constraint on which jurisdictions a brand can operate in.

Fiat#: Government-issued currency (USD, EUR, BRL). Settled via card networks, e-wallets, open-banking rails. Bank acceptance varies by license tier.
Crypto Settlement#: Deposits/withdrawals in BTC/ETH/USDT. Fast, low-cost, and license-flexible, but introduces wallet-management and AML-scrutiny obligations.
Hybrid Liquidity#: Operating both fiat and crypto rails inside the same player wallet. Adds operational complexity but unlocks the broadest player base.
Cold Storage#: Crypto reserves kept offline (hardware wallets, multi-sig vaults). Operators are expected to hold the bulk of player funds in cold storage; hot-wallet exposure is minimized.
Reverse-withdrawal#: A delay between a player's withdrawal request and execution during which the player can cancel and re-bet. Increasingly restricted by regulators as a player-protection issue.

Technical

Engineering vocabulary that operator CTOs and procurement teams expect to see in vendor materials.

API-first#: Every backend capability exposed via a documented HTTP API the operator can consume from any frontend. The opposite of a vendor's bundled-UI white-label.
Webhook#: An HTTP callback the platform fires when an event happens (deposit confirmed, KYC passed, big win). Lets operators wire their own systems without polling.
SLAService Level Agreement#: Contractual commitment to availability and response times — typically 99.9%+ uptime, 15-minute sev-1 acknowledgment, 4-hour sev-1 resolution. The number that gets cited at renewal.
p99 latency#: The 99th-percentile end-to-end response time — slower than 99% of requests are. The right number to track for player-experience SLOs (the median lies; tail latencies are felt).
Geo-blocking#: Restricting access by IP or device location to comply with jurisdictional licensing. Implementation requires both edge-CDN rules and in-application checks for VPN evasion.
Headless / Decoupled#: Architecture where the backend has no opinionated frontend. Operators ship their own UI, mobile app, or Telegram bot, all reading from the same API.

Term we should add?

The glossary is curated, not exhaustive. If you're an operator and there's a piece of platform vocabulary you keep having to explain to your team, send it over — we'll add it.

Suggest a term