Quick answer: Gross Gaming Revenue (GGR) is what players staked minus what they won back. Net Gaming Revenue (NGR) is GGR minus the direct costs of producing it: bonuses, gaming tax and, depending on who is counting, provider fees, payment costs and affiliate commissions. Regulators tax GGR. Operators, affiliates and CRM teams live on NGR, because that is the number a bonus can quietly destroy while GGR keeps growing.
This guide gives both formulas, a worked example, the deductions that differ between definitions, and the two levers a retention team actually has over the gap between the two figures.
What GGR is and how it is calculated
Gross Gaming Revenue is the operator’s gross win from gambling activity over a period:
GGR = Total stakes − Winnings paid outIn the UK the same quantity is called Gross Gambling Yield (GGY); that is the base on which HMRC charges gaming duties. Most continental regulators, and the European trade body EGBA, say GGR. The industry-level numbers you see quoted, such as Europe’s online market approaching €51 billion in 2025, are GGR figures (we summarised the EGBA report here).
Three things follow from the formula:
- GGR is not turnover. A slots player who deposits €100 and cycles it through a 96 % RTP game for an evening might generate €2,500 of stakes and about €100 of GGR. Reporting stakes as revenue is the classic way to make a casino look ten times bigger than it is.
- GGR is RTP seen from the other side. For casino, GGR ÷ stakes is the realised house edge; for a sportsbook it is the hold. A 6 % hold on €1 million of handle is €60,000 of GGR.
- GGR ignores what it cost to get the stakes. A player who wagers only bonus money still produces GGR. That is the whole problem NGR exists to fix.
What NGR is and how it is calculated
Net Gaming Revenue takes GGR and removes the direct costs of generating it:
NGR = GGR − Bonus cost − Gaming tax − Provider fees − Payment fees (− Affiliate commissions)Unlike GGR, NGR has no single legal definition. It is a commercial figure. The core deductions almost everyone agrees on are bonus cost and gaming tax. After that, definitions diverge:
| Deduction | What it covers | Included in NGR? |
|---|---|---|
| Bonus cost | Value of bonuses, free spins and free bets actually converted to real money or wagered | Always |
| Gaming tax / duty | Levied on GGR in most European markets | Always |
| Game provider fees | Revenue share paid to studios and aggregators, typically a percentage of GGR | Usually |
| Payment processing | PSP fees, chargebacks, failed-transaction costs | Usually |
| Affiliate commissions | Revenue-share payments to partners | Depends on the contract |
| Jackpot contributions | Seed and progressive contributions | Depends |
This is why an affiliate agreement, a platform provider’s revenue-share clause and an internal management report can all say “NGR” and mean three different numbers. Before comparing anyone’s NGR with yours, read their definition.
A worked example
Take a month for a mid-size casino in a regulated European market:
| Line | Amount |
|---|---|
| Total stakes (turnover) | €25,000,000 |
| Winnings paid out | €23,750,000 |
| GGR | €1,250,000 |
| Bonus cost | − €250,000 |
| Gaming tax at 20 % of GGR | − €250,000 |
| Provider fees at 12 % of GGR | − €150,000 |
| Payment fees and chargebacks | − €40,000 |
| NGR | €560,000 |
GGR is 5 % of turnover, a normal casino hold. NGR is 45 % of GGR. Nearly a third of gross revenue went to the tax office and a fifth went back to players as bonuses. Change the tax rate to 35 % and NGR drops to €372,500 with nothing else changing. Cut bonus cost from 20 % of GGR to 12 % and NGR rises by €100,000. The tax rate is set by the regulator. The bonus ratio is set by the CRM team.
GGR vs NGR: the difference in one table
| GGR | NGR | |
|---|---|---|
| Formula | Stakes − winnings | GGR − direct costs of generating it |
| Who defines it | Regulator | Operator, contract by contract |
| What it is used for | Gaming tax base, licence reporting, market-size statistics | Management accounts, affiliate and B2B revenue shares, campaign ROI |
| Can a bonus increase it? | Yes, even at a loss | Only if the bonus produces more GGR than it costs after tax |
| Best read at | Product and market level: game, provider, sport | Segment and campaign level: cohort, promotion, channel |
The practical rule: use GGR to judge the product (which games, providers and sports make money) and NGR to judge marketing and retention (which players, segments and campaigns make money).
Why the gap matters more in high-tax markets
Because gaming duty is charged on GGR, every euro of GGR a bonus generates is taxed in full, even when the bonus cost more than the euro. In a market with a 20 % duty, a bonus needs to return at least €1.25 of GGR per €1 of bonus cost just to break even before provider and payment fees. In a market taxing GGR at 35 % or more, the break-even is roughly €1.55.
Blanket promotions rarely clear that bar. A reload bonus sent to the whole active base is mostly received by players who would have deposited anyway, so the incremental GGR is small and the cost is paid on everyone. This is the mechanism behind an operator whose GGR grows quarter after quarter while NGR stays flat: the growth is bought with bonus money that the tax base then punishes.
The two levers a CRM team has over NGR
An operator cannot change the duty rate or, in the short term, provider fees. It can change two things, and both sit in the CRM.
1. Bonus efficiency: GGR generated per euro of bonus cost.
- Replace calendar promotions with behaviour-triggered offers: a deposit-abandonment nudge or a declining-frequency reload goes only to players whose behaviour says they need one.
- Size the bonus to the segment. A player whose deposit frequency has dropped from weekly to monthly may need an offer; a player depositing on schedule does not.
- Read casino game metrics with real-money and bonus play separated. If a bonus drives most of its play on high-RTP titles, the nominal cost understates the real cost, because the GGR it produces is thin.
- Use control groups. Hold back 10 % of a segment from every promotion and compare deposits after bonus cost. If the held-out group deposits almost as much, the bonus is subsidising behaviour that was going to happen.
2. Unsubsidised activity: deposits and stakes that happen without a bonus.
- Reactivation flows that start at the first drop in session or deposit frequency, not at day 30 of dormancy, bring players back before a large bonus is the only argument left.
- Segmentation by value and lifecycle stage lets the team protect high-NGR players with service and content rather than money, and stop spending on segments whose NGR is negative after tax.
- Cross-sell between casino and sportsbook adds GGR from existing depositors at zero acquisition cost and usually at low bonus cost.
To manage either lever you need NGR, not GGR, attributed to campaigns. A campaign report that shows attributed deposits and GGR but not bonus cost will always flatter the biggest bonus. The 12 weekly retention reports that a CRM manager should run include exactly this split.
Related metrics worth tracking alongside GGR and NGR
- Hold / house edge: GGR ÷ stakes. Falling hold with stable stakes means players moved to higher-RTP games or bonus play increased.
- Bonus cost ratio: bonus cost ÷ GGR. The single most controllable input into NGR.
- NGR per active player: the retention version of ARPU. Track it per cohort and per segment.
- NGR margin: NGR ÷ GGR. Compare it per market, since the tax rate dominates it.
- Revenue per message sent: attributed NGR ÷ messages delivered, the efficiency measure for the CRM channel itself.
Definitions of the surrounding KPIs are in the iGaming KPI glossary.
Where InTarget fits
InTarget’s analytics show bet volume, GGR and RTP by game, provider and game type with real-money and bonus play separated, so a bonus’s true cost is visible next to the GGR it produced. Revenue attribution tags every campaign link and credits deposits to the campaign, step and channel that sent them, which turns “GGR went up” into “this reload SMS produced these deposits at this bonus cost”. A CRM manager can ask the AI Data Helper how much revenue a specific campaign generated last weekend in plain language, without waiting for an analyst. The tax rate is still the regulator’s. Everything on the bonus side of the NGR formula is in the CRM.
Frequently asked questions
Is GGR the same as GGY?
In practice, yes. Gross Gaming Revenue (GGR) and Gross Gambling Yield (GGY) both mean stakes minus winnings paid out. GGY is the term used by the UK Gambling Commission and HMRC; GGR is the term used by most other European regulators, by EGBA and by operators. Some regulators also include non-gaming revenue such as tournament fees in the figure, so check the local definition.
Are gaming taxes deducted from GGR or from NGR?
Most European gaming duties are charged on GGR, not on NGR. The tax is calculated before bonuses, provider fees and payment costs are taken off, which is exactly why NGR is the number operators watch: in a market with a high duty rate, a bonus that adds GGR can still lose money after tax.
Is NGR the same as profit?
No. NGR is revenue after the direct costs of generating gaming revenue: bonuses, gaming tax, game provider fees, payment processing and, in some definitions, affiliate commissions. Salaries, marketing spend on acquisition, licensing, technology and overheads still come out of NGR before you reach EBITDA or profit.
Why do two operators calculate NGR differently?
Because NGR is a commercial figure, not a regulatory one. There is no single legal definition. Each operator, and each affiliate or B2B contract, decides which deductions are included. The common core is GGR minus bonus cost minus gaming tax; provider fees, payment fees, chargebacks and affiliate commissions are included or excluded depending on the contract. Always read the definition in the agreement before comparing numbers.
What is a healthy NGR-to-GGR ratio?
It depends on the market’s tax rate more than on the operator. In a low-tax jurisdiction with disciplined bonusing, NGR can retain well over half of GGR; in a high-tax market with aggressive promotions it can fall below a third. The useful benchmark is your own ratio over time, per segment and per campaign: if it drops while GGR grows, promotions are buying gross revenue at a loss.
How does a CRM affect NGR?
A CRM changes NGR through the two variables an operator controls day to day: how much bonus money is spent to generate each euro of GGR, and how many active players keep depositing without a bonus at all. Behaviour-based segmentation and triggered campaigns replace blanket promotions with targeted ones, and attribution shows which campaigns produce deposits after bonus cost, so the bonus budget moves to where it produces NGR.