What Is Admin Fee in iGaming?

The iGaming market is one of the largest and fastest-growing industries. Year after year, casinos expand into new regions and scale up in existing ones, despite all regulatory hurdles. That's why most newcomers get their first taste of affiliate marketing through gambling.

In this article, we break down the concept of the admin fee in casinos. We'll walk through the pitfalls of RevShare with real-world examples.

Why pure RevShare doesn't exist

RevShare is one of the most popular payment models in gambling. A webmaster receives a percentage of the casino's profit, which is made up of the money lost by players. Typically, the affiliate's share ranges from 20% to 40%.

It's important to understand that an arbitrageur cannot count on a clean percentage. For example, if a casino earns $200 from a single player, the partner would theoretically receive $60 at a 30% rate. But there's also the Admin Fee — administrative costs.

Admin Fee includes:

• payment system commissions;
• slot provider commissions;
• player bonuses;
• currency conversion;
• call center, retention department, and platform administrator costs.

Webmasters may reasonably ask why they should foot the bill for all of this — but the question is rhetorical. Fees exist everywhere, and ultimately they are passed on to the partners who earn revenue from the casino's net profit.

The main problem with the admin fee is that in many cases no one will tell the webmaster exactly what costs are included in the Admin Fee for a specific product. These questions are usually ignored entirely, or the advertiser's representatives cite an NDA.

Partner profit calculation after an offer test

Another important nuance is the existence of a double commission. The Admin Fee is set by the advertiser, but when working with them through an affiliate network, the commission may increase further — and getting a meaningful explanation from support is unlikely.

In gambling chats and forums, you'll often come across the opinion that the admin fee is simply an additional tool for enriching the advertiser while cutting into webmasters' profits. Though to be fair, there are as many sets of terms and opinions as there are products.

Calculating actual RevShare payouts after deducting the Admin Fee is only possible if you know the commission rate. For example, if the commission is 15% and the RevShare rate is 35%, here's how it works on a lost deposit of $500.

($500)-15%*0.35=$149.

In this example, the losses due to the admin fee amount to $26, which may seem like a small sum. But when there are 20–30 such deposits in a month, the problem becomes significant.

If you think your product doesn't have this issue, don't jump to conclusions. It may turn out that the commission is quite substantial and simply isn't visible — or is hidden — in the reports.

Based on affiliate feedback, there have been cases where the Admin Fee reached 50%, which hits profit extremely hard. In the example below, the webmaster was paid 60% of the casino's net gaming revenue (NGR) — meaning 40% was deducted from their RevShare.

Can you protect yourself from Admin Fee increases?

Unfortunately, there's little an affiliate can do about a rising admin fee. If an advertiser or affiliate network decides to increase costs, the webmaster will only find out when they see lower numbers in their stats.

CPA network terms of service typically state that services are provided on an "as is" basis with no guarantees. So the only options are to accept it or find a different product.

You can ask about the Admin Fee size, but there's no way to predict the answer. Managers are generally not willing to disclose such information or risk pushing away potential affiliates.

So, running traffic to iGaming offers is not as straightforward as it's often advertised. The niche has many nuances that need to be factored in before setting targets on first deposits and ROI.