GGR and NGR are the two headline revenue metrics in online gambling. Both describe what a site earns, but they are captured at different points in the calculation, and that difference shapes how an operator judges a product vertical, an affiliate channel or an individual market.
How GGR is calculated
Gross Gaming Revenue is the difference between total stakes accepted and total winnings paid out over a period. It is a gross figure: it accounts for neither bonus costs, nor payment provider fees, nor levies owed to the regulator. That makes GGR a convenient basis for comparing product verticals against each other, because it follows the game result and is barely distorted by marketing policy.
What NGR deducts
Net Gaming Revenue is what remains once the operator subtracts the items it treats as direct costs of gaming turnover. That list usually includes:
- the cost of bonuses granted and wagered through;
- payment scheme fees and processing costs;
- gaming duty and licence levies;
- royalties paid to content providers.
Why the definitions diverge
There is no industry standard for NGR: each operator fixes the deduction list in the contract. The same site can report one NGR to an affiliate, another to its platform partner and a third internally, simply because the deduction bases differ. For an affiliate this is a central negotiating point: a revenue share on a wide deduction base pays materially less than the same percentage on a narrow one.
The practical conclusion is that the metrics of two companies can only be compared once the formulas have been reconciled. Without the list of deductions, an NGR figure carries no information on its own.