Archive, updated 27 August 2026
The notes so far
We write short notes on how money moves through the online gambling industry. Each note takes one line item from an operator's budget or one behaviour from its customers and works through what the available evidence supports. We publish when a note is ready and not before, which in practice has meant roughly one per month this year.
Our sources are the usual analyst's diet, listed operators' filings and earnings calls, regulator statistics, affiliate network disclosures, and conversations across the industry that we use for direction but never for numbers. Where a figure is an estimate we say so in the note. Where the evidence is thin we say that too, and several planned notes have died in draft for exactly that reason.
No. 10, late August 2026
Note on sponsorship pricing in betting
Betting brands pay millions for shirts on teams their customers never watch. We work through why regulation, more than reach, sets the price.
No. 9, late August 2026
Note on payment decline rates
The deposit that fails is a hidden acquisition cost nobody's budget owns. We size the leak and look at what recovering approvals is worth.
No. 8, August 2026
Note on operator reputation spend
Reputation budgets are growing while nobody agrees on what they buy. We sort the line item into its parts and look at who supplies each one.
No. 7, July 2026
Note on brand search behaviour
Brand queries are the cheapest traffic an operator has and the easiest to lose. What the search data shows about who actually captures them.
No. 6, June 2026
Note on affiliate channel economics
Revenue share, CPA and hybrid deals produce very different incentives. We trace where the margin in the affiliate channel actually sits.
No. 5, May 2026
Note on operator marketing costs
Marketing is most operators' largest cost after tax. We break the spend into media, bonuses and affiliates and look at what discipline would mean.
No. 4, April 2026
Note on crypto casino growth
The fastest-growing segment is the hardest to measure. We separate what the proxies can show from what only promotional numbers claim.
No. 3, March 2026
Note on regulated market entry costs
The licence fee is the smallest cost of entering a regulated market. We assemble the full bill, tax, compliance builds and the marketing ramp.
No. 2, February 2026
Note on player retention economics
Keeping a player costs a fraction of recruiting one, yet retention loses every budget fight. We work through the cohort arithmetic and why.
No. 1, January 2026
Note on bonus cost structures
A welcome offer is four costs wearing one banner. The series opener takes the bundle apart and asks what the headline figure really buys.
What comes next
The two drafts we flagged in the spring both cleared the evidence bar this summer and now sit in the archive as Nos. 9 and 10, payment declines and sponsorship pricing. Two new candidates are in early draft for the autumn, one on game supplier revenue shares, one on the cost of responsible gambling programmes. Neither is close to publishable yet. When one is, it will appear here first, dated and numbered like the rest.