Why agents add one
A sportsbook has a calendar. There are heavy weekends, quiet Tuesdays, and whole months when the sport your players care about is not being played. A casino has no calendar. It is there at eleven on a Tuesday night, when there is nothing on the board.
That is the first reason agents add one: it gives players a reason to stay on the book between games. The second is that the money behaves differently, and understanding how is most of what you need to know before you switch it on.
How a casino makes money
A sportsbook earns its margin from the price. At the usual price a player risks 110 to win 100, and if the money is even on both sides the book keeps about 4.5 percent of what was wagered. The full sum is in how a book's margin is worked out. That margin only holds across many games, and on any one weekend the results can go against you.
A casino earns its margin from the rules of each game. The measure is the house edge, defined as the casino profit expressed as a percentage of the player's original bet. The same source gives 2.7 percent for single-zero roulette and 5.26 percent for the double-zero version. The edge does not depend on who wins a match. It is in the wheel.
The practical difference is speed. A sports bet takes three hours to resolve. A slot spin takes seconds. A player makes far more decisions per hour in a casino, so the long-run percentage shows up sooner and the week to week swings in the casino figure tend to be smaller than in the sportsbook figure.
What it does to your week
Three things usually change.
The quiet days fill in. Play shows up on days that used to be empty, which matters most in the gap between seasons.
The figures get steadier. Many small bets at a fixed edge are less lumpy than a few large bets on one game.
More players count as active. On a pay per head bill you pay for each player whose bet was graded that week. A player who only played the casino on a quiet week is an active player that week. That is a real cost, and it is worth checking against what those players bring in. How the weekly bill is built walks through the count.
The risk that is new
A casino does not remove risk. It moves it.
A slot or a table game can pay a large amount on a single bet. Over thousands of spins the edge holds, but one player on one night can win far more than his sports limit would ever allow. If you have not set casino limits, the first you hear of it is the weekly figure.
There is a second, quieter risk. Casino play is fast, and a player on credit can lose more in an hour than he would in a weekend of sports. A player who cannot pay is your problem as much as his. Limits protect both of you.
How it is billed here
The digital casino, meaning slots and table games, is included in both plans. Standard is $8 per active player per week and Pro is $11. There is nothing to add for it.
Live dealer casino is separate, and how streamed tables work has its own guide. It is an add-on at $13 per active player per week on top of either plan, because streamed tables with real dealers cost more to run.
On either one, we take no percentage of what your casino makes. Some providers charge a share of casino results on top of the per-head fee, so it is a question to ask anyone you compare against. Here the weekly fee is the bill.
BookiePerHead takes no wagers and holds no player money. The casino result, like the sportsbook result, is the agent's to carry and to settle.
Set this up before you switch it on
- Ask how casino controls work. On the demo call, have the provider show you how casino access and casino limits are set for each player. Do not switch anything on until you have seen it.
- Start with players you trust, and start low. Not every player needs the casino on day one. Keep what a player may risk there lower than you think necessary, and raise it after a few clean weeks.
- Tell players it settles the same way. Casino play goes into the same weekly figure and closes on the same day. No second account, no second settlement.
- Check your bankroll against the new ceiling. Add the casino limits to the total you could owe in a bad week. If the number is more than you have set aside, lower the limits.
- Look at the casino line in the weekly report. Read it as its own figure for the first month so you learn what normal looks like.
An example
Take an agent, call her Renata, with thirty-five players in Costa Brava. Football carries her autumn. From late winter to summer about a third of her players go quiet.
After seeing on the demo call how casino limits are set, she opens the digital casino to twenty players with a good payment record and keeps what each may risk there modest. In the first quiet month, nine of the players who would normally have sat out place casino bets. They count as active those weeks, so her bill is higher than it would have been. Her weekly figure is also higher, and steadier, because the play is spread across many small bets.
In week three one player has a strong night at a table game and finishes the week well ahead. Because his casino limit was small, Renata pays him on settlement day without touching the money she keeps for football season. She leaves his limit where it is.
By the end of the season she has a clearer answer than any estimate could give her: which players use the casino, what it adds in the slow months, and what it costs in active heads.
When not to add it
If your bankroll is already tight against your sports limits, add nothing until that is fixed. If your players are a small group who only bet one sport and settle in person, they may not want it. And if casino games are treated differently from sports betting where you operate, that is a question to settle with a lawyer first. The rules for the two are often not the same, and they depend on where you and your players are.