How does pay per head work?
Pay per head, usually shortened to PPH, is how most independent bookmakers run a modern sportsbook without building one. Instead of writing software, taking bets by text and keeping the figures in a notebook, an agent uses a provider's platform and pays a flat weekly fee for each player who was active that week. The provider runs the technology. The agent runs the book.
None of that is new work. A bookmaker, in the dictionary sense, is a person who determines odds and receives and pays off bets. Pay per head does not change the job. It changes the tools it is done with.
The name is the billing. You pay per head, meaning per active player, per week. A player who does not bet in a given week costs you nothing that week. The bill follows the action rather than a headcount you are stuck with.
What you get
A pay per head platform is the whole operation on one login. Your players get a betting site on their phones that looks like the big books they already know. You get the office behind it.
A typical platform includes:
- A betting site your players use on phone and desktop.
- Lines on the major sports, posted and moved by the provider, with limits you control by player and by sport.
- Player management: opening accounts, setting credit, watching balances, seeing who is active this week.
- Weekly figures and win or loss in numbers you can settle from.
- A casino and a racebook alongside the sportsbook, on the same login.
Fuller tiers add live betting and a prop builder. The point is that you are not stitching tools together. You log in, set up your players, set your limits and run.
Where the lines come from
This is where new agents get confused, so here is the plain version. The provider posts and maintains the lines on the major sports and leagues around the clock and moves them as the action and the games move. You are not pricing every game at two in the morning. The lines are there when you wake up.
What you keep is the judgement. You can move a line for your whole book or for one sharp player, raise or lower limits, and decide who gets what. The provider does the constant work of keeping prices current. You make the calls that protect your book.
One honest exception: horse racing. Racing prices are pari-mutuel, which means they come from the track's pool, not from the provider. Nobody sets a racing price the way a spread is set.
How the billing works
You are billed per active player, per week, at your tier's rate. The bill rises and falls with how many of your players actually bet.
At BookiePerHead an active player is one who had a bet settle in the billing week. Settled means graded: won, lost or pushed. A player who logs in and does not bet is not billed. A player who deposits and does not bet is not billed. Standard is $8 per active player per week and Pro is $11; live dealer casino is a $13 add-on on either tier. The rate card has the whole thing, including what each tier holds.
Two things to check when you compare providers. First, ask what "active" means, because a provider that bills on logins, or on your whole roster, costs more than one that bills on settled bets. Second, ask what happens to the casino money. Some providers quote a low per-head rate and take a percentage of what your casino makes on top. The casino is often the most profitable half of a book, so that percentage is not small, and it repeats every week. BookiePerHead takes no percentage of casino action in either tier.
What a provider is not
This matters, so it is worth saying plainly. A pay per head provider gives the agent the software, the platform and the lines. It does not take wagers from the public, hold player money or pay players, and it does not run your book for you.
That split is not just how this industry talks about itself. Where sports betting is regulated, the law draws the same line. Washington, D.C., for one, licenses a sports wagering supplier, a party that sells or leases the equipment, systems and services used to conduct sports wagering. That licence is separate from the operator's, and the operator is the one who actually takes the wagers.
You run your own book. You carry the action, you handle the money with your players, and you are responsible for the laws that apply where you operate. Running a book is regulated in some places and prohibited in others, and that responsibility sits with the agent, not with the software. If a provider tells you its software makes your operation legal anywhere, treat that as a warning sign. No software can do that.
Who it is for
Pay per head suits an agent who already has players and wants to look like a real book, and it suits someone starting out who wants to look established from the first week. Your players judge you by your software. A clean platform that stays up on a busy Sunday is the difference between keeping them and losing them to a bigger book.
It also suits an agent with Spanish-speaking players. Most of the category is English first, with Spanish laid on top like a translated menu. A platform and a support line that work in both languages is a real advantage when half your action is more comfortable in Spanish.
How to try it
There is no self-serve trial at BookiePerHead. What there is instead is a demo of the real platform, running, with your book in mind. If you move, the setup and the move of your players is done for you, and most agents are live within 48 hours of first contact.
The honest way to choose is to see each platform running and compare it to what you have now. If you want the next step, read what pay per head costs, see how to switch providers without losing players, or get a demo.