Admin Fee is the fee that online casino affiliate programs charge to cover their costs of processing player deposits and withdrawals and fees they pay to the game providers.
For instance, VAVADA Casino affiliate program has:
- Average deposit fee of 8.51% (6-9% depending on the payment system)
- Average withdrawal fee of 5.92%
- Game provider fee of 14%
GamblingCraft affiliate program (PlayFortuna and Booi casinos):
- Average deposit fee is 7.06% (changes depending on the payment system)
- Average withdrawal fee is 1.89%
- Game provider fee is 13%
This is the official admin fee breakdown provided by managers. But I wanted to see for myself if that’s how much they actually charge.
The goal was to calculate the overall admin fee without calculating each component separately. I wanted to know how much do affiliates get after all costs have been deducted.
https://docs.google.com/spreadsheets/d/1GGLU9abErzkKuZn6Ps2ejdBHxEvtG8rq83GrDTvtktk/edit?usp=sharing
The calculations are very simple and they are shown in the google sheets doc in the link above. You can copy the spreadsheet and enter your affiliate data to check out how much admin fee you’ve been charged. Enter your data into the green columns and you’ll automatically get the result.
- Player deposit
- Player withdrawal
- Your revenue share
- Your income from the player
If you don’t have the necessary stats, contact your affiliate manager and ask for it. You’ll also need to see the stats for each player. Or you can create a new referral link and ask your friend to deposit and lose, let’s say $10. Then you’ll see how much you earn from this player.
Deposits – withdrawals = profit from a player. The admin fee is the amount deducted from that profit to get the 100% revshare.
If a player hasn’t claimed any bonuses and has a zero balance after playing, that’s when we get the most accurate results. So, it’s better to do calculations for several different players and compare the results. That’s how you can be confident that the actual admin fee set for your account is what you’ve calculated.
How Much Do Affiliate Programs Actually Charge?
In reality, the fee charged to cover the costs is much higher!!! Let’s call it the total fee for a period. If you enter data on not one but all players for that period into the table provided above, you’ll see that the fee is higher. Why?
It’s because of bonuses that a casino gives to its players.
Example 1
A player made a deposit, lost some (or all) of it and withdrew the remaining balance. No bonus was claimed. In this case, the admin fee will be exactly what affiliate partners have set.
Example 2
Assume everything is the same, but this time the player claims bonuses. It’s obvious that deposit bonuses, cashback, rakeback, or some sort of loyalty points lead to the player getting extra funds to play more, and the game provider fee increases. If bonuses have been wagered, they can be withdrawn, adding to the payment processing fee.
The total admin fee at the end of the period can grow from 25-30% to 40%, 50% and even 60%, depending on the number of bonuses received by players. That means that the actual profit affiliates earn will depend not only on the admin fee set by the affiliate program manager, but also on the casino’s bonus policy. And that’s the topic for another post.
The second tab in the google spreadsheet is just the demonstration of how admin fee affects affiliate earnings. Suppose everything except the admin fee is the same across all casinos: 50% revenue share, 1 million lost by a player, no bonuses claimed. That’s just a hypothetical case that isn’t realistic at all, but it shows the difference.
P.S. The data provided in the spreadsheet is from my affiliate account and is verified by the affiliate program managers.
