Most growth comes from customers you already have
Winning a new operator is the visible part of B2B sales. For most established suppliers, it is not where most of the growth comes from. Genius Sports' 2025 annual filing breaks down the US$116.7 million increase in its betting technology revenue that year: US$99.5 million came from existing customers, through price increases on renewals and renegotiations among other things, and US$17.1 million from new customers. Sportradar reports a customer net retention rate for its largest clients of 109 per cent in 2025 and 127 per cent in 2024, meaning that revenue from the same group of customers grew year on year even after counting the ones that shrank or left.
The reason is structural. A supplier with revenue share contracts grows when its operators grow, enter new markets, add products and give its products more prominence. An operator that has integrated a supplier, certified its products in several markets and trained its staff on its tools has a high cost of switching. Both facts reward a supplier that manages its accounts well, and punish one that treats the signed contract as the end of the sale.
This lesson covers what happens after signature: onboarding and go-live, performance reviews, growth, churn, key account plans, how to measure a sales operation whose revenue is mostly variable, and how to build and pay the team.
Onboarding and go-live
The handover from the salesperson who won the deal to the people who will deliver it is the first point of failure. Everything the operator was told during the sale (timelines, features, the support model, the promotions the supplier would fund) needs to be written down and passed on, or the account starts with a broken promise.
A good onboarding plan has four parts:
- A named team on both sides: a commercial owner, a technical lead, and a compliance contact who knows which certificates and registrations each market needs.
- A launch plan by market and product, dated from the gates described in lesson four rather than from optimism.
- Agreed launch commitments from the operator: lobby placement, a launch campaign, inclusion in promotions. These were traded for price during the negotiation and should be in the contract or a written launch plan.
- A definition of "live". Inspired Entertainment's annual report counts 207 live interactive customers at the end of 2025, up from 175; the word "live" matters, because a signed customer that is not yet live earns nothing.
The first ninety days after launch set the account's trajectory. A game portfolio that launches quietly, without lobby position, rarely recovers. Account managers should watch the first weeks' data daily and escalate problems (a missing market, a game not appearing on mobile, a bonus feature not configured) before the operator notices them.
Performance reviews
Regular business reviews turn a supplier relationship into a partnership. Quarterly is the usual rhythm for significant accounts, with monthly operational calls between them.
A review the operator values is built on data the operator cannot easily assemble itself. A content supplier sees how its games perform across many operators and can show, without naming anyone, how this operator's results compare: its share of the supplier's network revenue against its share of comparable operators, the effect of lobby position on a game's revenue, which new releases are working elsewhere. A sportsbook supplier can show margin and turnover by sport against a benchmark. A payments provider can show approval rates by method and bank.
The review should end with agreed actions on both sides, not a slide deck. The supplier commits to a roadmap item or a promotion; the operator commits to placement, a market launch or a product trial. Those commitments become the agenda for the next review.
Cross-sell, upsell and new markets
Growth inside an account comes from five directions:
- The operator's own growth, which raises revenue share automatically.
- New markets, as the operator launches in jurisdictions where the supplier is already certified, or the supplier certifies where the operator is already live.
- More product, such as additional games, a second vertical, or a premium tier.
- Better position, meaning more prominence for the supplier's products within the operator's offering.
- Price, through escalators, renewals and the removal of discounts given at launch.
Market expansion is the one most often missed. An account plan should list every market the operator is in or entering, and for each one whether the supplier is licensed, certified and live there. The gaps are the growth plan, and they also tell the supplier's compliance team where to prioritise licensing work.
Churn and why operators leave
Churn, the loss of a customer or of its revenue, is the counterpart of growth. Operators leave suppliers for a handful of reasons, and the filings document most of them.
They build their own. The largest operators eventually bring core technology in house. DraftKings' 2020 registration statement said that after acquiring SBTech it intended to move its sportsbook to that platform and committed to pay Kambi for use of its platform until 30 September 2021. In October 2022 Kambi announced that PENN would migrate to its own sportsbook technology, with one-time fees to Kambi of US$12.5 million for early termination and US$15 million for transition services. Those fees show what a well-drafted contract can recover when a customer leaves early.
They are acquired. A change of ownership can bring a new parent with its own suppliers, which is why change of control clauses matter (lesson five). Departures of every kind show up in suppliers' results: Kambi's 2025 annual report notes that its revenue fell partly because termination fees from partners leaving its network were received in 2024 and not in 2025, and it expects the planned migrations of two partners to continue to weigh on 2026.
They insource one product. Playtech's 2025 results attribute part of a fall in UK B2B revenue to the continued insourcing of self-service betting terminals by one operator.
They lose their market or licence, as regulation changes or an operator exits a jurisdiction.
They are unhappy, with service, performance or price. This is the only churn reason the account team fully controls, and it usually gives warning: falling placement, slower replies, a new procurement contact asking about contract terms.
Account managers cannot stop an operator building its own sportsbook. They can see it coming (hiring announcements, acquisitions, investor presentations), make sure the contract pays for an early exit, and keep the relationship strong enough to keep the products the operator does not build.
Renewals
Every supply contract has an end, and the renewal is the moment an incumbent is most exposed. The operator's procurement team may run a competitive process; competitors who have tracked the contract date (lesson two) will be ready.
Good account teams start renewal work twelve to eighteen months before expiry for significant accounts. They review the account's history (what was promised, what was delivered, what the operator still lacks), agree with the operator what success over the next term would look like, and bring the commercial proposal early, before a formal process forces a like-for-like price comparison. Genius Sports' filing shows how renewals can grow an account: it attributes much of its 2025 growth in betting revenue to price increases on contract renewals and renegotiations, alongside new services. A supplier that can show measurable value over the last term negotiates the next one from strength; one that has not reviewed the account since go-live negotiates on price alone.
Renewals are also where an account's terms can be repaired. Discounts given at launch, deductions that grew unnoticed, and service levels that no longer fit the operator's scale can all be revisited. The trade-off table in lesson five applies again: every concession at renewal should buy something, typically a longer term, a new market or a new product.
The key account plan
Key account management is a recognised discipline in business to business markets. Research published in Industrial Marketing Management by authors including Cranfield School of Management academics starts from the premise that key account management "supports the profitability and financial sustainability of firms in business-to-business markets". In iGaming, where a supplier's three largest customers can provide a third of its revenue (Kambi reported 35 per cent in 2025), it is a necessity.
A key account plan for an operator fits on two pages and covers:
- The account today: revenue by market and product, trend, share of the operator's spend in the category, contract dates and renewal terms.
- The operator's strategy: markets it is entering, products it is building, its financial position and any ownership changes.
- The buying centre: who decides, who influences, who the supplier knows and who it does not (lesson one).
- Growth opportunities, each with a value, an owner and a date.
- Risks: insourcing, acquisition, a competitor's approach, a regulatory change, and what the supplier will do about each.
- The relationship map: who at the supplier owns which relationship, including at executive level.
Measuring sales in a revenue-share business
Software companies measure sales with bookings and annual recurring revenue. In a business where most revenue is a share of a customer's results, those measures need adapting, and confusing them is a common source of bad forecasts.
| Measure | Definition | What it tells you | The trap |
|---|---|---|---|
| Bookings | Contracted value signed in the period | Sales team output | For revenue-share deals only the minimum guarantee is contracted; the rest is an estimate |
| Annual recurring revenue (ARR) | Annualised fixed and subscription fees under contract | Committed base | Misses most of a revenue-share supplier's income |
| Revenue-share run-rate | Latest month's or quarter's actual revenue, annualised | Current earning power of live accounts | Moves with seasonality, sporting calendars and the operator's own results |
| Net revenue retention | Revenue this year from last year's customers, including growth, contraction and churn, divided by their revenue last year | Whether accounts grow | Can hide churn behind growth at a few large accounts |
| Gross revenue retention | The same, counting losses but not growth | How much of the base is kept | Ignores upsell, so read it alongside net retention |
| Win rate | Opportunities won as a share of opportunities decided in the period | Qualification and competitiveness | Meaningless unless the stage at which an opportunity is counted is fixed |
Sportradar's filing gives a clear published example of how a net retention rate is built: current period revenue "includes any upsells and is net of contraction and attrition over the trailing twelve months, but excludes revenue from new customers". Gross retention excludes the upside: Workday, outside gambling, describes its gross revenue retention as taking into account revenue lost to churn but not additional revenue from add-ons or expansion. A supplier should track both, by segment.
For forecasting, keep two numbers separate for every revenue-share deal: the contracted minimum (which is a booking) and the expected revenue (which is a forecast, weighted by the go-live date and a performance assumption). Reporting the second as if it were the first is how sales teams overstate their year.
Building and paying the sales team
An iGaming supplier's commercial team usually has four roles: business development managers who win new operators, account managers who grow existing ones, partner managers who run channels (lesson six), and pre-sales or solutions specialists who handle product demonstrations, technical questions and RFP responses. In smaller suppliers one person often holds several of these.
Pay mix, the split between base salary and target variable pay, should follow how much the role influences the result. The Alexander Group, a sales compensation consultancy, gives typical mixes of about 65/35 for account managers, 50/50 for hunters, and 75/25 or 80/20 for strategic account managers. Benchmarks from software sales give a sense of scale and difficulty: The Bridge Group's 2026 research reported median account executive on-target earnings of US$200,000, 48 per cent of account executives reaching annual quota, and an average ramp time of 6.2 months. These are software-industry figures, mostly from the United States, not iGaming benchmarks, but the ramp time is a useful warning: a new seller in a market with long sales cycles and regulatory gates is unlikely to be fully productive in their first two quarters.
Commission on revenue-share deals: a worked example
The difficulty with commission in this industry is that the value of a revenue-share deal is not known at signature. Consider a hypothetical sportsbook data supplier that signs a three-year deal with a minimum guarantee of 10,000 a month, and expects revenue of about 15,000 a month once the operator is live.
| Plan design | How it pays | Payout if live on time at 15,000 a month | Weakness |
|---|---|---|---|
| Commission on contracted value at signature | 10% of the first-year minimum (120,000) | 12,000 at signature | Pays nothing for the upside; rewards signing deals that never go live unless clawed back |
| Commission on actual revenue | 8% of invoiced revenue for the first 12 months after go-live | 14,400 over the year | The seller waits for go-live and may be paid late for delays they did not cause |
| Hybrid | 5% of the first-year minimum at signature (6,000), plus 8% of revenue above the minimum in the first 12 months (60,000 above, so 4,800) | 10,800 in total | More complex to administer, but aligned with both closing and performance |
Most suppliers settle on a version of the hybrid, with three protections: a clawback if the customer terminates or fails to go live within a set period, a cap or decelerator on windfalls caused by events outside the seller's control (a major tournament, an operator acquisition), and a clear rule for when the account passes from the business development manager to an account manager, after which the hunter stops earning on it.
The through-line
The course has followed the sale from the operator's buying centre to a measured, managed account. The same idea runs through every stage: a supplier earns from operators' results, so its sellers succeed by understanding how operators make decisions, pricing risk honestly, planning around regulation rather than hoping it away, and treating the signed contract as the start of the relationship. Companion reading is in The iGaming Value Chain, iGaming Platform and Technology and Reading iGaming Financial Results.