Insights
8 Questions to Ask a Casino Aggregator or Provider Before Signing the Contract
The first slide of an aggregator pitch is almost always the size of the catalogue. It is an impressive figure, and on its own it tells you very little. It does not show which games your players can open in their country, and it says nothing about the invoice that arrives at the end of the month. The eight questions below get to those answers, and they work with any provider on your shortlist, us included.
Key takeaways
Judge a catalogue by what is live in your markets today, since that is the only part your players can reach.
Get the fee model in writing and check what it grows with, because aggregation is paid from game revenue for as long as the contract runs.
Test lobby control in the demo, because games your team cannot arrange rarely get found by players.
Settle the exit terms before you sign, while you still have leverage.
1. Which games are live in my markets today?
What you need is a dated list of the providers and titles live in each market you plan to serve, and the total catalogue can wait. A casino game aggregator connects your casino to many studios through one integration, but each studio decides where its games can be offered and approves each operator on its own terms, so the part open to you is always smaller than the headline figure.
Put the lists from different aggregators side by side and the gaps show up quickly, such as a studio your players expect that one aggregator cannot offer where you operate. Some of the largest studios also prefer to sign with operators directly, so find out which of them come through the aggregator and which would need a contract of their own.
In an advertising feature for iGaming Business, Hub88's commercial director made the same point from the supplier's side: a catalogue should be weighed by how relevant it is to your players before anyone looks at its size.
2. How are the fees calculated, and what do they grow with?
Aggregation is usually paid for as a share of game revenue, often at rates that differ from studio to studio, so the cost grows as your casino grows. That is why the full fee model belongs in writing, with what each fee is calculated on and whether it changes with volume or by provider.
The details sit in the charges passed through from the studios, which come on top of the aggregator's own, and in any monthly minimum. Jackpot contributions and promotional rounds may be treated differently as well, which matters most if your lobby leans on progressive games or free-round campaigns. Then there is the month when game revenue turns negative, and whether that loss is carried into the next one.
One request cuts through most of this: a sample monthly invoice based on a realistic month for your casino. If the aggregator cannot produce one, its fee model is probably harder to predict than the proposal suggests.
3. Who controls the lobby?
Your own team should be able to switch games on and off and reorder the lobby for each market without raising a support ticket. The aggregator delivers the games, but players choose what to play in the lobby, and every change that waits on a supplier arrives late.
A sales deck will always say yes, so see it work in a live demo. Have someone from your team hide a game in one market and move a new release to the top, and time how long it takes.
4. How do new releases reach my lobby?
A new game should reach your lobby while players are still talking about it, and that depends on how many hands it passes through after the studio launches it. New titles drive a large share of player curiosity, so a slow path costs attention in exactly the weeks that count.
The useful details are whether releases appear automatically or need a request, whether they arrive already enabled for your markets, and how you hear that a new title is out. A recent example says more than a promise: pick a game released last month and find out when it went live for an existing client.
5. What happens when a provider goes down?
With dozens of studios behind one integration, an outage at one of them is routine. What separates aggregators is whether your team hears about it from the aggregator or from your players, so monitoring and alerts for each studio deserve as much attention as the catalogue.
Support hours and service levels should be in writing, together with the name of whoever you call when something escalates. In an editorial interview with Yogonet, Dmytro Kryvorchuk, chief operating officer of the aggregation provider Infingame, described uptime as a business measure more than a technical one. For an operator, an outage during a busy evening is lost revenue.
6. What will I see in the reports?
Weekly reports by provider and by game, with an option to export the data, are the minimum. Without them, decisions about the lobby and about which studios to keep come down to guesswork.
Kryvorchuk made a related point in the same interview: operators need data they can act on more than they need extra dashboards. The demo is the place to test that. Bring a question your team would really ask, such as which new games held players beyond their first week, and see whether the reports can answer it.
7. How does it connect to my wallet and platform?
The integration work splits differently from one aggregator to the next. Some plug into a platform the operator already runs, others come as part of a wider platform, and the share of the work that lands on your developers changes a great deal between the two.
Next comes the money: how balances and currencies move between the casino and the games, and what happens to a round in progress if the connection drops. If you run your own platform, find out whether the aggregator offers an API built for that case and what your developers would need to build. The limits and self-exclusions your players set also have to hold in every studio's games reached through the aggregator.
8. What does leaving look like?
The exit terms decide how much leverage you keep for the whole contract, so they are worth settling at the start, even though nobody wants to raise them then. That covers your data, the final settlement and the notice each side has to give.
Look closely at the minimum term and at any fee for ending early. Your game and transaction history should come back in a format you can use, rounds still open at the cut-off need a clear way to close, and the final invoice should state how it treats negative revenue carried over.
What should you ask Lynon?
We are always glad to share our industry expertise with growing businesses, and we expect the same eight questions from anyone who considers us. Put them to our team exactly as you would to any other aggregator.
The Casino Aggregator is one of the many products we offer. For operators who want to keep their existing platform and grow their game portfolio, it is a flexible way to add new content: through the Games API in our Versa API, it brings 70k+ games from 300+ providers to your current platform with one API integration. The details are on the Casino Aggregator product page.
When your shortlist starts to take shape, we would be glad to be on it, and to go through each answer with your team with your own markets in front of us.
Frequently asked questions
What is a casino game aggregator?
A casino game aggregator is a single integration that connects an online casino to games from many studios at once. The operator builds and manages one connection, while the aggregator handles the technical links to each studio. Each studio still approves the operator for its own games.
How do casino aggregators charge operators?
Revenue share is the common model: the aggregator takes part of what the games generate, at rates that can differ by studio. Some add set-up fees or monthly minimums. Ask each aggregator for its full fee model in writing and for a sample invoice based on a realistic month.
Can I use more than one aggregator?
Yes. Some operators use a second aggregator to reach studios the first cannot offer in a market. Others add one as a fallback when a provider goes down, or to keep leverage when rates come up for renewal. Each extra aggregator brings another integration and another set of fees, so the reason needs to be worth that cost.
Do all games in an aggregator's catalogue work in every market?
No. Each studio decides where its games can be offered, so the content available to a casino depends on its markets. Ask for the list of games live in your markets before you compare catalogues.
Related products
One integration that brings games from many providers into your casino, so your team manages one connection instead of dozens.
Connects a single Lynon solution, such as the Games API, to the platform you already run.
