Fast Track launches True Value to measure player value from the first session

Measuring Value Beyond GGR

Fast Track launches True Value, a new product designed to measure the underlying economic value of player activity from the first completed session. By separating the value of play from the influence of luck, the solution aims to help operators make more informed decisions about players, bonuses and affiliates.

For years, gross gaming revenue (GGR) has been the industry’s primary reference point for assessing player value. However, GGR reflects the financial outcome rather than the underlying value of the activity. A valuable player who lands a large win can appear unprofitable, while an affiliate whose players experience a losing streak may appear to be delivering exceptional traffic.

Measuring Play, Not Just Outcomes

True Value calculates the underlying value of a session: what the operator would earn if the same pattern of play were repeated millions of times.

Built on the mathematical foundations of Fast Track’s gameplay risk engine, the product models the interaction between game mathematics, player behaviour and bonus mechanics. It considers factors including games played, return to player and volatility, stake sizes, sequence of play, and bonus mechanics and terms such as wagering requirements.

Simon Lidzén, Co-founder and CEO of Fast Track, said: “Operators make decisions every day about which players to recognise, which offers to continue and which acquisition partners to invest in. Those decisions deserve a better foundation than waiting for luck to average out"

“With True Value, we have now found a better way. I look forward to this becoming the new industry standard, helping operators truly understand where value is created and make informed decisions about where to invest.”

“We have been running True Value across our brands for several months. Having one number that tells us what a player is worth, updated as they play, has changed how we think about bonusing and how we manage our VIP base,” says Ross Parkhill, CEO at Rhino Entertainment (Betsson Group). “It removes a lot of debate from decisions that used to be based on instinct.” 
 

Research Highlights the Gap with GGR

The launch is supported by an analysis of 1.7 million sessions across several brands. The research examined how closely GGR reflected the True Value of the same activity, both at individual-session level and across larger samples.

Only 2.9% of individual sessions recorded GGR within 10% of their True Value. In the study’s random-sampling analysis, it took 250,000 sessions before nine out of ten samples fell within that range.

According to Fast Track, this highlights a practical challenge for operators, as decisions concerning players, offers and affiliates are often made long before such volumes of activity are available.

Applications Across Player and Affiliate Management

The practical implications extend across player segmentation, bonus evaluation and affiliate assessment.

In one deployment, True Value identified a few hundred players whose value was significantly above the operator’s threshold for its high-value player segment. Fewer than half were classified in that segment, illustrating how reliance on realised revenue can result in valuable players being overlooked.

Complementing GGR with Underlying Value

Ed Dickerson, Director of Product at Fast Track, said: “GGR tells you what the money did. True Value tells you what the play was worth. Both matter, but they answer different questions.

“The important distinction is that we are measuring activity that has already happened, not claiming to know everything about a player’s future after one session. More sessions build a richer picture of the player. What operators no longer have to wait for is an understanding of what those completed sessions were worth.”

True Value complements GGR by measuring the underlying value of the activity that generated the financial outcome. Together, the two metrics provide operators with additional information for assessing performance and making investment decisions.

On Show at SBC Summit Lisbon

True Value is on show at SBC Summit in Lisbon, stand A311.