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Ask any iGaming executive about their biggest challenge and you’ll hear the same refrain: acquisition costs are skyrocketing while player lifetime value remains flat. Operators have mastered the art of bringing players in. But new research reveals they’re dramatically underinvesting in the function that keeps them there.
Comm100 and SBC Media surveyed iGaming operators worldwide to understand how they balance acquisition and retention spending. The findings expose a striking disconnect between what operators know drives retention and where they actually allocate budget.
Here’s what the data reveals:
The knowledge exists, but capital allocation hasn’t caught up yet. This retention investment gap creates an extraordinary window for differentiation at a moment when acquisition channels are becoming more expensive and less effective.
Let’s examine why this gap exists, what it costs operators, and how forward-thinking teams are already closing it.
Discover the full SBC x Comm100 research revealing how iGaming operators can balance acquisition and retention to maximize lifetime value.
Read the full reportWhen operators rank their budget priorities, the results are clear: acquisition channels dominate the conversation. Affiliate commissions capture 35% of first-place votes. Paid media secures 20%. Customer support operations? Just 5% consider it a top spending priority, ranking it dead last. In fact, 35% of operators said support was their lowest area of spend.
But ask those same operators what drives retention, and the picture flips entirely.
70% of the operators we surveyed pointed to speed of issue resolution as the primary driver. 65% recognize that personalized care for high-value players directly impacts lifetime value. And, 45% cite multi-language and 24/7 availability as crucial.
Operators can even articulate the sophisticated retention signals they want to track: betting frequency variations, stake size patterns, session length changes, and the inflection points when promotional incentives stop working.
They understand that repeated negative interactions, declining satisfaction trajectories, and players who stop responding to support follow-ups all signal impending churn.
The real test of value comes when budgets tighten. Ask operators which area they’d reduce spending on first, and support ranks fourth out of five options. Only 10% would prioritize cutting helpdesk operations. Compare that to paid acquisition, where 40% would make cuts first; four times as many. Even game and content updates (35%) would face the axe before support.
This reveals something crucial: operators treat support as infrastructure, not investment. It’s essential enough to protect when money gets tight, but not strategic enough to fund proactively when growth capital becomes available. Support sits in a strange middle ground; too critical to eliminate, too undervalued to properly resource.
Operators keep directing budgets toward acquisition channels with rising costs and diminishing returns, while the function they’d protect last in a downturn gets the smallest share of growth investment.
While operators articulate sophisticated retention strategies, their operational reality lags behind. 75% still depend on supervisor review to identify at-risk players: a manual process that creates bottlenecks, limits scalability, and introduces human bias into retention decisions.
The numbers tell the story: only 35% use real-time sentiment or behavioral analysis. 50% rely on training frontline agents to detect player emotion manually. 60% deploy follow-up campaigns after warning signs appear, rather than intervening during the critical window when retention actions still matter.
Here’s the paradox: operators can articulate exactly which retention signals matter, but their systems can’t track them at scale.
The signals operators know they should monitor:
These behavioral patterns contain predictive signals that could flag churn risk days or weeks before it becomes irreversible. The data exists. The warning signs are there. But manual monitoring can’t process the volume.
The math doesn’t work: A supervisor might review a dozen player interactions per day. Meanwhile, a high-value player could generate warning signs across 50 touchpoints in 48 hours:
By the time manual review spots the pattern and escalates it, the player has already moved deposits to a competitor.
This creates two distinct realities in the market: operators locked into reactive monitoring who watch players churn after the intervention window closes, and early movers deploying AI-powered detection who identify at-risk behavior in real time and act while retention is still possible.
The retention investment gap has always existed. What’s changed is the cost of ignoring it.
Acquisition channels that delivered reliable returns for years are becoming exponentially more expensive and less effective. Tightening restrictions on gambling advertising in established markets around the world are making things difficult, while growing regulatory pressure on influencer marketing is also affecting the way operators approach advertising.
Affiliates now face existential challenges in the age of AI-driven search, where traditional SEO strategies lose ground to answer engines that bypass affiliate links entirely. In fact, AI is fundamentally reshaping sports betting, changing how operators compete and what players expect.
Customer acquisition costs continue climbing while the channels delivering those customers become less dependable. Meanwhile, retention economics remain constant. A player already in your ecosystem costs nothing to reach.
Every interaction is an opportunity to deepen engagement rather than justify acquisition spend. High-value players who stay active for years generate multiples of their initial value. Even recreational players become profitable when proven retention strategies extend their lifetime beyond a few sessions.
This creates a fundamental shift in where competitive advantage lives. The operators who win the next five years won’t be those who can outspend competitors on acquisition. They’ll be the ones who figured out how to keep the players they already paid to acquire and can prove it through gaming metrics that actually matter.
Those who move first to reallocate investment toward retention infrastructure can capture outsized market share while competitors continue pouring resources into increasingly expensive acquisition channels.
The operators closing the retention investment gap aren’t throwing more headcount at the problem. They’re shifting from reactive firefighting to predictive intelligence that catches churn before it happens.
Traditional support operates on lag. A player contacts support, gets help, and the interaction gets logged. By the time patterns emerge in manual review, the intervention window has closed.
AI-powered support is leading, not lagging. Real-time sentiment analysis identifies frustration in the moment. Behavioral tracking spots when deposit frequency changes or session length declines, triggering proactive outreach before players disengage.
Conventional wisdom says scaling support requires linear headcount growth. More players mean more agents. This creates unsustainable costs as volumes expand. AI breaks this model by handling volume that doesn’t require human judgment. Routine questions about account balances, withdrawal timeframes, and bonus terms get resolved instantly through AI-powered chatbots operating 24/7.
This frees human agents to focus on what moves retention metrics: VIP players needing personalized support, complex problems requiring judgment and empathy, and players showing early signs of gambling disorders.
The data validates this: 45% of operators say the ability to scale without adding headcount would justify increased investment.
If you’re an operator looking to take advantage of AI with a focus on improving retention, here are five strategic shifts you need to make:
Stop focusing only on CSAT scores. Start connecting support actions directly to business outcomes. Link fast issue resolution to reduced churn with specific retention percentages.
Demonstrate how VIP-focused support increases lifetime value with concrete revenue figures. Calculate acquisition cost savings when existing players stay active longer rather than needing replacement through expensive channels.
When support proves it drives measurable retention outcomes, the business case for reallocation becomes clear.
Manual monitoring can’t scale. Implement AI-powered systems like AI Insights that monitor customer sentiment in real-time, and give you leading indicators about how your support function is performing.
When a high-value player’s session length drops, deposits decline, and support interactions show frustration, the system flags this immediately rather than weeks later during supervisor review.
15% of operators don’t measure support ROI at all. Only 35% focus on player lifetime value attribution. This measurement gap makes justifying investment impossible.
Operators need to build frameworks that connect support actions to financial outcomes by tracking how fast issue resolution correlates with churn reduction across player segments, measuring VIP retention rates based on support quality metrics, and calculating how many players would have required replacement through expensive acquisition channels if support interventions hadn’t prevented churn.
These attribution models create the measurement infrastructure that 70% of operators say would justify increased investment, turning what feels like operational overhead into provable retention value.
The best results come from augmentation, not outright replacement. AI handles volume and provides intelligence. Humans handle complexity and build relationships. AI Agents and AI Copilots make your human agents more effective, but agents still control interactions and apply judgment.
This maintains quality while achieving operational leverage that makes support economically sustainable as volumes grow.
Platform technology has standardized playing experiences. Bonuses are easily replicated and create players loyal to offers rather than operators. The survey shows 95% use bonus programs and 70% run VIP schemes, yet retention remains challenging.
Exceptional support creates differentiation competitors can’t quickly copy. It requires operational excellence, technology investment, and cultural commitment that can’t be replicated with a promotional budget increase. Players remember operators that resolved their withdrawal in minutes. VIPs stay where support agents know their preferences.
Combine AI automation for routine questions with human excellence for high-value interactions requiring judgment and empathy.
Market conditions favor operators who reallocate toward retention infrastructure. The technology exists and has been proven. Operators understand the value and would increase investment if shown demonstrable LTV impact.
As the report shows, the retention investment gap is an execution problem. Budget allocation still reflects an acquisition-first mentality that made sense when channels were reliable and affordable. That world no longer exists. Acquisition costs continue rising while the most sustainable competitive advantages remain underfunded.
The operators who close this gap over the next 12 to 18 months will capture market share from competitors still pouring resources into increasingly expensive acquisition channels. They’ll build retention infrastructure that compounds advantage as their player base grows more valuable over time. At Comm100, we provide AI customer support solutions designed to maximize player satisfaction. Our player engagement platform is used by some of the industry’s leading operators, platform providers, and BPO providers to drive engagement and loyalty.
See how Comm100’s AI-powered customer engagement platform helps iGaming operators boost player retention and satisfaction through smarter, real-time
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