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iGaming's biggest affiliates are deliberately trading upfront cost-per-acquisition deals for revenue share, and their Q1 2026 numbers show the switch is now structural rather than a passing experiment. Better Collective reported that 77% of its new depositing customers in the first quarter signed onto revenue-share contracts, up from 73% in the fourth quarter of 2025, while revenue-share income from North America rose 46% year on year.
It is the clearest marker yet of a deeper change in how players get acquired and paid for across the industry.
What revenue share actually changes
Under a cost-per-acquisition (CPA) deal, an operator pays a fixed sum, often several hundred euros, the moment a referred player makes a first deposit. Cash arrives fast, the affiliate moves on, and the operator carries all the downstream risk. Under revenue share, the affiliate is paid an ongoing percentage of the net revenue that player generates for as long as they stay active: less cash today, more over time, and interests finally pointed in the same direction as the operator's, because a churned or low-value player now hurts both parties.
The numbers behind the shift
Better Collective's first quarter is the clearest evidence. Group revenue reached 86.3 million euros, up 5%, or 9% in constant currencies, with EBITDA before special items rising to 25.1 million euros from 22.0 million a year earlier, according to its Q1 2026 report. The number that matters sits underneath: recurring revenue passed 50 million euros, of which roughly 40 million came from revenue share, and the company's North American region grew to 25.8 million euros as it pushed players onto revenue-share contracts. Chief executive Jesper Søgaard tied the quarter to preparations for the FIFA World Cup 2026, the single largest acquisition event on the calendar.
Catena Media is making the same move from a weaker position. The company has restated its strategy around what it calls a transition to a more sustainable revenue model, recruiting players through revenue-share agreements rather than CPA, and it posted the fastest growth of the major affiliates in the quarter, with revenue from continuing operations up 26% to 12.3 million euros and adjusted EBITDA up to 2.7 million euros.
Why now: acquisition got too expensive to front-load
The model shift is being forced by acquisition economics, not affiliate preference. Paid channels for gambling have tightened sharply. Search and social platforms now run country-by-country certification regimes for gambling advertisers, supply of compliant inventory is constrained, and effective cost per first-time depositor in tier-one regulated markets sits well into the hundreds of euros. When the cost of acquiring a player rises, a fixed CPA becomes a riskier bet for the operator paying it and a thinner margin for the affiliate negotiating it.
Revenue share resolves the tension by spreading risk across the relationship and across time. It also rewards affiliates who send quality traffic, because their upside now depends on whether the player stays. This is the same logic driving operators themselves, where, as we argued, iGaming growth now lives in player retention rather than raw acquisition volume.
What it means for the operator on the other side
The shift also reflects what operators now want to buy. Under CPA, the operator pays the same whether the referred player deposits once and vanishes or stays for three years, so the affiliate has every incentive to send volume regardless of value. Under revenue share, a churned, bonus-hunting or self-excluded player costs the affiliate too, and paying for sustained value rather than a one-time deposit is a more defensible use of marketing spend.
That alignment has a compliance dimension as well. Revenue-share affiliates have a direct financial reason to send players who will sustain healthy, long-term activity, and in markets where regulators scrutinise affiliate marketing and hold operators accountable for the traffic sources they pay, an aligned model is easier to defend than a pure volume-based CPA arrangement.
The hybrid middle ground, and the firm going the other way
Few deals are purely one or the other in 2026. The fastest-growing structure is the hybrid: a smaller upfront CPA to cover the affiliate's immediate costs, combined with a revenue-share tail that rewards player quality over time. The hybrid lets a capital-constrained affiliate keep some cash velocity while still building the recurring book, and it gives operators a blended cost that flexes with actual performance.
Not everyone is moving the same way. Gambling.com Group cut deep in the first quarter, taking a more conservative path even as Catena Media accelerated, a divergence we detailed in our Q1 2026 affiliate earnings roundup. A firm prioritising near-term margin and cash generation has a rational reason to lean on CPA and managed cost discipline rather than fund a slow-building revenue-share book.
The World Cup is the stress test
The FIFA World Cup 2026 will be the first large-scale test of whether revenue-share cohorts hold up under a demand spike. The tournament will pour millions of new depositing customers into the funnel over a few weeks. Under CPA, those sign-ups would book as a one-time revenue surge and then fade. Under revenue share, the value of that cohort is realised only if the players acquired during the tournament keep betting through the seasons that follow.
That makes the World Cup a genuine wager on retention quality rather than acquisition volume. If the revenue-share cohorts decay quickly once the tournament ends, the model's promise of durable, compounding income weakens. If they hold, the affiliates that built recurring books going into the event will compound that base for years.
The catch affiliates are accepting
Revenue share is not a free upgrade. It pushes income into the future, which strains the cash flow of any affiliate that grew up on CPA's instant settlement, and it ties the affiliate's revenue to the survival and discipline of the operator paying it. If the operator mismanages the player, raises minimum withdrawals, or loses its licence, the affiliate's stream goes with it. Building a revenue-share book is slower and demands a stronger balance sheet, which is part of why the largest, best-capitalised affiliates are leading the transition while smaller arbitrage-style players cling to CPA.
There is also a reporting consequence. A revenue-share-heavy book reports lower revenue today than the same traffic sold on CPA, then compounds. Near-term growth looks softer, an awkward fit for quarterly markets, which helps explain why some affiliates have been punished for doing the financially correct thing.
The economics only work if the underlying player value holds. Industry consensus treats a roughly three-to-one ratio of player lifetime value to acquisition cost as the floor for sustainable growth, and revenue share is a direct bet that a referred player will clear that bar over time rather than at the moment of first deposit. An affiliate that sends low-value traffic onto revenue-share contracts simply earns less, slowly, instead of more, quickly. That is the discipline the model imposes.
The bellwethers have already chosen
The direction is set. The bellwether affiliates are building recurring, aligned revenue, accepting slower cash and a higher capital requirement in exchange for durability. Expect the gap to widen, with well-capitalised players compounding revenue-share books while CPA-dependent shops absorb rising acquisition costs without recurring income as a cushion.
For operators, the lesson is that the cheapest acquisition deal on paper is rarely the cheapest in practice, and the affiliates moving to revenue share are betting they can prove it.
Related on SparkNews: Affiliate Earnings Diverge in Q1 2026 as Catena Rebounds and Gambling.com Cuts | Why iGaming Growth Now Lives in Player Retention