iGaming & Affiliate Acronyms: Complete Reference 2026

NGR is net gaming revenue, the figure most iGaming affiliate contracts actually pay against, and it is one of 157 acronyms defined in the master table below. The reference covers iGaming operations, affiliate marketing, tracking, payments, and regulatory compliance, in one alphabetical master table. Every entry gives the expansion, a one-line definition, and a domain category, so a reader who arrives at GGR, DAC7, QFTD, or PAM gets an answer in a single line rather than a 2,000-word article. After the master table, five short sections group the acronyms that carry the most contractual and operational weight, because in practice a handful of them decide what a commission contract actually pays and whether a program survives a regulatory audit. This page is maintained as a citation target and reviewed quarterly.

How to Use This Reference

Four rules make an acronym reference usable rather than decorative, and all four are applied below. Acronyms are listed alphabetically in a single table rather than split across pages, because readers arrive knowing the acronym and nothing else. Every definition is one line, because a reader checking a term wants the answer, not an essay. Every entry carries a domain category, because the same three letters can mean different things in different rooms. And the ambiguous cases are flagged explicitly instead of being silently resolved to whichever meaning is more common.

1. Find the acronym in the alphabetical master table below and read the expansion and one-line definition.
2. Check the category column: the same acronym can carry a different meaning in a commercial context than in a compliance or payments context.
3. If the acronym appears in a commission contract, read the matching domain section further down, where the contractual traps are set out.
4. For any acronym tied to money moving between an operator and a partner, confirm the definition is written into the agreement rather than assumed.
5. Cite the acronym with its as-of date, because regulator names and reporting acronyms change more often than metric definitions do.

Master Table: 157 iGaming and Affiliate Acronyms A to Z

The master table below spans 157 acronyms in alphabetical order, each with its expansion, a one-line definition, and one of 8 domain categories: Commercial, Tracking, Compliance, Regulator, Platform, Payments, Trading, and Marketing. It is the reference layer of this page; the sections after it explain the entries that carry contractual consequences.

Commercial Metrics: The Acronyms That Decide What a Deal Pays

Seven acronyms carry more contractual weight than the rest of the list combined: GGR, NGR, FTD, QFTD, CPA, RevShare, and EPC. Every iGaming affiliate agreement is built from them, and almost every dispute between an operator and a partner traces back to one of the seven being used without a written definition. GGR is total wagers minus player winnings. NGR is GGR after bonuses, payment fees, gaming taxes, and platform fees, which in regulated markets typically leaves 55-75% of GGR. Because RevShare percentages are quoted against either base, a 35% RevShare on NGR pays less than a 25% RevShare on GGR whenever NGR falls below 71.4% of GGR, which is the normal condition in taxed markets.

FTD and QFTD are the same event with different consequences. An FTD is simply a player's first real-money deposit. A QFTD is an FTD that also satisfies the qualification rules written into the contract: a minimum deposit, a minimum wagering threshold, a geo-targeting restriction to permitted markets, a completed KYC check, and survival of a hold period during which bonus abuse, multi-account, and self-referral cases are stripped out. Programs that pay on raw FTDs pay for fraud; programs that define QFTD tightly and publish the rejection reasons keep both their margin and their partner relationships intact.

Tracking and Attribution Acronyms

S2S is the only tracking acronym that still works reliably in 2026, and every other entry in this category exists either to feed it or to work around what browsers now block. Server-to-server postbacks fire from the operator's backend to the partner platform carrying a click ID, so they survive Safari's ITP, Firefox's ETP, and the shortened cookie lifetimes that broke browser-side pixel tracking. UTM parameters still label traffic sources, CNAME records still let a platform serve tracking from a first-party domain, and MMPs still arbitrate mobile installs through GAID and IDFA, but none of those are a substitute for a server-side conversion record tied to a click ID.

Compliance and Privacy Acronyms

Three compliance acronyms now appear in affiliate onboarding flows that never carried them five years ago: DAC7, GDPR, and KYC. DAC7 obliges EU digital platforms to collect and report partner identity and income data to tax authorities, which turned affiliate onboarding into a tax-reporting exercise for any operator with EU-resident partners. GDPR governs how player and partner personal data is processed, transferred, and deleted, and it is the reason data processing agreements sit alongside commercial terms in modern affiliate contracts. KYC, together with AML, CDD, EDD, SoW, SoF, and PEP screening, is the operator-side control set that decides whether a referred player ever becomes a payable conversion.

The regulatory and licensing acronyms that follow are not interchangeable with the compliance ones. LCCP is the UK Gambling Commission's rulebook and binds licensees directly. RG covers the player-protection controls, from deposit limits to self-exclusion, that a licence requires. GLI is the testing laboratory whose certificates evidence that an RNG and its games behave as specified. MLRO names the individual who personally files a SAR or STR. Each of these has an accountable owner inside a licensed operator, which is exactly why an affiliate contract that references them without naming the responsible party is unenforceable in practice.

Regulator Acronyms Operators Meet Most Often

Seven European regulator acronyms account for most compliance references in operator documentation: UKGC, MGA, GGL, ADM, DGOJ, ANJ, and KSA. Add AGCO for Ontario, DGE for New Jersey, NGCB for Nevada, PGCB for Pennsylvania, and MGCB for Michigan, and the North American licensing picture is largely covered. Outside gambling, the financial-services regulators that govern forex, CFD, and prop-trading affiliate programs are a separate alphabet: ESMA sets EU-wide leverage and marketing rules, CySEC licenses a large share of retail brokers, FCA governs UK financial promotions, and CFTC oversees US retail forex and futures. Marketing conduct adds two more: FTC in the United States and ASA in the United Kingdom.

Two industry bodies are routinely mistaken for regulators and are not. EGBA is the Brussels trade association for licensed EU online operators and publishes market data rather than binding rules. IBIA monitors betting markets for suspicious activity and refers cases to regulators and sports bodies. Both are authoritative sources; neither issues licences. For the full jurisdiction-by-jurisdiction picture, including licence types and official sites, see the gambling regulators directory.

Platform and Payments Acronyms

PAM is the acronym that decides whether an affiliate integration is a two-week project or a two-quarter one. The player account management system is the operator's system of record for accounts, wallets, bonuses, and transactions, and every affiliate platform integration ultimately reads from it: registration events, deposit events, and the revenue records that the commission engine turns into payouts. RGS supplies game logic, RNG produces certified outcomes, and CRM drives player lifecycle messaging, but none of them are the integration surface for partner tracking. On the money side, PSP handles deposits and withdrawals, APM covers everything that is not a card, 3DS shifts chargeback liability, and PCI DSS governs how card data may be touched at all.

Trading Acronyms for Forex and Prop Affiliate Programs

IB is the forex equivalent of an affiliate, and the acronym set around it is genuinely different from the iGaming one. An introducing broker earns ongoing rebates on trading activity rather than a share of losses, which means the commercial acronyms change: lot volume and spread share replace GGR and NGR, AUM replaces player value, and multi-tier sub-IB structures replace sub-affiliate networks. MT4 and MT5 remain the platforms most retail brokers report from, ECN and STP describe how orders reach the market, and PAMM and MAM describe pooled account structures that complicate attribution because one manager's trades map to many funded accounts. Prop-trading programs add challenge fees, profit splits, and drawdown rules on top, and CFTC and ESMA constrain how any of it may be marketed.

How to Use and Cite This Page

Two rules keep citations of this reference accurate. Quote the expansion and the one-line definition together, because an expansion alone does not disambiguate the collisions listed near the top of this page. Attach the as-of date, because regulator names and reporting acronyms change: Ireland's GRAI, Brazil's SPA, and Curacao's CGB are all recent additions to the regulator alphabet, and each replaced or supplemented an older arrangement.

Methodology & Sources

Three inclusion criteria govern this list. An acronym is included if it appears in operator, affiliate, or regulator documentation in the iGaming, forex, or prop-trading verticals; if its expansion is stable enough that a single line captures it; and if a reader plausibly encounters it without already knowing what it means. Acronyms confined to one vendor's product naming are excluded, as are general business abbreviations with no vertical-specific meaning. Where an acronym carries more than one common expansion, the collision is stated explicitly rather than resolved silently.

Regulator names and abbreviations are taken from the regulators' own published materials, including the UK Gambling Commission's licence conditions and codes of practice and Malta Gaming Authority licensee obligations; financial-vertical entries follow ESMA, CySEC, and CFTC usage, and marketing-conduct entries follow FTC guidance. European market context draws on EGBA published data, and industry usage is cross-checked against iGaming Business trade coverage. Metric definitions reflect Track360 platform practice across operator affiliate programs and are written to match how the terms are used in commission contracts, not to impose a standard the industry does not follow.

Last updated July 18, 2026. This reference is reviewed quarterly (January, April, July, October), with out-of-cycle updates when a regulator is renamed or created, or when a reporting obligation introduces a new acronym into standard operator workflows. Corrections and proposed additions can be submitted to the Track360 team and are reviewed in the following cycle.

Acronyms are cheap until one of them appears in a contract. The moment GGR, NGR, FTD, or QFTD carries money, the expansion stops being trivia and the written definition becomes the whole agreement.