How it's calculated
CAC (Customer Acquisition Cost) is total acquisition spend — paid media, affiliate commissions, marketing tools and the portion of the growth team dedicated to it — divided by the number of players won in the same period.
CAC = total acquisition spend ÷ number of new players
Example: an operator spends R$ 300,000 in a month across paid media and affiliate commissions and ends the period with 5,000 new sign-ups. Registration CAC is R$ 300,000 ÷ 5,000 = R$ 60. That number alone hides the metric that actually matters for the business.
Registered player vs depositing player: the distinction that changes everything
Not every sign-up becomes an active player. Of the 5,000 registrations above, if only 1,200 completed KYC and made a first deposit (FTD), the real CAC per depositing player is R$ 300,000 ÷ 1,200 = R$ 250 — more than four times the registration CAC.
Reporting registration CAC in isolation is the most common way to artificially inflate a channel's apparent efficiency. A channel that delivers cheap sign-ups but a low FTD rate — low-quality traffic, poorly targeted bonuses, KYC friction — can end up with a worse depositor CAC than a channel with a higher cost per click but cleaner conversion. Every media budget decision should be made looking at FTD CAC, never registration CAC.
What's a healthy LTV:CAC ratio?
The practical benchmark used in digital acquisition, including iGaming, is keeping player LTV at least 3 times FTD CAC (LTV:CAC ≥ 3:1). Below 1:1, the operation loses money on every new player. Between 1:1 and 3:1, acquisition only holds up if payback — the time it takes a player to "repay" their own CAC in generated NGR — is short enough not to strain cash flow.
This ratio needs to be calculated per channel and per campaign cohort, not as an overall average. An affiliate channel with R$ 180 CAC and R$ 900 average LTV (a 5:1 ratio) can coexist with a paid media channel at R$ 400 CAC and R$ 700 LTV (a 1.75:1 ratio) without the blended average revealing that the second channel is on thin ice.
Why CAC rose after regulation
Law No. 14,790/2023 and the SPA's complementary rules restricted the format, content and channels available for betting advertising in Brazil — bans on certain advertising appeals, mandatory disclosure for influencer content, and stricter rules for sports sponsorship. The direct effect is fewer compliance-safe channels competing for the same audience, which pushes up cost per click and per conversion on the channels that remain.
| Channel | CAC level | Characteristic |
|---|---|---|
| SEO / organic | Low | Fixed content cost, slower to scale |
| Affiliate program (CPA) | Medium | Variable cost, paid only on qualified conversion |
| Google Ads / paid search | Medium-high | Competitive auction, restricted to compliant terms |
| Paid social | High | Content restrictions push up cost per click |
| Influencers | High | Requires disclosure and prior approval, longer cycle |
Operators that relied on generic paid media before regulation tend to shift budget toward affiliates and SEO — channels where cost is more predictable and conversion, historically, better qualified.