Gamification & Rewards

The engagement layer covers both the casino and the sportsbook. Every mechanic in it (the streak, missions, levels, tier perks) runs on one reward engine. Each one comes down to the same rule: something the player did → is the player eligible → pay a reward. What gets paid is a reward, built once in a catalog and used in many places; the things a reward is made of are defined in the Benefits Catalog. It is separate from Promotions & Bonuses, which covers casino bonus money with wagering requirements. Promotions run on the same engine but have their own switch (see below).

The three switches

Every feature is off by default. There are three independent switches: Tiers (XP, levels, level rewards and tier perks), Streaks and Missions. An operator turns each on from the backoffice: on the Gamification page's Overview tab, or the same settings on the casino settings page. Nothing accrues until someone switches it on on purpose.

A switch that is off stops new progress in that feature only: no new XP, level-ups, streak days or mission progress, and no rewards from them. What players already earned keeps working whatever the switches say: free bets, boosts and mystery boxes they hold stay usable (boxes still open), My rewards shows their inventory and history, and their tier and XP stay visible. Staff grants and promotions are never behind a switch.

This is a deliberate default, not an unfinished feature. These are inducement surfaces, and jurisdictions treat them differently. Ontario's standards bar mechanics that encourage players to chase losses or keep going after they have said they want to stop, and prohibit advertising inducements publicly. The Netherlands has moved against bonuses outright. An operator licensed in one of those markets must be able to run the platform without them. The switches also fail closed: if the setting cannot be read, the surfaces stay hidden.

Each change asks for confirmation, says what players keep, and is audited as a settings change. The three switches live in settings (the Overview tab and the casino settings page); the Streak tab has no switch of its own.

The Leaderboard has its own switch, independent of these three: off removes the board from navigation, redirects its page home and makes its API return not-found.

The VIP club has its own switch too (off by default, on the Overview tab). Off stops new VIP grants and new VIP-only accrual; players who are already VIP keep their status, support routing and audiences, and staff can still remove it.

Missions have no per-vertical switch. Each mission is set to sportsbook or casino, and it runs once the Missions switch is on.

Boxes a player already holds can still be opened with Tiers off, and the XP in the prize is paid. XP and rewards are credited at the time the bet or round settled, not when the worker happened to process it.

How rewards are built

A reward is a package staff build once in the rewards catalog and use anywhere:

• a bundle pays every item in it;
• a mystery box draws one item by weight.

A reward holds 1–20 items. Each item is a benefit from the catalog (or a nested reward). The item kinds are:

Each mechanic uses rewards like this:

Every grant path announces what the player received; see Benefits Catalog.

Nothing is edited in place. Past payouts refer to the reward they paid. So changing what a streak day, mission or issued reward pays creates a new version and archives the old one. A catalog reward can be deleted only if nothing uses it and nothing was ever paid from it.

Every payout has one record and cannot happen twice. The engine works from a queue of committed facts: settled bets and rounds, deposits, registrations. Each fact produces at most one payout per rule and period. A failed step is retried automatically (up to eight attempts with backoff), and a payout that stopped halfway is finished later under its original reference. Nothing is lost and nothing is issued twice.

Free bets

A free bet is a voucher, not bonus money. It is a separate instrument from a bonus grant, with its own lifecycle and no wagering requirement.

Stake is not returned. A $10 free bet on a 2.50 selection returns $15, not $25. The player receives what the notional stake would have won, and the notional itself is never credited. This is the standard sportsbook reading, and settlement enforces it, not the interface.

A voided or pushed free bet is forfeited, not refunded. A cash bet returns its stake. A free bet returns nothing, because no stake was ever taken. This is the free-bet rule players ask about most, so state it plainly in your terms.

A free bet cannot be cashed out.

A free bet posts no stake to the ledger. Its only entry is the win, and its cost shows at the net-revenue line, not as turnover.

Bet boosts

A boost is a token that adds a percentage to the winnings of a sportsbook cash bet. Like a free bet, it is issued as a reward item and held until used.

• Terms carried by the token: the boost percentage, a cap on the extra winnings, an optional minimum and maximum odds, an optional maximum stake, singles, multis or either, and optional sports and market types. A boost can apply to the winnings or to one leg's price, and can be tied to a single event or selection.
• In the bet slip (free bets are marked with a gift icon in My Bets) each boost is a chip under the stake. A boost the slip doesn't qualify for is shown disabled, with the reason. The potential return includes the extra ("incl. +$2.50 boost").
• One boost per bet, cash stakes only. A boost cannot be combined with a free bet, because two promotional instruments on one bet cannot be costed cleanly.
• On a win, the extra is (winnings) × boost %, capped at the token's maximum. It is paid as a separate ledger line and booked as promotional cost at the net-revenue line. It is never shown as a higher price or a bigger win, so hold and RTP figures stay honest. The operator's maximum-payout limit covers the payout and the extra together.
• Lost, void or push pays nothing, and the token stays spent.
• A bet carrying a boost cannot be cashed out.
• A settlement correction pays or claws back only the difference in the extra.
• A boosted bet is still a cash bet. It earns XP and counts toward streaks and missions as normal. Only the extra is promotional.

The activity streak

The number of consecutive days on which the player made a qualifying settled wager.

There is one streak per player for the whole platform. A settled sportsbook bet and a settled casino round both advance it, and a day counts once however much was played, in either product. There is one reward ladder.

Outcome-independent. A losing bet or spin counts exactly as much as a winning one. That is the point: a streak that only advanced on wins would tell a player who just lost to keep going, and this layer avoids that everywhere.

• Counted on settlement, not placement, so a wager cannot be placed, used for progress, and then cancelled
• One day counts once, whatever the number of bets or rounds
• Days run midnight to midnight UTC, not the player's local time
• Void and push bets do not count, and neither do refunded rounds: the wager was unwound and the player carried no risk
• Promotional money does not count. Bets funded by free bets are excluded, and so are casino rounds staked even partly from a bonus balance. Zero-stake rounds, such as promotional free spins, are excluded for the same reason.
• A missed day resets the run, but the player's best run is kept and shown

The reward ladder is configurable per operator and per currency. Each reward day pays XP, a benefit, or both. Days are added and edited in dialogs, and each change needs a reason and is audited. An empty streak can start from a default ladder: 7 or 31 days, XP only, in every currency, 10 XP on day one and 10 more each day; prizes can be added to any day afterwards. The player sees this week's days, whether today has counted, and what the next reward day pays.

Missions

An objective a player completes within a time window, rewarded with XP, a prize, or both.

Four objective kinds, all of them measures of activity:

Each mission is either a sportsbook or a casino mission. It can take qualification filters: a minimum stake, plus a minimum odds and chosen sports or market types for the sportsbook, or chosen games for the casino. It also has an optional start and end. Scope matches on any leg, so a multi covering soccer and tennis counts for a soccer-only mission. Progress uses the same settled-wager rule as the streak, and promotional stakes are excluded. Progress in one currency never adds to progress in another.

A mission that has not started yet is not shown to players. A mission finished before its deadline stays "completed". It never later shows as "expired".

Why there is no "win 3 bets" mission

Win-conditioned objectives cannot be configured. This is a design decision, not a gap. A mission to win a number of bets tells a player who has just lost that the way to the reward is to keep betting until the result turns. That is a loss-chasing mechanic, and several regulators restrict it specifically.

What matters for a buyer: the engine's objective model has no measure that counts wins, so no configuration can produce one. It is enforced by the data model, not by leaving a field off a form. An operator cannot create one by accident, and staff cannot be talked into one.

XP, tiers and levels

XP is a progression, not a currency. It is never spent, and it never goes down.

Earning XP from play. Each qualifying settled wager earns XP at a rate per USD staked, set separately for the sportsbook and the casino. Stakes in other currencies are converted at live FX rates. A currency with no rate earns nothing rather than a guessed amount. The operator also sets:

• a daily cap on XP earned from wagering;
• a minimum odds below which a sportsbook bet earns no XP.

Casino XP can be paid at a flat rate per USD, or scaled by the game's house edge against a 96% RTP game, so lower-edge play climbs slower.

Rewards can also pay XP (streak days, missions, boxes, level-up prizes). That XP is not capped. Free-bet bets and bonus-funded rounds earn nothing. With no XP rates configured, no XP is earned.

Tiers and levels. The operator defines a ladder of named tiers (for example Bronze, Silver, Gold), each split into levels with explicit XP thresholds. Steps can be uneven. The whole ladder must go strictly upwards. The tier ladder editor shows each level's XP and an estimate of the wagering it takes to reach it at the current rates. Tiers never go down. A player's position is worked out from their total XP every time, so editing the ladder never leaves a stale position. An operator with no tiers can start from a default ladder of eight tiers (Bronze to Opal), three levels each, as a draft to edit before saving; it comes without level-up prizes. With no tiers, players see no Levels page: the surface reads as off.

Level-up prizes. Each tier can name a catalog reward, which is paid at every level reached inside that tier, once per level, ever.

Perks

A perk is a standing entitlement, in force until staff change or delete it. A perk belongs to no tier: it names who gets it, and it applies to a player if any of its targets match.

• Tier and above: that tier and every tier above (needs the Tiers switch);
• Every VIP;
• One VIP, assigned from the player record by the player's host, backup host or a VIP manager, with a reason. Revoking VIP removes these assignments.

Perks stack. A player gets every perk that applies to them, from every tier up to theirs and from the VIP group. One perk pays once per period however many of its targets match. Perks are managed under Rewards, Perks, and a tier's panel lists the perks it carries up from lower tiers. Staff add and edit them with a reason, audited. Players see them on the Levels page ("yours", then "unlocks at ..."), where each tier card also shows the limits it carries.

Four kinds are built:

• Periodic benefit: any benefit a reward can hold (a free bet, a boost, bonus money, a cash reward, a locked bonus, XP) once a week or once a month. A free bet or boost is paid after the player's first settled cash sports bet of the period; anything else after the first cash casino round or settled cash sports bet of the period, whichever comes first, so a dormant account gets nothing. Bonus money must be a fixed amount. A periodic perk for VIPs pays only while the VIP club switch is on.
• Better box: level-ups pay a better catalog box than the tier's standard prize. Tiers only.
• Limits: raises what a player may withdraw or bet. Six figures in USD, any of them optional: minimum, maximum and daily cap for withdrawals, the manual review threshold, and the sportsbook max bet and max payout. A limits perk can only raise what the player gets: the most generous figure wins (the highest maximum, the lowest minimum), and a figure below the global one changes nothing. The review threshold is a risk setting, used as set by the strongest matching perk. Withdrawal figures apply once identity is approved. The backoffice All limits page lists every figure per target.
• Rakeback: a rate at which the house edge is returned as cash from a claimable vault. See Promotions & Bonuses.

Each tier shows what it costs: the most a player can receive a month from its perks (including those carried up), a projection for the players in it now, and what was actually paid in the last 30 days, split into perks and level-up prizes. Face value is used (a free bet at its stake, a box at its odds-weighted average); XP, bet boosts, percent-of-deposit grants, better boxes and rakeback are not costed. An empty perk list can start from default perks: a weekly or monthly locked bonus at Gold, Emerald, Sapphire, Ruby, Diamond and Opal, for those on the ladder.

Tier art. Each tier can have a badge and a hero banner. Both are generated through the platform's AI site-images pipeline or uploaded by hand, and a draft never reaches players until someone applies it. A tier without art shows a placeholder.

The backoffice XP sources view lists everything that pays XP in one place: wagering rates, streak days, missions, level-up prizes and catalog rewards containing XP. For each group it shows whether that XP counts toward the daily cap.

The VIP club

VIP is an invite-only club on top of the open XP ladder. Staff grant it from the player record with a reason; it is never earned automatically, has no sub-tiers, and revoking it never touches XP or tier. A grant is refused unless the club switch is on, the player is active, not self-excluded or on a break, and has approved identity. A self-excluded or cooling-off player gets no VIP incentives and no VIP card.

• Hosts. A VIP can have a host and a backup host (relationship managers). Only staff with the VIP host power, a recorded responsible-gambling training date and a display name can be assigned. The VIP sees the host's display name and contact and nothing else; a disabled host is flagged for reassignment and the player sees the backup.
• My VIPs lists a host's players (or all, for a VIP manager) with last activity, 30-day wagering and net deposits and responsible-gaming flags. Candidates suggests players worth inviting, from theoretical loss over 90 days, account age, activity days and approved identity, and lists players screened out for deposit spikes, rapid re-deposits, limit raises or exclusion. It only suggests; nothing is granted or sent.
• Perks and limits. A VIP gets every perk that targets all VIPs or them alone. A host can set one player's own limits from the player page without access to the Gamification area; the same most-generous rule applies.
• Host reloads. A host can schedule cash for one VIP: a total split into 1 to 90 equal claims, one a day or a week, each claimable for 24 hours once open. The reload is capped per host per UTC month (1,000 USD by default, set on the VIP club card). Claims are paid as cash with no wagering and announced like any reward; cancelling, or revoking VIP, stops further claims.

VIP can also be a benefit audience and a cohort condition.

Mystery boxes and the rewards inventory

A mystery box's prize is drawn when the box is issued, using a cryptographic random draw. The draw and the odds at that moment are stored with the box, so a later edit never changes a box the player already holds, and every draw can be audited.

• Odds are shown before opening: every possible prize with its chance.
• Every box contains a prize. There is no "nothing" outcome.
• A box can have an optional unopened expiry. An expired box pays nothing.
• Opening is a reveal, not a draw. The animated chest reveal shows only the prize that was drawn. It never cycles through other prizes or stages a near-miss. Any tap skips to the prize, and it respects reduced-motion settings.
• Opening a box needs no identity verification by default. It goes through its own access rule, so an operator that sees boxes farmed by fresh accounts can require verified identity per region from Jurisdictions.

Players see everything they have been paid on My rewards: held boxes, free bets and boosts, and where each came from. The header also carries a rewards tray, and the wallet has a Rewards section where rakeback is claimed.

What the player sees

• An XP ring on the account button, and a level meter under the player's name in the account menu.
• "My rewards" and "Tiers" entries in the sidebar.
• A "Your progress" card on the home lobby: level and XP, this week's streak and the next reward day, the top mission, and any held boxes, free bets and boosts. A box can be opened right there. Only the parts the operator has set up are shown.
• My rewards: the streak, missions and free bets in full, then the inventory with the chest reveal.
• Levels: the player's position, the tier ladder with each tier's level-up prize, the XP rates, today's wagering XP against the daily cap, and perks.
• The bet slip: free-bet and boost pickers.
• The leaderboard page, where it is switched on.

All of these are translated into every locale the player site supports.

Leaderboard

Ranks players by turnover or net profit (payout minus stake, so it can be negative), over a day, week, month, or all time. It covers the sportsbook only and shows the top 50.

These are rolling windows, not calendar periods: the monthly board covers the last month up to now and does not reset on the 1st. Worth knowing if you plan to market a "monthly winner".

Identity is opt-in. A player who has not opted in still keeps their rank, but appears without a name. To appear by name, a player sets a public handle, separate from their email address and unique regardless of letter case, so two players cannot take names that look the same. A hidden player still sees their own name in their own row. Nobody else does, and email addresses never appear in a leaderboard response.

Free bets are excluded from both metrics. Promotional stakes are not the player's own money, so counting them would let issued tokens buy a ranking. Unsettled bets are excluded too.

There is no prize pool and no ranking reward. The board ranks players and pays nothing. An operator who wants to reward a finishing position does it manually today, with a staff grant from the player's record.

Running it from the backoffice

The Gamification page opens on an Overview that describes the program in sentences built from the saved configuration:

• how players earn XP, climb tiers and what each level-up pays, with a warning when a tier has no prize;
• the streak, live missions and the leaderboard;
• the catalog and the bonus money benefits.

Each part links to the tab that changes it. The sidebar section lists Tiers (XP rates, XP sources, tier ladder, level-up prizes, tier costs, tier art), Streak, Missions, Rewards, Leaderboard and Promotions. Rewards has three tabs: the rewards catalog and its editor, Benefits (what each reward is made of, including bonus money terms; see Benefits Catalog and Promotions & Bonuses) and Perks. The overview also carries the VIP club switch and host reload cap. A tab whose switch is off says so and links to the switch.

Per player, the Gamification tab on the player record shows eligibility, XP by day, enrolments and progress, and every reward issued with its source. From it, staff can:

• grant any catalog reward or a single benefit. A reason is required, and a request sent twice still grants once. Items that could not be delivered, for example for a self-excluded player, are reported as skipped. The player list can also grant to many selected players at once.
• revoke an unused reward: a held box, or free bets and boosts that are all still unspent. XP and bonus money cannot be revoked.

Audit. A reason is required, and an audit entry written, for every change to the streak switch, streak days, missions, XP rates, the tier ladder, perks (including a VIP's assigned perks and own limits), VIP grants and host reloads, grants and revokes. These change what the platform pays out. Catalog edits are audited with a before-and-after snapshot but need no reason. The catalog is a template; the streak day, mission, level or perk that uses a reward is where the entitlement is decided.

Responsible gaming

Every surface in this chapter is gated. See Responsible Gaming for the controls themselves.

Rewards disappear entirely rather than appearing greyed out or disabled. A visible reward the player cannot use still advertises something they are barred from claiming, which is the harm the exclusion exists to prevent. The gate fails closed: while the check is loading, or if it fails, nothing is shown. Briefly hiding a reward from an eligible player can be undone; showing one to an excluded player cannot. A suppressed player's browser does not even request reward data. An excluded player earns no progress, no XP and no payouts, and a payout already queued for them is skipped if they self-exclude before it is delivered.

Other constraints, worth knowing up front because they are hard to add later:

• No live countdowns anywhere in the player-facing rewards interface. Time remaining is a rough, fixed phrase, and it goes blank in the final hour rather than getting more precise. A ticking clock creates urgency, which is what an inducement surface should not do.
• Nothing celebrates a losing bet. Completing a mission or reaching a streak day fills a progress bar and changes a state. The only animated reward moment is the chest reveal, which the player starts by opening a box.
• The one motion cue is on the streak. Until today counts, today's circle glows softly and slowly. It is turned off under reduced-motion settings. An operator with a cautious regulator may want it removed, which is a small change.

Scope & Roadmap

Implemented.

• Announcements: every grant is announced to the player once, and nested bundles are described by what they pay.
• The engine: one reward engine with a retrying queue of committed facts, one record per payout, and payouts that cannot happen twice.
• Switches: per-operator tiers, streaks and missions switches, off by default and failing closed, each stopping new accrual in its feature while owned rewards keep working; an independent leaderboard switch.
• The rewards catalog: bundles and mystery boxes of benefits: free bets, casino bonus money, bet boosts, XP, cash rewards, locked bonuses and nested rewards; versioned, never edited in place.
• Free bets: a stake-not-returned voucher with optional odds, bet-type, sport and market limits, spendable in the bet slip.
• Bet boosts: a token with its own terms, applied in the bet slip, paid as a separate line, costed at net revenue and capped by the operator's maximum payout.
• Streak: one platform-wide activity streak, settled, outcome-independent and counted once a day, with a per-currency reward ladder.
• Missions: sportsbook and casino missions with four activity-only objectives, filters and a time window. The model cannot express a win-conditioned objective.
• XP and tiers: XP per USD staked with a daily cap and a minimum-odds floor; a tier ladder with explicit level thresholds and wagering estimates; level-up prizes; standing perks (periodic benefit, better box, limits, rakeback) with tier, VIP and one-player targets; tier cost panels; default ladders and perks for empty screens; tier art through the AI image pipeline.
• VIP club: invite-only, with hosts, My VIPs, candidates, perks, limits and host cash reloads, behind its own switch.
• Mystery boxes: drawn at issue, odds shown before opening, a chest reveal with no near-miss, and an access rule per region.
• Player surfaces: My rewards, Levels, the home-lobby progress card, the XP ring, and bet-slip pickers.
• Leaderboard: two metrics, four periods, opt-in identity, free bets excluded, behind its own switch.
• Backoffice: the overview, tabs and XP sources view; per-player grant and revoke with reasons; tiered audit.
• RG: suppression that hides rather than disables and stops the fetch.

Partial.

• Payout limits have no configuration surface. The engine enforces per-player and global caps on any reward, trigger or item kind (count or value, per day/week/month/lifetime), checked under lock at issue. But no backoffice screen or API sets them, so in practice the only caps are:
  • the once-per-period rules each mechanic has built in;
  • the daily wagering-XP cap and minimum odds;
  • each boost's own terms.
• Perk triggers have no per-player limit beyond once per period.
• RG suppression covers self-exclusion and cool-off breaks, the cases that matter most. It does not cover a player who has hit a deposit, loss or wager limit. The platform reports which limits a player has set, not how much of one they have used, and "has a limit" is not "reached a limit". Closing this needs a remaining-allowance figure the API does not yet report.
• Two surfaces treat an unwound wager differently. Void and push bets are excluded from the streak, missions and XP, but still count toward leaderboard turnover.
• Public handles are unique platform-wide, not per operator. That is stricter than needed, but it needs revisiting before a second operator wants its own set of names.
• Streak days and missions pay XP and one benefit. They cannot pay a bundle or a mystery box.

Not built.

• Competition: no prize pools, no ranking rewards, no tournaments.
• Points: no loyalty points or redemption store. XP is a progression, not a spendable currency.
• More perks: no weekly bet refund or monthly extra box.
• Targeting: no mission chains and no per-player targeting beyond tier perks. A mission is on for everyone or off for everyone.
• Tier status: no annual tier status or tier-down.
• Casino-side free spins: none as a reward; boosts are sportsbook only.

Free bet limits are optional. A free bet benefit can carry minimum and maximum odds, a singles or multis rule, sports and market types, and an expiry. Leave them empty and the token can be spent on any bet in its currency. The filters on missions and streaks decide what earns a reward, never how a free bet may be spent.

No abuse detection specific to this layer. The protections are structural:

• settled wagers only;
• promotional stakes excluded;
• the XP cap and odds floor;
• once-per-period payouts;
• optional identity checks for boxes.

Nothing detects a player farming the streak with minimum-stake bets on near-certain selections, or linked accounts collecting level-up prizes.