Reviewed payouts are a relatively new but important feature that online
casinos are offering to help secure player confidence and trust.
The most prominent reviewing agency in the online casino business is
PricewaterhouseCoopers (PwC), one of the world's largest professional services
firms.
PwC currently provides review services to more than thirty online casinos,
through working agreements with Swedish casinos software supplier Boss Media and
South African-based MicroGaming Systems.
How does PwC calculate the payout percentages? Do they accurately reflect the
percentage amount being paid back to players?
We calculate the percentage winnings to wagered amounts, and not the amounts
paid back to clients. This means that the same dollar could be played through a
number of times and only then be "re-called" by players. We are very
confident that our calculations as published are correct.
Do these reviewed figures assure players that the casino's bookkeeping is
honest?
We have been very careful not to imply that we perform any review of the
casinos or their financial results. However, we have performed various detailed
reviews of casino backoffices, and have no reason to believe that any dishonesty
exists. I want to assure you that my firm will resign immediately should there
be any sign of dishonesty by any of our clients. Our reputation is worth much
more than any fees any client could pay us.
Are there ways casinos could alter the numbers without PwC's knowledge? Is
this likely?
We download gigabytes of data every month and run our own software against
these files to calculate the published ratios. We also perform various other
checks, for example, we reconcile independent financial information to these
data log file figures in order to ensure that our figures are independently
confirmed. Casinos are unable to manipulate these numbers without PwC's
knowledge. We also perform this exercise for 38 casinos and have built up
significant knowledge of the data, and trends that will alarm us immediately
should anything be wrong.
Can you provide any other general info about the reviews?
We use very senior and experienced people only to perform this work (partner
time on this exceeds 50%). We have performed various random number tests on the
software, and are very satisfied with the level of cooperation we receive from
MicroGaming Systems. I want to stress that we will not hesitate to keep reports
back if there is any hint that everything is not above board.
PricewaterhouseCoopers is a multi-national corporation employing more than
160,000 people in over 150 countries, providing services in 24 different market
sectors.
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