What is Whale?
Whale is informal industry slang for a customer who gambles exceptionally large sums, enough that their individual results can affect a casino's reported revenue.
A single whale on a winning streak at baccarat can visibly reduce a casino's quarterly hold, while heavy losses by a few players can inflate it. Analysts sometimes cite whale activity when explaining unusual results.
The term is also used in mobile and social gaming for the small share of players who account for most in-app spending.
Regulators have criticised business models that depend heavily on a small number of very high spenders, given the risk that some may be experiencing harm or gambling with funds that are not their own. In industry coverage, the term is informal and usually appears in quotation marks. It is not a regulatory category, unlike defined terms such as high-value customer. Concerns about whales have been raised in several enforcement cases in Great Britain and Australia, and in research on how concentrated gambling spend is among a small minority of customers.