How concentrated is revenue in top spenders?
№ 139 · Whale concentration
Definition
MetricShare of in-app purchase revenue held by the top slice of payers
Unit% of IAP revenue held by the top N% of payers
Pareto of revenue by paying-user spend tier. Top 1% of payers usually 50%+ of revenue. Build by sorting payers by trailing 30-day spend. Tells you whether to design for whales or breadth. Example: top 1% = 58% of revenue (very whale-driven game).
Benchmarks
| Bottom 30% | Median | Top 30% |
|---|---|---|
| most concentrated end: top 5% of payers above about 60% of IAP revenue, with whales at 1% to 2% of the whole player base driving 50% to 70% of IAP | top 5% of payers hold about 48% of IAP revenue; the top 10% of users hold 70% to 85%; the top 2% hold 35% to 45% | less concentrated end of the distribution: top 5% of payers holding under about 40% of IAP revenue and the top 10% of users under about 65% |
In-app purchase revenue only, mobile free-to-play, global, 2023 to 2025. Concentration is measured over payers unless stated otherwise, and payers are typically 2% to 5% of the player base, so a percentage of payers and a percentage of players are not the same axis. Moloco's figures come from 100 top-grossing advertisers representing roughly half of global IAP revenue, so they describe scaled titles rather than the long tail. · Concentration numbers are only comparable when the denominator is stated, and most published figures do not state it. Moloco's 48% is the top 5% of paying users. AppAgent's 50% to 70% is whales as a share of the whole player base at 1% to 2%. Both can be true at once. Widely circulated historic figures should not be used as current: Swrve's 0.15% of players producing 50% of revenue is from 2014, its top-10%-of-payers-at-64% figure is from 2016, and the Everyplay survey is from 2014 and is self-reported rather than measured. Direction of travel is toward more concentration, not less, with the top 1% of iOS winning bid prices up 140% in 2024 as advertisers compete for the same narrow segment. Note also that this card is directionless by nature: high concentration is a risk profile, not a failure, and it is normal in midcore, RPG and social casino.
Category split omitted: No two independent Tier 1 or Tier 2 sources publish payer concentration split by genre. ARPPU spread by genre is available and is a proxy for payer depth, but it says nothing about the shape of the tail, so a genre split here would be manufactured rather than sourced.
When it looks bad
The top decile bar grows month after month while the total revenue bar stays flat, so the same money is arriving from fewer accounts and the mid-tier bars are hollowing out underneath it.
Top 1% of payers moving from 22% to 38% of IAP revenue over two quarters on flat total IAP, with the count of payers spending between $20 and $100 down by a third.
What to do about it
- Track revenue at risk from the top 100 accounts as a standing number alongside their own retention curve. With 1% to 2% of the base driving 50% to 70% of IAP (AppAgent), payer retention and blended retention are different businesses and only one of them predicts revenue.
- Build the mid-tier rather than the top tier when concentration rises. Whale transactions cluster around $20 and more than half of whales never make a single purchase above $50, so the growth sits in a deeper pack ladder and higher repeat frequency, not in a larger headline SKU.
- Set an explicit concentration ceiling and treat a breach as a product signal rather than a monetisation win. The scaled-title benchmark is the top 5% of payers at about 48% of revenue (Moloco); materially above that means the economy has stopped monetising the middle.
- Separate concentration driven by whale growth from concentration driven by mid-tier churn. Both push the same bar up and they need opposite responses, so never read the top-decile share without absolute payer counts by spend band next to it.
Sources
- Moloco The top 5% of paying users now generate 48% of total gaming revenue. The top 5% of US iOS high-value users, just 0.02% of global installs, generate 20% of global gaming revenue across both platforms. moloco.com ↗
- Moloco (via GameDev Reports) 70% to 85% of all IAP revenue is generated by 10% of users, and the most valuable 2% of players generate 35% to 45% of all IAP revenue. Highest D7 ARPPU is in Hong Kong at $37.5, Qatar at $28 and Iceland at $27.4. gamedevreports.substack.com ↗
- AppsFlyer Whales, the 2% to 5% of big spenders, often contribute more than 50% of a game's income, and high-value buyer revenue in North America declined 8% over the period. Attracting whales on iOS has become materially harder. appsflyer.com ↗
- AppAgent Whales are about 1% to 2% of the player base and typically drive 50% to 70% of total IAP revenue. The typical whale transaction is around $20 and more than half of whales never make a single purchase above $50, so whale revenue accumulates rather than arriving in single large payments. appagent.com ↗
- AppMagic The share of App Store paying users who had spent more than $100 by day 90 rose from 22% in 2024 to 32% in 2025 in hybridcasual titles, so the high-spend tier is thickening even in genres that historically had none. gamedevreports.substack.com ↗
- Swrve (via Game Developer) 2.3% of free-to-play players spent in the measured month and the top 10% of those payers produced 64% of measured revenue, up from an estimated 50% the previous year. Dated 2016 and included only for direction of travel. gamedeveloper.com ↗
- Sensor Tower (via GameDev Reports) The top 1% of apps generated 92.2% of all IAP revenue in 2025, $154 billion against $13.1 billion shared among the remaining 99%, so the same power law that shapes payer distribution also shapes title distribution. gamedevreports.substack.com ↗
- AppsFlyer D90 IAP ARPPU is $11.40 in casino, $9.80 midcore and $7.26 casual, so the average payer in every genre is nowhere near whale level and the tail is doing the work. appsflyer.com ↗
- Moloco The top 1% of iOS winning bid prices across the industry surged 140% in 2024 while overall median bid prices remained steady, which is the acquisition-side signature of revenue concentration. moloco.com ↗
- Everyplay (via Game Developer) The top 1% of spenders, those spending over $50 a month at an average of $108, accounted for roughly 29% of all mobile game revenue, with two-thirds of revenue from the top 10% of players. Dated 2014, survey-based rather than measured, included only as the historic anchor. gamedeveloper.com ↗