Agreed. 
Gooner, you are still missing the point. Forget your experience with sports. I stated it in one of my previous posts as well as I could.
Over the entire player base, the payout rate remains the same. Jackpots are previously paid for by both operators and affiliates communally. The Software company manages the money in most cases.
Each affiliate has a minute fraction of this base, and this fraction will also remain the same payout rate – if distributed over many years. The affiliate is subject to ruin on any particular month or several in a row because s/he doesn’t have the entire player base to reflect the payout rate and even earnings out. You catch one of the winners, you are wiped out. Nothing to balance it.
If you have each casino calculate profits as the independent unit it is, the affiliate ends up being able to absorb the blows easier as only one property at a time is affected. If you bundle, all income across the board is wiped out.
What is happening right now is that the player base for both casinos and affiliates alike has shrunk. The casinos are not happy because they want to continue to run the joint as usual, without reducing expenses. So the perfect way is to have the affiliates absorb the present losses for one of the properties applied to all the different properties at once. This frees up extra money on a monthly basis as profits are not paid out.
I hope this is clearer, I don’t know how to explain it any better.