Illustration of our modelling technique using NGC 4494 as an example. In all panels, GC data are shown as blue points, the DF model is shown as a black solid curve, and the 68% confidence interval of the model is shown as a grey shaded area. a: Sloan Digital Sky Survey (SDSS) colour image of the galaxy with blue crosses marking the spectroscopically confirmed GCs in the SLUGGS survey (made with Aladin). b: projected number density profile of the GCs compared to that of the f(J) model. c: marginalised posterior distributions of the halo mass and concentration estimated with an MCMC method. Dark and light grey areas encompass, respectively, 68% and 95% probability, while the black solid lines and cross mark the maximum-likelihood model. d: LOS velocity as a function of projected radius, V_los − r, for the GCs compared with the projected phase-space density of the maximum-likelihood f(J) model. The contours contain 68–95–99% of the projected phase-space density of the model. e: circular velocity profile, V_circ (top), and velocity anisotropy profile, (bottom), of the f(J) model. f: LOS velocity dispersion profile of the GCs measured with SLUGGS data compared to that of our f(J) model. We also compare to independent measurements of the σ_los profile of planetary nebulae from Pulsoni et al. (2018, red squares).