News
Evolution Gaming Showing No Signs of Slowing Down
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At a time of increasing, but not always uniform regulation and ever more competition, it’s easy to see how margins in the iGaming industry are being squeezed. Yet that’s doing nothing to slow down growth, with one major player returning consistently impressive figures.
Evolution Gaming, one of the most trusted providers of ‘live casino’ gaming software in the world, recorded a 54% increase in operating revenues in the first quarter of 2019, compared to the same period last year, up to €79.3m from €51.6m and second quarter revenues of €85.7m (45% increase YOY).
That’s an eye-opening figure proving the online gambling market is far from reaching its peak. Profits for Evolution were up, too, rising to €28.6m for the quarter (€16.5m).
Such a strong performance does not happen by accident. Evolution is reaping the rewards for investing in growth and innovation throughout 2018.
And with the increasing appetite for ‘live dealer’ gaming showing no signs of slowing down, the outlook for 2020 and beyond looks exciting.
The optimism is entirely justified because there are several drivers behind the growth.
Growing interest in live dealer games
There was a time when online casino table games featured little more than animated graphics with a random number generator spitting out cards or selecting where the roulette wheel ball would fall. At first, customers enjoyed the novelty factor of gambling online.
But one thing these games lacked was apparent trust. If you can’t see a human dealer shuffling and using real cards, or spinning a roulette wheel in real time, then how can you be sure the game is fair? Of course, we’re not suggesting the old games were corrupt, but players love interacting with real, live dealers.
Live casino games, like the growing offering from Evolution, have become an immersive experience. You bet in real time, can chat to the dealer, and wait while new decks of cards are added to the shoe in blackjack – decks of cards that you watched being shuffled and cut by an assistant moments before. Now, there is no reason to blame the games for being rigged should you hit a losing streak; the games are 100% trustworthy and realistic.
Featuring real people, and therefore being easier to follow, live casino games are also attracting a new audience through platforms like YouTube and Twitch, where broadcasters are able to chronical their live dealer action in real time to huge audiences.
Some have been watched over 500,000 times. Many viewers may not have contemplated online gambling in its formative years, but the live dealer set-up creates a visually stimulating experience which is driving many more to sign up and give it a go.
The casino operators, of course, have seen this coming from a mile off. Once only a few dabbled in the live casino experience, preferring to stick to the tried-and-tested old-fashioned, animated format.
Now, any online casino worthy of playing at will have a full suite of live dealer games. Further, the casino bosses recognise what a rising star the format is, so they offer bespoke sign-up bonuses for their live dealer games.
The bigger operators, such as Kindred Group’s Unibet Casino, use the Evolution Gaming live dealer studios, but brand the tables in the Unibet logo and messaging. It’s a white label set-up that benefits Stars while further boosting revenues at Evolution.
Evolution offers more for existing customers
One of the major attractions of live dealer gaming is interacting with the actual dealer. While you may not wish to chat, you’ll certainly enjoy listening to their conversation. Some are real performers, adding to the whole user experience.
However, one obvious flaw is when the dealer does not speak your language. If he or she is English, and you are Italian, you’re not going to get the same enjoyment from your session at the tables.
Evolution recognises this is a key area for growth and is investing in new native speaking tables for its studios. While the big, licensed languages were catered for earlier, such as French and Spanish, more are being added all the time.
Recently, Portuguese tables appeared, opening up live roulette and blackjack to the wider market in Brazil. Finnish has been added to the same games by the Betsson Group Casinos. We’ve recently seen Arabic games, and live casino hold’em in Italian!
Clearly, as regulated markets continue to open up, there is potential for Evolution to grow further by expanding not just the languages it offers, but the games it runs in those languages.
Rumours are already circulating that Evolution Gaming are setting up a Hindi language live casino tables and a Japanese studio to offer games in those markets.
New games appealing to different audiences
The online gambling sector has always been innovative, driven by fast-evolving technologies and from having some of the best developers available. In terms of marketing, the sector recognised early on that one size does not fit all: while many players enjoy traditional games like roulette and blackjack, many others want something different.
It is diversifying that worked well for the online poker market. Think about the advent of speed poker, started by Full Tilt with its Rush ring games. Add the more recent “Spin and Go” multiplier format which began at Winamax. Evolution took this valuable lesson and applied it to the live dealer experience.
New games like Lightning Roulette are breaking the mould. In this version of the game, once the fast betting action is over, the dealer spins reels that add win multipliers to random numbers. If that number comes up, and you have bet on it, you might get up to 500 times your winnings. The action is fast and furious, just like the name Lightning suggests.
It’s a concept that attracts an entirely new audience, including those who usually prefer casino slot games, who enjoy the fast pace and prize multipliers on offer. And while casino operators benefit from extending the lifetime value of customers, Evolution will get more income.
More new formats and games are coming out of development all the time. There’s Dream Catcher, a new version of the traditional spin the wheel, and Lightning Dice, which takes something as simple as predicting the total sum from three dice and turns it into an exciting live casino game.
Like slots, licensing deals for big-name new games add further to Evolution’s potential. Recent additions to its live offering include Monopoly Live and Deal Or No Deal. Both offer exciting takes on the original, widening the reach of each client casino’s marketing efforts.
New integrations keep being signed
As has already been pointed out, all of the better operators now offer live casino games, and many of them are with Evolution. So is there really more growth potential? Or are we hitting the ceiling?
The truth is new partners are integrating the Evolution live dealer experience all the time. The company’s Q1 update mentioned several new partnerships, including with the fantasy sports operator Draft Kings in the USA, Loto-Québec in Canada and Svenska Spel in Sweden.
The Canadian and Swedish operators are run and owned by the national Governments, which adds further credibility to the Evolution brand.
The big USA question
The US online gambling market is huge. Unfortunately, it’s not open to all, and different games are only available in certain states. The online poker market took a huge hit when the game was banned under the Unlawful Internet Gambling Enforcement Act in 2006, and all related online gaming stopped. Only in recent years has it begun to open up as states began legalising it, such as in Nevada and New Jersey.
Opportunities for the online casino and gaming sector and the companies like Evolution that supply it are clear. Coherent Market Insights predicts the US online gambling market could be worth $123 billion by the year 2026. Drivers, it notes, are wider digitization and access to devices, plus increasing trust in online payment services.
The potential in the US is so great it adds rocket fuel to Evolution Gaming’s upward trajectory.
Sitting pretty despite the competitive landscape
As we’ve seen, Evolution has enjoyed meteoric success. There can’t be many businesses in the online gambling space that can boast year-on-year revenue increases of over 50%.
A potential threat to this growth is new competitors arriving and trying to take a piece of the action. However, such is Evolution’s dominance, experience and superior service levels; it’s hard to see any reason why operators would want to partner with anybody else.
Innovation is one way a competitor might try to get a foothold in the next five years, but unfortunately for anyone thinking of trying (and it would be an expensive route to market anyway), Evolution is already well down the road with the likes of Lightning Roulette or Monopoly Live.
With the outlined drivers to growth and the current buoyant market landscape, it’s hard to see a world anytime soon where Evolution Gaming is not continuing its tremendous growth, while maintaining its impressive record of snapping up industry awards for its games.
Source: European Gaming Media
This is a Syndicated News piece. Photo credits or photo sources can be found on the source article: Evolution Gaming Showing No Signs of Slowing Down
A partnership between game developer Turbo Games and iGaming solution provider and aggregator Slotegrator began in November 2022 via the APIgrator game integration solution. Since then, the collaboration has been developing successfully — and now it’s time to analyze what made it successful.
Turbo Games has noticed how the new technologies spreading throughout the industry can work for the good of brand transparency and player loyalty: “We can already see how blockchain technology has made it possible to make betting checks more accessible to players. All you need is a blockchain-hash and a decoder service. We think we will continue to move in this direction. Many traditional online casinos do not offer the possibility to check the bet. Sooner or later we all have to come to this. Perhaps the development of artificial intelligence will help here, because we are already seeing its involvement in all spheres of human life.”
Turbo Games specializes in provably fair games. Provable fairness is a concept where players can verify their wins or losses using blockchain technology — the outcome of the game is dictated by a smart contract and is absolutely random, barring the possibility of any human involvement. Using cryptographic hashing algorithms, the gambling site and the player’s device both generate seeds (random strings of numbers). Players receive a key that allows them to check the results; if the results are the same as the game round they witnessed, it proves that there was no foul play.
According to statistics from Turbo Games, the audience for provably fair games is mostly between 18 and 25 years old. However, there are also players aged 35-40 who prefer traditional games but would like to try something new, and have turned their attention to provably fair games.
There are good odds that the technology of provably fair games will become more popular, if not even commonplace, because it gives players a feeling of transparency and proves that the business is trustworthy without the need to search through dozens of reviews. Whereas many innovations in iGaming simply add entertainment, provable fairness addresses security concerns and reassures players that they’re not being exploited, which is invaluable.
Provably fair games are beneficial for both players and online casinos. Vadim Potapenko, Head of Sales at Turbo Games, comments: “It often happens that the users are not satisfied with the result, because gambling is not only about big wins, but also possible losses. By allowing them to check the fairness of a bet, we make life easier for platforms and players. Of course, this allows us to communicate with partners and users that we work honestly and that’s why they should trust our games.”
Ayvar Gabidullin, Business Development Manager at Slotegrator, adds that “this type of game is now becoming more and more popular and has great potential for both players and game providers in the future. On the part of the player, the advantage is that the player can always be sure that his game is fair and he can independently check any of his bets. And for the game provider, this also simplifies the process of implementing casino games, since now it will not be necessary to obtain the appropriate certificates from independent laboratories before launching new games, they can immediately enter the market with these games and where anyone can check the result and make sure that that there is no cheating with players. Many game providers are starting to look towards this type of game. And as far as I see, many operators are starting to think about adding these games.”
What do players in 2023 need? The iGaming industry is all about reputation and trust. Players have a huge number of platforms to choose from, making them pickier and pickier. There’s an abundance of forums where players leave reviews, so if players view a brand as untrustworthy, there are plenty of places they can share their opinion. Provable fairness not only stops that from happening, it provides evidence to the contrary, giving players something else to talk about.
Slotegrator also recommends investing time and effort into localization and creating an effective and detailed marketing strategy — before trying provably fair technology players need to get to the platform, and there is no acquisition without marketing.
ABOUT SLOTEGRATOR
Since 2012, Slotegrator has been one of the iGaming industry’s leading software and business solution providers for online casino and sportsbook operators.
The company’s main focus is software development and support for online casino platforms, as well as the integration of game content and payment systems.
The company works with licensed game developers and offers a vast portfolio of casino content: slots, live casino games, poker, virtual sports, table games, lotteries, casual games, and data feeds for betting.
Slotegrator also provides consulting services in gambling license acquisition and business incorporation.
More information: https://slotegrator.pro/
ABOUT TURBO GAMES
Turbo Games — a provably fair games provider that belongs to Turbo Stars company — has an ambitious goal to establish widespread recognition throughout the iGaming world. Even though it is young, the company consists of professionals who have been working on the brand for over five years and are even planning to introduce a new brand for a wider audience soon.
Turbo Games also works in Europe, India, and South Africa, where the company sees the most potential and expects the same “hype” as in Brazil.
The portfolio of Turbo Games consists of 21 titles, including well-known games like Mines, Crash X, DoubleRoll, Hi-Lo, and Plinko. The studio releases a game every month. However, not all games are developed from scratch. Wicket Blast and Spin Strike, the last two releases, are based on cricket and the Indian Premier League. Crash X remains the most popular fast game in the Turbo Games portfolio, and the studio reports that crash games enjoy stable levels of popularity. Overall, the main focus of the brand is provably fair games.
More information: https://turbogames.io/
Looking to take your career to the next level in the games industry? Then, Nordic Game Talents is the place to be! Games Factory Talents has teamed up with Nordic Game to bring you Nordic Game Talents.
From Oct 27-29, the online and interactive event is dedicated to recruitment and career building in the creative & games industry within the Nordic region. The event empowers participants to be part of a bigger community and motivates them to explore new paths in achieving their career goals.
Hiring creative & games studios – Supercell, Funcom, Panzerdog, Tactile Games, Gamecan, Fingersoft, Dazzle Rocks, Redhill Games to name a few from the Nordic region will be participating in the event. These studios will share information on their latest projects, work culture and what it takes to be part of their team. The individual games associations from Finland, Denmark, Sweden, Norway and Estonia will share insights through live sessions on the booming games industry in their respective countries. Career development topics pertinent to job seekers like – How to have a successful first interview, Creative Portfolio reviews will also be discussed.
Experienced game industry professionals and individuals beginning their careers from around the world are welcome to join the event. One-to-one interviews with the hiring studios can be scheduled through the event platform. A great opportunity to get to know the studios and network with game professionals from around the world.
Participating in the event
As a job seeker attending Nordic Game Talents, take a few minutes to fill out a simple registration form. After filling the registration form you will receive a link to the online event platform – PINE, to join the event on 27th October. Participants joining Nordic Game Talents will also receive a free-of-charge pass to the Nordic Game Conference.
To view the complete agenda, please click here and to learn more about the event please visit Games Job Fair
About Games Factory Talents
A Helsinki-based talent attraction agency dedicated to the games & creative industry. Our services include direct recruitment, organizing game job fairs and managing a community of game industry professionals through our GameDev Talent Board.
To learn more about Games Factory Talents visit – Games Factory Talents
810 THE SPREAD
Cumulus Media Launches 810 THE SPREAD, the Bay Area’s First Sports Station Focused on Sports Betting
Cumulus Media (NASDAQ: CMLS) announces that it has launched the Bay Area’s first Sports radio station focused on sports betting, 810 THE SPREAD. The new station brings sports and sports betting news, information, and insights to the burgeoning and underserved sports betting audience in San Francisco. 810 THE SPREAD will deliver behind-the-book perspectives from experts in a highly entertaining and engaging format. 810 THE SPREAD goes live today on the legendary 810am frequency that has been the 80-year home of historic Talk Radio KGO-AM. Cumulus San Francisco also launched the station’s new website at www.810thespread.com. Kevin Graham, Program Director of Cumulus’ sister sports stations KNBR 680AM/104.5FM and 1050 KTCT, adds Program Director duties for 810 THE SPREAD.
Larry Blumhagen, Vice President/Market Manager, Cumulus San Francisco, said: “810 THE SPREAD joins our sports brands KNBR 680AM/104.5FM and 1050 KTCT for a trifecta of dynamic sports content across four signals and streaming everywhere. We are excited about this new chapter and look forward to serving the Bay Area’s passionate sports fans in an incomparable way.”
Blumhagen added: “This is a bittersweet day for us, as it’s hard to say goodbye to the legendary KGO, which has been a part of listeners’ lives for so many years. We want to thank all the people who have been a part of KGO’s historic run these many years – and the listeners who loyally tuned in to the station. Times change, and we must change with them.”
Kevin Graham, Program Director, 810 THE SPREAD, said: “810 THE SPREAD will be the Bay Area’s best bet for sports fans and sports betting enthusiasts, and we are pleased to introduce sports-betting radio to our community. The station will feature a lineup of expert personalities that deliver unique sports talk and sports betting insights that entertain, inform, and engage, along with Cal Football and Basketball as well as select professional and college sports play-by-play events. While 810 THE SPREAD will feature specific gambling information, we believe our entertaining presentation will make it a favorite for all Bay area sports fans and a perfect complement to the legendary KNBR and KTCT. With its addition, it truly shows Cumulus’ commitment to the Bay area as ‘The Sports Leader’!”
The weekday programming lineup for 810 THE SPREAD includes:
6am-9am – Bet QL Daily – The must-consume show for sports fans and betting fans alike. Hosted by Joe Ostrowski, Joe Giglio, and Erin Hawksworth.
9am-12pm – Jim Rome - Aggressive, informed sports opinions, rapid-fire dialogue, and plenty of sports smack. As one of the most prolific sports talk hosts in America, Rome draws massive tune-in with legions of fans known as clones, who live for Rome’s take on the day’s largest issues in sports.
12pm-4pm – You Better You Bet – Nick Kostos and Ken Barkley have you covered for the best bets on the biggest matchups, the latest line movement and updates in the futures market. We’ll have up-to-the-minute coverage of backdoor covers and bad beats, and the cheers and tears that come with them. It’s sports betting conversation like you’ve never heard before.
4pm-8pm – Bet MGM Tonight – Live sports betting updates for all the night’s games as they happen – plus live “look-ins” for Major League Baseball games in progress. Get the latest scores, sides, totals, props, parlays, futures, and much more with hosts Quinton Mayo, Trysta Krick, and Ryan Horvat.
8pm-12 Midnight – CBS Sports Radio
BetQL Network programming is provided by Cumulus Media’s Westwood One through a partnership with Audacy.
For more information or to stream 810 THE SPREAD, visit: http://www.810thespread.com.
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