Live casino games: Playtech vs. Evolution
This month iGaming Tracker’s Ken Muir explores the rise of casino live gaming and the respective roles played by Playtech and Evolution.
There has been a lot of interest in casino live gaming in recent months. Playtech has recently completed its migration of dedicated live casino rooms to its next generation studio in Riga, Latvia.
In July, we identified a game launch that had equivalent exposure to a major new slot release. It was surprising to us that it was actually a new live game format from Evolution, albeit a take on a traditional casino Wheel of Fortune format, called Dream Catcher.
Most online casinos have a live casino offering on their live casino tab, however at iGaming Tracker we have noticed that most landing pages now have live games present, along with standard HTML5/Flash table games and the top slots.
We looked at 17 UK-facing casinos in September, a good cross section of the UK gambling market. We tracked the main landing pages for each casino every day to assess:
• the mix of slots/live games and table games on each page;
• the supplier mix of live games;
• type of live games present; and
• to analyse the launch of Dream Catcher
Slot, table and live game mix
The above chart looks at the percentage mix between slots vs. live casino games vs. table games (HTML5/Flash games such as roulette, blackjack etc).
Most pages have some presence of casino live games, and when they don’t have live games it looks like it is due to exposure on another casino tab. For example, Sky Vegas doesn’t have a live casino game presence, but live games have a large presence on Sky Casino (Playtech exclusive).
Live games supplier mix
It seems that most casinos have an exclusive agreement with either Evolution or Playtech. All but one of the casinos analysed had live games exclusive to one supplier on their main page, even if they were offering slots games from multiple suppliers on the same page.
Type of live games present
The chart shows the type of live games on the main page. Interestingly there is a healthy mix of games, and often multiple options of roulette and blackjack.
Dream Catcher
In July, Dream Catcher rapidly started to appear prominently on many casino main pages. The game by Evolution is not a traditional live casino game, taking its inspiration from a Wheel of Fortune game.
This type of game builds a community feel into the casino live experience; consequently the game is likely to be more sticky than a typical slot game release. The graph below shows the positions on each page since its release.
It is likely that Dream Catcher will be the first of several new format live games which start to compete in the same space as casino slot games.
iGaming Tracker – how it works
iGaming Tracker tracks hundreds of casino sites worldwide every day. From this data it can ascertain which games are on which sites and where they are positioned on the pages. It can also measure the market share of casino games suppliers by percentage of “real estate” on casino sites at any given date.
For more information visit www.igamingtracker.com or email [email protected]