Seven years ago live dealer was a largely ignored product in Europe, today it is one of the most lucrative with a number of operators generating 20% of their online casino revenues via an expanding range of live software suppliers. James Bennett charts the battle for market share as the segment heats up, and travels to Riga to meet the biggest supplier of them all – Evolution Gaming
[
I
LIVE DEALER
The competition
THE BATTLE FOR
[
n 2006 there were two, now there are more than 15 with European live casino’s contribution to online casino turnover rising from just over the €1bn mark to €2.5bn seven years later. Technology has dramatically improved and, as a result, so has the quality of products available to operators. Dealers are better trained and the continent is rapidly regulating country-by-country, opening the door to new entrants in the land-based, lottery, media and entertainment and mobile sectors, to name a few. For several larger online operators, live dealer represents 20% or more of their overall casino revenues and, if anything, this section of the industry is showing no signs of slowing down. As a consequence, nor does the competition – with four of the industry’s largest service providers, Evolution Gaming, Playtech, Microgaming and now Net Entertainment, battling it out for market share in that order. Evolution (see more on p48) may have slightly more than 60% of the current European regulated market but it is acutely aware that the others mean serious business, particularly with the barriers to entry lower than ever before, demand for an effective live solution so high and the rewards of running an operation so lucrative. Evolution, for example, last year generated an annual network turnover of several hundreds of millions in gross gaming revenues for its
licensees, taking a varying percentage in revenue share depending on client agreements. Owing to this success, it has rather unsurprisingly been earmarked as one of the hottest properties on the market.
Playtech, Evolution’s closest competitor, may not specialise solely in live casino or compare to its scale of more than 100 tables, 700plus dealers rotating three times every 24 hours, eight dedicated languages, nor count approximately 70% of the top 20 operators as licensees. But, unlike its Riga neighbours, Playtech also has a large focus on Asian markets (around 15% of its revenues are generated there) and, more importantly, is arguably the industry’s most complete all-rounder and is able to offer existing – and tempt potential – clients with an almost complete array of services including live. A number of Evolution’s biggest clients however, are also on Playtech’s books in one form or another be it on its bingo network or casino platform or using its mobile and/or marketing services, for example. It may be Evolution’s biggest competitor but it is also one of its biggest admirers and – as a number of previous eGR news stories have suggested – it has reportedly considered making a bid for