Who Makes India’s Favorite Casino Games?

Evolution is the Indisputable Market Leader among 99 Competitors

A highly competitive field of at least 99 game development studios and more than 5,500 games that battle out for players’ attention is what hides behind the scenes of present-day online casino gaming.

In these dynamic settings, one game developer – Evolution Gaming, stands out as the clear leader in this specific B2B (business-to-business) market, consistently bringing in 60% to 70% of online casino operator turnovers throughout most of 2022, as revealed by one of the latest research papers by SevenJackpots.

The dominance of the game studio founded in Sweden in 2006 in the current market reality is even more overwhelming considering that the company owns Ezugi – one of the other leading brands focused on live casino games.

The study titled “Top Game Shows and Live Casino Classics Captivate India” is dedicated to “the leading game studios that provide the latest hit titles and fuel the sector’s growth,” as the authors have phrased it. The research is based on primary data on turnovers and active user shares between January 1 and October 31, 2022 provided by Casino Days, a leading online casino platform operating in India.

The Swedes have Interests in Almost All Online Casino Gaming Categories

With the exception of slots, Evolution is among the three biggest game providers for every online casino gaming category. In many of the categories, especially the major ones like Game Shows, Roulette, and Blackjack, products by Evolution have a dominant position, and in several categories like Triple Card, Fan Tan, and Poker, the studio is the only game provider.

The most popular category of casino games – Game Shows – mostly live casino adaptations of popular TV game concepts like “Wheel of Fortune”or “Deal or No Deal”, brought more than a third, or 34.48%, of the Casino Days turnover within the analyzed 10-month period. Out of that, 32.46% of the operator turnover, or 94.14% of the category turnover, was attracted by Evolution titles.

Together with their “sister brand” Ezugi, Evolution supplied 84.11% of the revenues within the category of Roulette games (which contributed almost a quarter or 22.91% of the operator turnovers), 61.82% of the income from Blackjack (with a contribution of 16.11%), and 84.16% of the turnovers made by Baccarat games (with a contribution of 7.45%).

Pragmatic Play, the Maltese Contender

Pragmatic Play, a Maltese company founded in 2015 and currently owned by the IBID investment group, are the toughest contender faced by Evolution, but are still operating at a far distance behind the leader. Within the period analyzed by SevenJackpots, Pragmatic games kept registering between 10% and 20% of the operator turnovers.

Originally specialized in slots, where they now generate two thirds of the turnover (3,0% out of 4.59% registered by the whole category), Pragmatic expanded their portfolio into live dealer games where it succeeded in acquiring significant market shares in virtually all major game categories.

Most notably, the Maltese studio holds 6.15% of the 16.11% Blackjack market, together with 3.63% of the 22.91% Roulette market, and 2.02% out of the 34.48% generated by Game Shows.

Pragmatic’s most popular game titles include “Roulette 8 – India”, “Blackjack 36 – The Club”, “Andar Bahar”, and “Mega Wheel”.

The Rest of the Field

While the top of the chart is dominated by just a few big whales, the bottom levels below the 10% mark swarms with action. Worthy of mentioning is OnAir Entertainment, an aspiring young studio that suddenly joined the top five performers in terms of turnover generation in the late summer of 2022

Slots, the most numerous game category with over 500 separate titles, have their own development dynamics where new games often shoot to instant stardom and fade into oblivion shortly after. Maybe because of this peculiarity, the vertical has its separate field of game providers, represented by Play ‘n GO (PNG) and Push Gaming, besides the leader Pragmatic.

Other notable studios include names such as OneTouch Live, Relax Gaming, Spribe, Playson, and Booongo, each of them attracting sizable user bases and shares of the registered turnovers.