Live dealer game provider and burgeoning industry behemoth Evolution Gaming released its interim report for the third quarter (January-September 2021) showing consistent and phenomenal growth in its live gaming product.
Third-quarter growth year on year saw operating revenues up by 97% to EUR 276 million and EBITDA increasing 113% for a 3-month profit of EUR 157.4 million compared to EUR 79.4 in the third quarter of last year.
Significant events during the last three months include continued high demand for live gaming content propelling the company to generate more than 53% rate of growth year on year; a nearly 8% increase in random number generator (RNG) game revenue, and a continued expansion into the US market with a live dealer studio opening in Michigan.
Live Gaming Grows Faster than RNG
The Swedish company’s live casino growth exceeded pre-pandemic levels, indicating a lot of new players are discovering real-time streaming casino floor games. However, RNG numbers also represent strong growth, if not quite as high as CEO Martin Carlesund would like to see in some segments.
NetEnt and Red Tiger brands showed about 3% growth while Big Time Gaming (BTG) kicked up the overall RNG numbers by delivering over ten times that in stand-alone numbers over the quarter. Red Tiger and NetEnt both use BTG’s Megaways mechanic in some of their games with titles like Gonzo’s Quest Megaways amalgamating something from each RNG brand into the title. Gonzo is originally a NetEnt game, but the Megaways version was released by Red Tiger after incorporating the BTG mechanics.
Evolution CEO Martin Carlesund spoke of the company’s continued expansion into the regulated American and Canadian markets when he said: “The North American online casino market continues to develop rapidly in both US and Canada. In Michigan, where we introduced our portfolio of NetEnt games in the beginning of the year, we launched our live casino in the beginning of the quarter.
“The studio is off to a very good start and this best-in-class offering is yet another enabler of growth in the US market. After the end of the period, we were first to the market with our slot games in Connecticut. We expect Live games to follow soon, Connecticut will be the 4th studio we operate in the US. Also after the end of the period, we launched our live and RNG games with the Ontario Lottery and Gaming Corporation, it will be the 4th province in Canada to go live from our Canadian studio.”
New Studios, New NetEnt Platform
In addition to new studios under development in Madrid and Yerevan, Carlesund noted the acquisition this past quarter of game maker DigiWheel in an all-cash deal.
“DigiWheel’s technology is exciting, innovative, and unique and will be blended into our online Live Casino games and game shows. The ambition is to launch new games in 2022 using this technology.”
Speaking to the reality of fewer new NetEnt game releases in 2021, he said the company is in the process of “reshaping” its RNG business and has completely rebuilt the NetEnt technical platform. They are currently in the process of deploying new integration tech for casinos with One Stop Shop (OSS) which will allow operators to access all Evolution content with a single integration.
New games for live dealers in the third quarter included Cash or Crash and a unique version of Fan Tan, especially appealing to Asian customers.
Source:
Evolution released today its Interim Report for January-September 2021, Evolution Gaming, October 28, 2021