Are Evolution poised to become the biggest name in online slots?

Are Evolution poised to become the biggest name in online slots?

 

Towards the latter end of July Evolution Gaming Group released its second quarter financial results which showed the iGaming powerhouse’s year-on-year operating revenues had doubled to an incredibly impressive €256.7 million.

If you know, or have read anything about Evolution in the past year then this news will hardly come as a surprise to you, as the company has been making serious leaps and bounds forward within the industry thanks to some shrewd and impressive acquisitions.

So impressive has their growth been in the last twelve months that many industry insiders are predicting big things for the Swedish company, with the experts at SlotGods.co.uk, one of the leading sources of independent bias free online slot reviews, believing that Evolution could quite easily become the biggest name in the world of online slots for years to come. 

If you’re not yet acquainted with Evolution then allow us to explain exactly who this trailblazing iGaming studio are, and why they’ve made such a splash in the last few years. 

Who are Evolution and what do they offer casino players?

Founded as Evolution Gaming in 2006, the company has for the most part provided top quality live casino content to iGaming operators around the world with live casino studios set up in Latvia, Romania, Georgia, Lithuania, Malta, Belgium and the United States. 

For more than a decade the company focused solely on live casino solutions, bringing popular table games to life online, ensuring players could enjoy roulette, blackjack, baccarat. sic bo and poker from the comfort of their own homes in real time, with real dealers, as if they were there.

In 2016 the company turned its attention to developing more creative live casino games that pushed major boundaries, offering game show style games, something that had not yet been seen before in the live casino space.

In the three years that followed since the release of their first live casino game show game, Dream Catcher, Evolution released a number of innovative new games to huge fanfare and applause, these include Monopoly Live, Lightning Roulette, Lightning Dice, Mega Ball, Crazy Time and most recently Gonzo’s Treasure Hunt.

Having conquered the fiercely competitive live casino market, helping develop it into a completely new beast in less than a single decade, Evolution decided to turn their attention to an even more competitive and lucrative market, online slots. 

The story of Evolution’s unparalleled spending spree

In 2018 Evolution made the decision to acquire one of their closest rivals in the live casino space Ezugi for the modest sum of €15.8m, this move allowed them to make positive moves in expanding their operations into the United States, a market with great untapped potential. 

However, as exciting as Evolution’s acquisition of Ezugi was, it barely registered as a drop in the ocean in comparison to the groundbreaking news that was to follow just two years later when the company announced they were purchasing NetEnt for the phenomenal price of €1.8 billion.

NetEnt, as most online slot fans know, are by far the most decorated and well established slot development studio in the world, nobody has come close to replicating the success they’ve achieved in the last two decades, and their line-up of games are unrivalled. 

The studio is known for creating true classics such as Divine Fortune, Dead or Alive, Gonzo’s Quest and Mega Fortune, just to name but a small handful of hit games that have graced the lobbies of online casinos. 

However, in purchasing NetEnt, not only had Evolution gotten their hands on one award winning slot studio, they had also taken control of Red Tiger Gaming by default, another high profile studio NetEnt themselves had purchased for £220 million just a year earlier.

With firm control over two of the online slot industries biggest studios there were plenty of questions regarding Evolution’s next moves. Would they begin to release online slots under the Evolution brand? Would they change the direction in which NetEnt and Red Tiger Gaming were going or would they just continue to operate business as usual?

The immediate answer was actually quite unexpected… Rather than lay out a roadmap stating their intentions, they went big once more. In 2021 Evolution unexpectedly completed the purchase of Big Time Gaming, the studio behind the legendary Megaways mechanic.

Having splashed €455 million on Big Time Gaming we really have to start wondering what they’re going to do next, especially considering they’ve got full creative control over the Megaways mechanic, a huge money-spinner for the Australian studio over the years.

What will Evolution do with the slot IP they’ve acquired?

Those of you that have been keeping a keen eye on developments at Evolution and the live casino world will have noticed that Gonzo’s Treasure Hunt Live was released in June 2021, this 3D augmented reality utilises the main character in NetEnt’s most successful slot game of all time, Gonzo’s Quest. 

The release was heralded as a ‘whole new direction’ for Evolution and their live casino games, so that potentially gives us quite a large clue as to what the studio are set to do with the IP they’ve acquired in the last two years. 

There’s clearly a high-demand for Evolution’s live casino offering with the studio experiencing 59% growth year on year, so naturally it makes complete sense for the company to continue in the direction they’re already going, so we could be seeing some of the most popular titles developed by NetEnt, Big Time Gaming and Red Tiger Gaming make a transition into the live casino scene in the not too distant future. 

It’s difficult to comprehend how Evolution will fit the Megaways mechanic into a live casino game, but one thing is for sure, if anyone can pull it off, Evolution can.

Can Evolution become the biggest name in slots?

Having keenly watched each and every move Evolution has made since their acquisitions, the team at Slot Gods believe that whilst Evolution will quite literally be the biggest name in slots on paper (in terms of the intellectual property they own), their direct involvement in the world of online slots will likely remain minimal.

It’s clear that the studio is looking to continue growing in the live casino space, especially as they make a move into the United States where iGaming is becoming increasingly more popular as liberal states slowly begin to open up to online gaming.

All three of the studios purchased by Evolution can rightly be described as some of the biggest players in the iGaming industry, their business models were working well before the live casino giant came along and they’ll continue to work for years to come, especially with the additional investment they’ll likely receive.

If anything, you can expect NetEnt, Red Tiger Gaming and Big Time Gaming to all continue dominating the online slots market, whilst Evolution continues to dominate the Live Casino market, taking a back seat as they allow their subsidiaries to do what they do best. …

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