iGaming Business Casino Review: An Inside Look at the Top Online Casinos and Casino Games
Each year, iGamingBusiness, in collaboration with eGaming Monitor, publishes the annual Casino Review report. The report provides a detailed overview of the online casino industry, including its dominant elements and declining parts. The 2023 edition collected data from 3,400 online casinos to discover the latest trends in the world of online gambling. If you’re a casino enthusiast who likes to stay updated with the world of online gambling, keep reading to find everything you need to know about the report’s findings!
General Overview
In 2023, eGaming Monitor identified 744 studios in the iGaming space, which was 18% more than the previous year. The report contains data from 40,642 unique casino games, belonging to 2,450 unique websites. Not only are these numbers a massive increase from 2022, but a database this extensive means that analysts now have more information than ever to accurately deduce the trends within the online iGaming industry. In summary, 2023 was the best year for casino-goers to find out more about the type of games they’re spending their money on!
Overview of Suppliers and Studios
From 2022 to 2023, 232 more suppliers became a part of the online gambling industry, taking the total number up to 1,637. When categorized by type, the most significant segment belonged to studios (48.9%), followed by aggregators or other platforms (20.6%). Almost 129 new studios were launched in the previous year, while 52 new platform providers/aggregators made their way into the casino market.
The Influx Effect
The top ten studio groups are still ruling the online gambling industry, as they had 55% of all game tiles globally in 2023. However, a ton of new providers opened up last year, which is why the top players lost 1% of their total share. Evolution Gaming is still the most popular provider across the world, with a 13% share across global gaming sites, but its share has decreased slightly as compared to 2022. Other top studios like Playtech and Light & Wonder also faced a decrease in industry shares, while Playson and Inspired Entertainment were entirely bumped out of the top ten.
On the other hand, studios like Play’n GO and Pragmatic Play saw an increase in their content reach despite the increasingly saturated industry. Pragmatic Play currently has an 11% share of the market, while Play’n GO has 5%. Lastly, when studio groups are compared by the number of casinos that feature their content, Evolution Gaming and Pragmatic Play still come up top. In 2023, 83% of all global casino sites featured gaming content from Evolution Gaming, making it a leading star.
The increasing influx of studio groups also affected large supply groups, such as those that have subsidiaries or parent companies. In 2023, larger supply groups owned 68% of the gaming content on all casino sites, a number that was 70% in 2022. This was a trend change, as previously, the share of the large supply groups saw an increase despite the increase in studios.
The reason 2023 saw a trend change was that the year-on-year studio increase grew massively, reaching 18%. When such a huge number of new studios open up, they take away space from those that already exist in the industry. While some fans might be disappointed to see their favorite studios losing popularity, others are excited at the prospect of newer games and innovative content!
Game Overview
Across the world, casino sites had a 50% increase in the number of games they offer. But you might be wondering how such phenomenal growth occurred in just one year! The answer is quite simple. We now have a ton of more casinos producing content, which operators add to their casino sites every year. This happens without any retirement of old gaming content on these websites.
All of this leads to an overall increase in the number of games these casino websites feature. The average gaming studio produced 2.36 games per month in 2023, excluding dormant studios. Collectively, over 10,000 new games made their way into the market. On average, a casino website features content from 59 suppliers. Here are the top ten studio groups by game production in 2023:
Studio Group Games Launched in 2023 Games Global 329 Pragmatic Play 313 Evolution Gaming 303 Playtech 188 Spinomenal 181
Distribution of Gaming Content by Type
If you’re someone who only runs to the slot machines every time they’re in a casino, we have some good news for you: the industry is filled with people like you! When content across gaming sites is viewed by type, slots make up a dominant part of the industry, almost amounting to a monopoly. Across all online casinos, 84.8% of all games are online slots, followed by live casino games at 6.6% of all gaming content. However, the report also found that new game types, such as crash games, are increasing in market share as well.
Crash games made up 0.3% of the industry in 2023, up from 0.1% in 2022. Furthermore, even though these new innovative games haven’t infiltrated the market like slots or live games, they’re still distributed across many gaming websites. They’re also often featured in better positions on these websites, such as in ‘featured’ or ‘popular’ sections. This shows that despite being loyal to slots, casino enthusiasts are willing to give a chance to new and innovative gaming, as long as it keeps things exciting!
Top Studio Groups by Game Positions
The report also evaluated studio groups by top casino games. This metric measures games according to the number of websites that feature them. According to this evaluation, the top 20 positions were dominantly owned by Pragmatic Play, Evolution Gaming, and Play’n GO. One game each from NetEnt and Red Tiger also made it to the top 20. Games by Pragmatic Play held the top three positions. These games were Gates of Olympus, Sweet Bonanza, and Big Bass Bonanza. Even though most of the games in the top 20 were slots, some live games and roulette versions were also seen there, showing that these games are holding their ground in a world defined by slots.
While these games have performed the best, here are some titles we recommend playing. Explore our reviews to learn more about them:
What’s Trending?
Lastly, it’s worth noting that branded games and Megaways titles decreased in their share of all gaming content in 2023. On the other hand, Action & Adventure, Animals & Nature, and Tales & Legends emerged as the top themes that people wanted to play. Sports and calendar events were among the themes that received the highest increase in their shares across gaming content.
Overview of Dealmakers
Within aggregators, EveryMatrix came at the top after striking new deals with 19 studios in 2023. Furthermore, the top studios in dealmaking were 7777Gaming and Endorphina, both of which secured nine distribution deals in the year. The year 2023 was also the era of originality for slot games, with only 11% of new slot machines sharing a name with an existing title. Before, this number was as high as 15%, which shows that originality has increased over this past year.
In Conclusion
In a nutshell, 2023 was an excellent year for this report by iGB and eGaming Monitor, simply because of the sheer number of games and studios it covered. It was also an overall brilliant year for the casino industry, as it added a ton of new content and struck up several new deals. The report showcases that online casinos are part of a growing industry, which is only expected to rise further in the coming days. This has left everyone excited to discover everything new that is about to come in the world of the best online casinos!
James is a casino games expert on the Playcasino.com editorial team. With many years of professional experience at a leading casino game development company and a passion for playing casino games, James has become a true expert in slots, blackjack, roulette, baccarat, and other games.
James uses this expertise to provide reliable, insider advice through his reviews and guides, breaking down the game rules and offering tips to help you win more often. Rely on James's extensive experience for expert advice on your casino play.
