Evolution encourages operators to bounce into Live Casino at ICE Totally Gaming 2017

What was your overall impression of ICE Totally Gaming 2017 and when do you expect to reap the benefits of your participation in the international exhibition?

This year’s ICE was our busiest ever, with more meetings than ever before conducted with existing and prospective clients. ICE serves as the ideal global meeting point in our business — we can have our extended teams and customers all in one place. And of course, it’s a fantastic global stage on which to introduce our latest games and releases, and indeed to showcase our world-leading Live Casino games portfolio. Overall it was an extremely busy few days and there was a lot of interest around our new games.

What would you say were the highlights of the London show?

One of the major highlights for me was our new Dual Play Baccarat studio streaming live from our stand. This solution extends Evolution’s convergence offer for land-based casinos. To see it all in action proved yet again the top-quality nature of our teams — particularly the way they were able to create a fully working Live Casino studio in such a short time frame. Guests were invited to come and play upstairs in the studio and could also play at the table from their phones as they enjoyed a drink and snacks at the bar.

Other people came up to me and said that they felt our speaker sessions on the stand stood out for the quality of the content. We had must-hear sessions from Tania Johannisson, Head of Game Integrity & Risk, James Stern, Director of Land-based and Todd Haushalter, our CPO. The topics they covered were ‘How Do Online Live Dealer Casinos Protect Themselves From Players They Cannot See?’, ‘The Bridge Connecting The Offline And Online Worlds’ and ‘How To Get The Most Out Of Your Evolution Live Casino Offering’. Our licensees and potential new licensees felt that these sessions really got under the skin of Live Casino operations and addressed the key issues.

What was the audience response to Evolution's novelties?

The feedback was extremely positive and focus on the sheer variety and choice on offer in our Live Casino portfolio. Of course we had the most comprehensive set of casino classics on show, but there are also so many multi-camera, multi-channel variants of Roulette, Blackjack, Baccarat and Poker to explore.

At this year’s ICE we placed particular emphasis on Evolution exclusives such as Three Card Poker and Ultimate Texas Hold’em. Both titles are the result of an agreement with Scientific Games, through which Evolution is the exclusive provider of the Live Casino versions of these dominant Poker games.

The feedback from operators looking to move into Live Casino for the first time was generally, “Wow, I didn’t realize there was so much to choose from!” It was a pleasure taking new and existing customers around the stand and seeing their eyes light up when a particular game captured their imagination and got them thinking about what it could achieve for them.

This year at ICE, Evolution's Dream Catcher made its international debut. Based on the conversations held with existing and potential customers during the show, what's next for this revolutionary game?

Without doubt the star of the show was Dream Catcher. We knew ICE would be the ideal occasion to launch a brand-new game type with our Dream Catcher Live Lucky Wheel, so we pulled out all the stops to make it happen.

Dream Catcher is a visually stunning super-sized vertical wheel with silver and gold 2x and 7x multiplier segments that act as bonus spins. It's been created using a precision-engineered bespoke wheel, built exclusively for us by TCSJOHNHUXLEY, so it looked fantastic streamed live to the stand.

This is a momentous launch for us because Dream Catcher will expose Live Casino to players who don’t play table games and therefore don’t play Live Casino. It really does broaden out the appeal of Live Casino.

With Dream Catcher we are reaching out to the millions of slot, bingo, and other players out there who might ordinarily never venture near a Live Casino game. But Dream Catcher is different because there’s no table, no cards and the rules are so simple. It’s akin to a TV-style game with the inclusion of the multipliers.

It’s intentionally simple and friendly to play, and with the potential for the 2x and 7x multipliers to keep hitting sequentially, players can win thousands of times their initial bet, just like they can with slots.

Dream Catcher is almost like a game show that you can play along with at home, on desktop, tablet and smartphone.
We know that both slot and table game players will find it a familiar and an enjoyable way to play and bet for fun. We’ve really tried hard to make Dream Catcher a game that will expand the Live Casino space.

What were the industry's hot topics during the event?

Land-based and online/offline convergence for sure, so our new Dual Play Baccarat game spoke to that market perfectly. We already have our Dual Play Roulette tables installed in top London venues such as The Ritz Club and The Hippodrome, so there was a convergence buzz around our stand.

The other hot topic for us was mobile, which continues to go from strength to strength. Because we invested so extensively in mobile on behalf of our licensees we are now seeing around 46% of game revenue across our network coming from the mobile channel — so it’s no wonder mobile continues to be a taking point.

How would you describe the current state of the international gambling market?

From our perspective it’s doing very well. Live Casino continues to grow and strengthen its position among operators as well as players. The opportunities can be very exciting, as Live Casino is one of, if not the, fastest growing verticals. We continue to gain more operators, to sign new deals, to open more and more new tables for existing clients and to generally widen our portfolio of games and exclusive content.

What will be your key areas of focus for 2017?

The extension of our Dual Play portfolio to maximise the convergence opportunity for land-based casinos and online operators will certainly be a key focus.

Mobile will also continue to be key driver of growth, as mentioned earlier. The emphasis at the moment is completing the rollout of portrait gaming on smartphone. We can see that being another likely incremental revenue earner for operators. Dream Catcher, for example, will be on both smartphone portrait and horizontal from day one, which I think will have a big impact on revenue as that convenience makes the game so easy to dip into when you have a few spare minutes.

At the same time, we will continue to strengthen our general position in the European market, while monitoring developments, as always, in re-regulating markets. We have a proven track record of being first to market in new markets, and we will be looking to extend that record.