October Online Game Report: Dominance of top three US suppliers slips as smaller firms circle
Each month, Eilers & Krejcik Gaming releases its US-focused Online Game Performance Report alongside Fantini Research.
Gathering data directly from online operators across nearly 30 sites, the report provides an in-depth recap of US online casino and iGaming performance.
Top US iGaming suppliers by GGR
The dominance of the two leading suppliers in the US market – Evolution and IGT – continued to slip through September, with market leader Evolution’s share of overall GGR down from 28.2% to 27.1%.
The live casino specialist’s share of slot GGR was reduced from 20.3% to 18.5%, while its hold on the table games segment increased from 36.2% to 38.8%.
IGT, meanwhile, saw its overall share of GGR fall by a full percentage point from 21.8% to 20.8%. While the supplier remained the number one provider of table games, its proportion of GGR from the segment tumbled from 46.9% to 43.1%, while its share of slots GGR fell from 19.4% to 18.1%.
Those losses were explained in part by Light & Wonder’s continuing growth, as the supplier formerly known as Scientific Games increased its share of overall GGR from 18.1% to 18.3%.
This was likely due to L&W’s improved performance in the slots category, where its share of GGR grew from 21.3% to 21.7%. The supplier therefore continued as the top-performing slots supplier included in the report.
Between the top three suppliers combined, overall share of GGR fell from 68.1% to 66.2%, suggesting online casino customers are continuing to diversify the suppliers whose games they are playing.
Significant movers among the suppliers listed in the report include Digital Gaming Corporation in fifth place, which grew its share of GGR from 5.3% to 6.6%, and Gaming Realms, which saw its proportion of overall GGR increase from 2.8% to 3.6%, moving up from seventh place to sixth as a result.
September was also a good month for Greentube, which remained in ninth place overall but increased its market share from 2.2% to 2.5%.
Additionally, Ainsworth almost doubled its share of overall GGR from 0.6% to 1%, moving up the list from 16th place to 13th as a result.
Top performing games by GGR
Just as the dominance of the top three suppliers in the market continued to wane in September, so too did the lead of the top performing individual games.
The highest grossing game included in the report – IGT’s Blackjack – saw its share of GGR tumble from 2.9% to 2.19%, while Evolution’s Live Dealer Roulette rocketed from fifth position at 1.67% to second, with 2.15% of overall GGR.
The live casino specialist’s own version of Blackjack, however, fell from second position with 2.15% of GGR to fifth, with just 1.5%.Light & Wonder’s 88 Fortunes slot remained in third position, though its share of GGR slipped from 2.07% to 1.99%.
The total proportion of GGR generated by the 25 best performing games fell from 27.56% to 25.63%, again suggesting that players continue to spread their spend across an increasingly broad variety of games.
The top three performing titles in the report – which together accounted for 7.12% of GGR in August – now account for a significantly smaller proportion at 6.33%.
This month, Evolution increased its number of titles in the top 25 from 10 to 12, while IGT and Light & Wonder performed consistently with the previous month, holding six and four of the top positions, respectively.
Everi, which had two games in the top 25 last month, had just one this time round, while AGS retained its single game on the leaderboard; slot title Capital Gains.
GGR breakdown by game category
While slots continued to account for the largest proportion of GGR of any single segment, at 76.6%, that represented a reduction of 1.2 percentage points from 77.8% in the prior month.
That decline – as well as a fall for table games revenue as a proportion of overall GGR from 11.5% to 11.2% – is explained principally by an increase in the popularity of live casino, whose share of overall GGR grew from 7.9% to 8.8%.
Video poker also saw a modest increase from 2.1% to 2.2%, while the proportion of GGR attributable to instant win games almost doubled from 0.5% to 0.9%.
Of all the game titles included in the report, the proportion of slots fell slightly from 90.5% to 90.1% while the report now includes a larger proportion of table games and live casino titles, which increased as a proportion of all games from 4.7% to 4.9% and from 1.9% to 2%, respectively.
Proportion of the market included in the report
Eilers & Krejcik includes a vast quantity of data in its reports, covering some 58.5% of the US iGaming market and now tracking more than 36,000 separate game titles every month across 29 online casino sites.
The growth in the number of games tracked by the firm, as well as the number of online casinos available to US consumers – from just a handful in recent years to more than 40 today – demonstrate the growth of regulated online casino products across the US.
With legalised iGaming available in just a few states, however, the data included in this report shows the beginning of the vertical’s growth trajectory, which will be further driven by the introduction of new legislation and regulation across additional US states in the months and years to come.
If you are interested in learning more, subscribing, or participating in the Eilers-Fantini Online Game Performance Database, reach out to Rick Eckert at reckert@ekgamingllc.com.
