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Sweden – Evolution sees operating revenue surge by 97 per cent as live dealer continues to boom

By - 1 November 2021

Evolution saw its third quarter operating revenues increase by 97 per cent to €276m with profit coming in at €157.4m

The quarter saw the continued expansion in the US with opening of a new live casino studio in Michigan. Top-line growth was driven by very strong global demand for Live Casino but also impacted positively from the company’s  increased RNG business. Live Casino revenue growth was 53.2 per cent compared to Q3 2020, which is higher than the pre-pandemic growth rate levels, showing that many of the company’s newer players are staying in the network. RNG growth was 7.9 per cent compared to pro-forma figures of Q3 2020 for NetEnt and BTG.

Big Time Gaming, which was fully consolidated into Evolution’s results in the third quarter, contributed with €10.6m in revenue. BTG stand-alone is growing at a rate of over 30 per cent in the quarter, compared to their corresponding quarter in 2020. Evolution’s NetEnt and Red Tiger brands show growth of about three per cent compared to the same quarter 2020.

CEO Martin Carlesund said: “While this development is in line with our expectations, our ambition for our NetEnt and Red Tiger brands is to deliver stronger growth moving into 2022. The third quarter this year has been another quarter of extremely high activity within Evolution. The expansion of our business at the current speed is simply put – hard work – and I want to start these comments by thanking everyone in Evolution for great work during this period, without your effort and commitment the achieved financial results would not be possible.

The result for the third quarter 2021 has once again proven that our strategy to focus “We are in the process of reshaping our RNG business. This year we have both re-structured the product roadmap and also re-built the complete technical platform for NetEnt. We are right now rolling out our updated integration for casino, One Stop Shop (OSS), towards customers which enables operators to reach all our existing content from one single integration and ensures that access to future Evolution content will go seamless and fast world-wide. This is a major step for both us and our customers but even more so for all our end users who will get more fantastic Evolution content. One side effect of this total technical make-over has been fewer new game releases in 2021.

“As always, we continue to develop our portfolio of games. While our game shows, including successful wheelbased games such as Monopoly Live and Crazy Time, continue to attract players, we continue to broaden the audience for the game show category. Our new bouncing ball game – Cash or Crash – adds strategic and decision-making features in a game show style game. This game is all about player choice and the ability for the player to control the outcome. We also launched Fan Tan – a fresh twist on the beautiful traditional Asian bead game,” he added.

“Besides adding new unique games, it’s absolutely crucial to constantly enhance the end-user experience and entertainment value through enhanced and innovative user interfaces. Reduce all small bottlenecks and make it seamless. During the quarter, we launched an improved user interface to our traditional Blackjack game, through a new zooming feature in portrait mode. This clearly improves the gaming experience further.”

The aim with all our offerings is to excite and entertain players with the best possible choice of world-class gaming. We are committed to creating the most immersive and exciting gaming experiences available.”

The North American online casino market continues to develop rapidly in both US and Canada.

Mr Carlesund explained: “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.

Ongoing studio projects include new studios in Madrid and Yerevan. This quarter, a lot of business focus has been centred around investing and establishing new studios. “As always, expansion potential lies in existing markets, as well as new geographies and we will, as a natural part of our business, continue to expand and invest in existing studios both in North America and other regions at the same level as earlier,” Mr. Carlesund added. “Also, during the past quarter, we signed an agreement to acquire 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.

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