Whilst land-based casinos suffered heavily due to the global health pandemic, it has been well documented that during lockdown there has been an overall increase in the popularity of online casino offerings.

With the likes of poker seeing a resurgence online and more operators shifting their focus to the virtual landscape, the live casino industry has also seen a significant interest in the game show segment leading to the question, is this variant the next big thing for the sector?

Speaking on the final day of SBC Summit Barcelona – Digital, Rokas Benetis, head of live casino at LeoVegas, detailed the rise of game show content and why the offering is booming.

“Game Shows as a game type only appeared in this industry just a couple of years ago, with the evolution and launch of Dream Catcher being the first sort of non classical table game variant,” he explained.

“The games themselves are sort of coming from popular TV shows. You’re currently on an offering where you have Deal or No Deal, Monopoly, you know, Dream Catcher and other games, which are on a different level in terms of player engagement.

“It’s more attractive to a wider audience and I think the players feel more comfortable on them because they’re much simpler to players or require a lesser knowledge level to play them.

“It really opened the door for a much wider player profile for live games. I know in the past when we see you know, the specific profiles tend to gravitate towards classical games like blackjack or roulette. But the growth in the last couple of years really came from game shows.”

Ciara Nic Liam, product director games of chance at Betsson Group, agreed with Benetis’ comments whilst also highlighting that game shows in live casinos also came at the perfect time given that the sector was undergoing new regulations.

Nic Liam added: “I think the piece worth pointing out as well is the emergence of those game shows came at a really great time when there was an enhanced focus on due diligence and KYC and people weren’t just trying to bring in large live casino VIPs that wanted private tables.

“People pivoted more to recreational players and their player base to make sure their casino was more sustainable. So people push these games quite heavily. There were live casino players that tried these game shows, and that was to love to buy them. But actually, as we see, even with the streamer community, it’s a lot of predominantly strong, slot players that go on and play these game shows.

“What we then find is we try to up-sell them and cross sell them to other live casino games because a live casino customer in a lot of markets can be more valuable than a slots customer.”