iGaming Business Casino Review: A Closer Look at Top Online Casinos and Games
Published each year by iGamingBusiness with eGaming Monitor, the Casino Review tracks expansion and contraction in online gambling. The 2023 edition used data from 3,400 online casinos to identify industry trends. Here we examine its findings on suppliers, studios, game categories and dealmaking.
Industry at a Glance
The 2023 data from eGaming Monitor counted 744 active iGaming studios, up 18% from the prior year. The report covered 40,642 distinct casino games listed on 2,450 unique websites. Compared with 2022, the expanded dataset gave analysts more information to evaluate online casino content trends. It offers readers a detailed snapshot of the games casinos listed in 2023.
Suppliers and Studios
The supplier total grew by 232 from 2022 to 2023, reaching 1,637. Studios were the largest category at 48.9%, followed by aggregators and other platforms at 20.6%. The market also added nearly 129 studios in the prior year, as well as 52 new platform providers and aggregators.
Market Share Shifts
The ten biggest studio groups still accounted for 55% of game placements worldwide in 2023. However, new providers entering the market cut their combined share by 1%. Evolution Gaming remained the most widely distributed provider, with a 13% share across global gaming sites, slightly below its 2022 position. Playtech and Light & Wonder also lost share, while Playson and Inspired Entertainment fell out of the top ten.
Play’n GO and Pragmatic Play grew their content reach as competition intensified. Pragmatic Play held an 11% market share, and Play’n GO had 5%. Based on the number of casinos carrying their games, Evolution Gaming and Pragmatic Play remained among the leaders. Evolution Gaming titles appeared on 83% of global casino sites in 2023, placing its catalogue among the most widely distributed.
Parent-company and subsidiary relationships also influenced supply. Large supplier groups provided 68% of the gaming content on casino sites in 2023, down from 70% in 2022. This reversed the earlier trend, when large groups kept gaining share even as more studios entered the market.
The report associated the change with an 18% year-over-year rise in studios in 2023. New providers competed with established ones for visibility and placement. As a result, familiar studios could represent a smaller share while new releases and ideas expanded the content mix.
Game Supply
Casino sites worldwide recorded a 50% increase in the number of games offered. The report attributed this growth to more casinos and their expanding catalogues, while older titles generally stayed listed instead of being removed. Together, those factors raised the total volume of games over the year.
Growing studio output also expanded casino websites’ game selections. Among studios that were active, average production reached 2.36 games per month in 2023. More than 10,000 new games entered the market, and an average casino website featured content from 59 suppliers. The report ranked the ten studio groups with the most game releases in 2023 as follows:
Studio Group Games Released in 2023 Games Global 329 Pragmatic Play 313 Evolution Gaming 303 Playtech 188 Spinomenal 181
Game Categories
Slots accounted for most of the games catalogued across gaming websites. They made up 84.8% of online casino games, far exceeding online slots’s counterpart, Live Casino, at 6.6%. The study added that newer categories such as crash games were gaining ground, albeit from a far smaller share.
Crash games represented 0.3% of the industry in 2023, compared with 0.1% in 2022. They appeared across many gaming websites, though they remained much less common than slots and live games. The report noted that crash titles often appeared in prominent areas such as ‘featured’ and ‘popular’ sections. This suggests operators were giving the format visibility as interest in newer game types increased.
Studio Groups by Game Placement
The report compared studios by counting how many websites featured each of the 20 top casino games. Most leading spots went to Pragmatic Play, Evolution Gaming and Play’n GO. NetEnt and Red Tiger each had one title in the top 20. Pragmatic Play took the top three places with Gates of Olympus, Sweet Bonanza and Big Bass Bonanza. Slots dominated the top 20, alongside some live titles and roulette variants, showing those formats also had a presence.
Here are a few notable game titles to explore as a starting point for individual game reviews:
Emerging Themes
Branded games and Megaways titles made up a smaller portion of gaming content in 2023. Action & Adventure, Animals & Nature, and Tales & Legends were the leading themes by player interest. Sports and calendar-themed games saw some of the biggest increases in their share of content.
Deals and Partnerships
Among aggregators, EveryMatrix led after adding deals with 19 studios in 2023. In distribution, 7777Gaming and Endorphina topped the studio rankings, with nine agreements each in 2023. Slot titles showed another change: only 11% of new slot machines reused an existing game’s name. The comparison had been 15%, which the review viewed as a sign of greater originality in slot naming over the year.
Key Findings
The iGB and eGaming Monitor review surveyed a broad range of studios and games in 2023. Its figures chart an industry that expanded its content and entered into new distribution deals that year. The findings provide a detailed historical snapshot of online casino catalogues and their suppliers; they do not determine what is currently available or authorized in Canada. Use the report as background when exploring online casino reviews.
Evan Carrington brings more than 12 years of experience in the iGaming industry, specializing in online casino reviews, slot game analysis, and player safety assessments. Their expertise includes casino licensing, RTP, volatility, bonus terms, and withdrawal policies. Combining hands-on reviews with independent research, Evan provides clear, evidence-based coverage to help players understand gambling platforms, their features, and possible risks.
