In the UK, much of the online casino market is driven by two key segments: sports betting and bingo.
But while sports and bingo sites are similar in that they both have casino pages offering slot content for their customer, they appeal to completely different segments of the gambling base.
This analysis will look at the difference in casino slot content between these two groups of sites.
We will also take a look at Playtech game content, unique in that this commands significant presence on operator sites through their exclusive sportsbook ‘casino’ tabs as well as through its Virtue Fusion platform which powers many bingo sites.
Sites analysed
The 10 bingo and 10 sports sites we compared are shown below.
We looked at the games in the top 10 positions of each page every day from 1 June to 30 September and aggregated the data to get the top 20 positions.
So how did we decide which sites to analyse? We simply typed ‘bingo’ for the top 10 ranking bingo sites and ‘football bet’ for the top 10 sports betting sites.
You will notice that many of the sports betting sites have multiple casino tabs, for example ‘Casino’, ‘Vegas’, ‘Arcade’ etc. We used all of them for this analysis. If a site had multiple tabs with slot content, each page was given equal weighting.
The following home pages were analysed: Crown Bingo (home), Foxy Bingo (home), Gala Bingo Games, Lucky Pants Bingo (home), Mecca Bingo (home), Mirror Bingo (home), Sky Bingo Games, Sun Bingo (home), William Hill Bingo (home) and Wink Bingo (home).
Sports betting sites analysed were Betbright Casino (home), Betbright Games (home), Betfair Arcade, Betfair Casino, Betvictor Featured Favourites, Betway Casino (home), Betway Vegas (home), Bwin Casino (home), Coral Casino Top Games, Ladbrokes Casino (home), Ladbrokes Games (home), Ladbrokes Slots (home), Paddy Power Casino (home), Paddy Power Games, Sky Casino, Sky Vegas Main, William Hill Casino, William Hill Games (home), William Hill Macau (home), William Hill Vegas (home).
Top ranking games
These show a significant difference in game content, although interestingly the same suppliers feature strongly in both sets of rankings.
There are also some similarities. SG Digital’s Rainbow Riches ranks number one for both sports betting and bingo sites, with Cleopatra (IGT) and Starburst (NetEnt) also in the top five for both.
We also see sports-related content such as Top Trumps World Football Stars and Frankie Dettori’s Magic 7 by Playtech ranking on sports betting sites.
Some providers also have markedly different content ranking across the two site groupings. Blueprint’s Pig Wizard for example is the highest-ranking title for bingo sites, though this slot title does not feature at all in the sports betting rankings.
The bingo rankings also feature TV show-branded content such as Love Island and Britain’s Got Talent. Aside from Deal or No Deal, TV-branded content does not feature in the top 20 for sports betting sites.
Playtech content
Playtech is unique in that its ownership of major bingo software supplier Virtue Fusion and exclusive ‘casino’ tabs on the major sportsbooks gives them significant market share for casino content across bingo and sports betting sites.
The acquisition of bingo slots-focused developer Eyecon and Quickspin reinforces their share across both segments.
Two of Playtech’s titles emphasise its focused content strategy. Fluffy Favourites by Eyecon has consistently been one of the most popular games on bingo sites since its release in 2016. Likewise, Frankie Dettori’s Magic 7 has consistently maintained a strong presence on sports betting sites.
Table 2 below shows the top-ranking games for both segments. On the sports pages Quickspin content is strongly present on tabs such as the ‘Coral slots’ page.
While Playtech has content on these ‘non-exclusive’ pages (which is increasing), the majority of their content is on tabs only containing Playtech games, such as ‘Bet365 Casino’ and ‘Sky Casino’.
Supplier content share
The heatmaps show the content share by suppliers for the tracked pages for September. It is important to note that it assumes that all pages tracked have equal weighting and it only considers the top 20 positions of each page.
For this, only slot content is considered; table games and live table games are omitted. (Playtech and NetEnt would have a higher share of these were considered).
Two other interesting insights arise from looking at the content. First, Red Tiger has significant presence on most of the slot pages of the major sports betting sites, as well as exclusive Macau tabs on two of the sites. So a relatively new company has made a big impact on the sports segment.
The second point is how the content share of Playtech in the bingo segment has increased with the acquisition of Eyecon, reinforcing their already dominant share through owning the Virtue Fusion network (see Figure 1).
Page breakdown
Breaking down the content share further by looking at the supplier share on each casino page tracked, of the 10 bingo slots pages analysed, no less than nine feature Playtech/Eyecon content. On six of these, they command the largest share of content (see Figure 2).
This contrasts with the sports segment, where Playtech content is concentrated on its exclusive casino tabs.
Likewise, SG Digital has a presence on nine pages, though this is largely due to the success of the Rainbow Riches series.
Summing up
The type of slot content differs markedly across the bingo and sports segments. While the same suppliers are present, the content share differs. Playtech has the largest share of content on both the sports and bingo site groupings, with Eyecon content making a significant contribution to the bingo share.
iGaming Tracker – how it works
iGaming Tracker tracks hundreds of casino sites worldwide every day. From this data it can ascertain which games are on which sites and where they are positioned on the pages. It can also measure the market share of casino games suppliers by percentage of “real estate” on casino sites at any given date.
With more than 17 years’ experience in the gambling and sports industries, Ken Muir founded iGaming Tracker, which provides market intelligence services for the igaming industry, in 2015. Previously, he was at Perform Group as commercial director (direct to consumer sites) and Sky Betting & Gaming in various roles, including head of CRM and head of business strategy.