Evolution
Runs live casino from purpose-built television studios. Nearly every game show format on the market today came out of Evolution or a studio it acquired.
Studio profile
It absorbed Ezugi, NetEnt with Red Tiger, Big Time Gaming and Nolimit City, so a large share of the wider slot catalogue also sits under the same group.
| Licences | MGA, UKGC and regulators in several US states |
|---|
Documented catalogue
- Lightning Roulette — 97.30%, medium volatility
- MONOPOLY Big Baller — 96.10%, medium volatility
- Live Blackjack — 99.29%, low volatility
The licences listed above are the ones the studio itself declares publicly. A developer holding a licence says nothing about the operator distributing its games: those are two separate authorisations, and the regulation page explains how to check the second one.
How much of this site is actually Evolution
Evolution AB is a Swedish company, founded 2006, headquartered in Stockholm and listed on Nasdaq Stockholm. It began as a live dealer specialist and bought its way into slots. The result is that a group most players associate with roulette tables now sits behind a large share of the game sheets on this site, usually without its name appearing anywhere on the tile.
| Acquisition | Announced | Reported price | What it brought |
|---|---|---|---|
| Ezugi | 2018 | Not disclosed at the time | Live dealer reach into new markets |
| NetEnt (including Red Tiger) | 2020 | Around $2.1bn | Starburst, Gonzo's Quest, Divine Fortune; Red Tiger had been bought by NetEnt in 2019 for about £220m |
| Big Time Gaming | 2021 | €450m | The Megaways engine, licensed out to dozens of other studios |
| Nolimit City | 2022 | Up to €340m | Mental, San Quentin, Fire in the Hole and the xWays mechanics |
Follow that through the catalogue here. Lightning Roulette, Live Blackjack and MONOPOLY Big Baller are Evolution's own. Fire in the Hole xBomb is Nolimit City, which is Evolution. And The Dog House Megaways is a Pragmatic Play game running a Big Time Gaming engine — so Evolution earns from a competitor's title through a licence fee.
The live business is the business
Despite four slot acquisitions, the RNG side — NetEnt, Red Tiger, Big Time Gaming, Nolimit City combined — accounts for roughly 14 to 15% of group revenue. The rest comes from live tables and game shows streamed from Evolution's own studios.
That ratio explains what the company actually sells. A live table is not a game file an operator integrates once; it is a physical studio, dealers on shift, camera and streaming infrastructure, and a per-hour cost that never goes away. The format everyone copies — Crazy Time, Lightning Roulette, MONOPOLY Live — came out of that model, and it is also why almost nobody else has managed to compete in it at scale.
Why concentration is worth knowing about
A player switching between two casinos usually assumes they are sampling different suppliers. In live casino they are mostly not. The same group produces the tables at both, often streamed from the same studios, under the same certifications.
None of that is wrongdoing and it changes no published return. But it is the sort of thing this site exists to make visible: "we work with over a hundred providers" is a claim about integrations, not about how many independent companies are behind the games you play.
It also concentrates operational risk. Evolution's live output depends on physical studios and staff in specific countries, and disruption in one location affects tables across many operators at once — something the industry saw during labour disputes at the company's Georgian studios.
Live returns are higher, and that is not generosity
The figures on the live sheets here are well above slot territory — 99.29% on Live Blackjack, 98.94% on Live Baccarat, 97.30% on roulette. Two things go with them.
- Blackjack's figure assumes optimal play on every hand. Ordinary play returns less, and the gap is larger than the house edge itself.
- Round speed is the other half. A streamed table resolves far more rounds per hour than most people expect, and a small edge applied to a large turnover costs more than a large edge applied to a small one.
The game shows run the opposite way: Crazy Time at 96.08% and Mega Ball at 95.05% are priced like slots because they behave like them, with most of the return sitting in rare bonus rounds.
Questions people actually ask about this studio
Does Evolution own NetEnt? Yes, since 2020, and Red Tiger came with it. Big Time Gaming and Nolimit City followed in 2021 and 2022.
Is a Megaways game an Evolution game? The engine is Big Time Gaming's, which Evolution owns. The game itself can be built by any studio licensing it.
Why do live tables have such high RTP? Table games are mathematically tighter than slots. Blackjack's figure also assumes perfect strategy, which very few players sustain.
Are game shows better value than slots? No. Crazy Time and Mega Ball publish returns in slot territory and carry slot-like volatility.