It might seem like hyperbole, but there is something momentous about the launch of Evolution Gaming’s live dealer online casino in Pennsylvania.

The same could be said when the product launched at New Jersey online casinos.

If there is one single product that defines the rise of online gaming over the past decade, it is likely live casino. And if there is a company synonymous with that product, it is Evolution Gaming.

A quick look at the company’s last annual report shows just why. In 2012 total operating revenues for Evolution stood at €31.1m. By 2019, that had risen over 10-fold to €365.8m.

That, remember, is just a share of the Evolution live casino business of their partner operators. While they tend to receive a better percentage of revenue share than the suppliers of other products, it points to a huge market for live casino, and one that is growing at pace.

Is it any wonder online gaming operators in the US have been rushing where they can to sign up for Evolution’s services?

The on the Evolution corporate site is peppered with announcements involving the likes of William Hill, BetMGM, PointsBet, and BetParx. The latest to sign on the dotted line is Wynn Sports Interactive, which said just this month it would be adding Evolution’s roulette, blackjack, and other table games to its New Jersey offering.

The Next Leap

The next stage in Evolution’s journey is the . This deal is likely to be completed slightly later than planned due to a Competition and Markets Authority (CMA) inquiry in the UK. It is a hugely significant deal as it will mean Evolution is no longer a (tremendously successful) one-trick-pony.

As it stands, the US remains a small but growing part of the Evolution business. In the third quarter, the US was worth just €9.2m from a total of €140m or 6.5%.

On the earnings call that accompanied the company’s third-quarter results, all it said was that it would look forward to further regulation “whatever the timespan.”

To further its US expansion, the company has committed to building a live casino studio wherever it is licensed in the US. Hence, it has a new studio in Pennsylvania, and it has committed to building a studio in Michigan.

The Road Ahead for Evolution

Back at the start of the year, analysts at Peel Hunt pointed to the scale of the Evolution business. “At the end of the fourth quarter, Evolution had 700 live gaming tables serving over 200 B2B customers,” they wrote.

“Management expressed optimism about future growth and increasing the gap on its competition which… it is well placed to do. New games include roulette and blackjack variants, as well as online craps, which could be important in the US online market.”

Will Hersey, chief executive of Roundhill Investments, the investment firm behind the BETZ ETF, which includes Evolution in its holdings, said he believes the trajectory for live casino will be similar in the US to the story from Europe and elsewhere, depending on the pace of regulation.

“I think the gating factor will be the rate at which new states offer regulated iGaming, rather than demand (which I expect will be very strong).

“In particular, I believe live casino can capture more traditional gamblers as opposed to fully digital casino games, in the sense that there is a sense of ‘comfort’ in physical cards being dealt. This will be particularly important for an older audience, which might be hesitant to ‘trust’ the algorithms underlying fully-virtual casino games.

“Evolution has taken this a step further, and has been particularly innovative in creating scalable live casino games that can be played by thousands of users at once.”

However, the US is far from the only opportunity for Evolution and NetEnt once the two are merged. On the earnings call, Carlesund said that Asia was another priority. “The market is huge; it is a lot of countries,” he said. “We are taking market share, but we are still a very small actor.”