Evolution (EVO)
Since it was established in 2006, Evolution has been one of the first B2B providers of live casino solutions in Europe. The founders, Jens Von Bahr and Fredrik Österberg, believed that the user experience in online casinos at the time was really poor, mainly because of the absence of human dealers. Evolution was born with the aim of improving the user experience and earning player trust. Especially in southern European markets, some players were particularly wary of playing games where a random number generator (RNG) dealt the cards without showing them first, so the player couldn’t see if there was any sort of fraud involved. The Swedish company, with a current market cap of $20 billion, was born inside a closet with one of the founders shuffling the cards in front of several cameras. Jens Von Bahr and Fredrik Österberg still control around 11% of Evolution's total shares through Österbahr Ventures AB Investments, and their holdings are valued at more than $2.1 billion today.
RNG online casino games had already been established in Europe several years before Evolution was founded, but the concept of live casino was late to arrive because of insufficient streaming capacity and technology to produce high-quality video content. Evolution has played a very important role in developing and redefining an emerging market that has seen exponential growth in the last decade. Today, live casino is an increasingly important component of the product offerings of any Tier 1 - 2 operator and Evolution is the leading provider of B2B solutions, with a European market share over 65%. Playtech, Evolution's closest competitor, started offering live casino solutions around the same year, but poorer execution and less focus on live casino solutions - in favor of adding new product lines and expanding services - have translated into a lower market share.
Live casino has significantly benefited from structural growth tailwinds over the last decade, becoming the fastest growing market segment in the online casino industry. Back in 2009 - 2010, there were only half a dozen live casino providers and the user experience felt archaic well before customers could even start playing - in order to play, users had to download a program that only ran on Windows. Besides, loading times were too long and the game catalog was limited to Blackjack and Roulette. Increased data transmission capacity, expansion of internet access among the population, improved smartphone and tablet technology (69% of Evolution's total revenue comes from these devices) and increased user willingness to use online payment methods have been the key industry growth drivers. In just a decade, live casinos, which previously accounted for 1-3% of the average casino operator's net gaming revenue (NGR), now account for 25%-30% of the NGR.