New research forecasts online social casino games will amass US$2.7 billion in revenue this year, and Caesars Interactive controls the largest share of it.
The Web gambling branch of US land-based casino giant Caesars Entertainment is credited with 21% of the market in the third quarter, according to Eilers Research, a gaming analytics and consulting firm headquartered in Southern California. Second place is held by IGT’s DoubleDown Casino with 11%. Zynga is third with 9%.
Caesars Interactive is reported to have passed Zynga back in 2013 for the top spot in the sector, which operates legally in the US by offering wager-free gambling on Facebook and other platforms in exchange for in-game add-on purchases and fees for extra play credits.
Caesars also markets legal real-money games in Atlantic City and Nevada, led by its World Series of Poker platform, but social gaming drives 95% of its revenue growth, according to socialcasinointelligence.com, and dwarfs the take from its real-money applications.
In the social space, Zynga’s poker platform is reported to be more popular than WSOP, and VentureBeat says Caesars’ overall lead is due mainly to the popularity of its Slotomania brand, which has about double the users as WSOP on Facebook.
Other leaders in the third quarter, according to Eilers: Big Fish Games, with an estimated 8% of the market; GSN + Bash Gaming with 7%; Williams Interactive with 5%; and Playstudios, High 5 Games, Double U Games and Aristocrat’s Product Madness with 2% each
