Slot Games Increasingly Popular: Does This Show Market Maturity
Nearly 9 Out of 10 Online Casino Games are Slots
“Slots are cited as a prime example of a booming online casino niche that sees the most game titles produced every year,” SevenJackpots Industry Researcher Svilen Madjov writes in a recent primary big data-based study dedicated to studying modern-day trends at online casinos in India.
“There are reported active player sessions in over 2300 slot titles (out of 2640 total casino games). The astounding amount of game supply corresponds to high player interest and growing market competitiveness,” Madjov adds, highlighting the whopping almost 90% dominance of slot titles in casino game libraries.
Eight out of the 18 leading games sorted by player count from a sample of close to 2 lakh registered online casino players are slot games.
Slots are responsible for 29% of the gaming sessions registered by a total of 28,000 casino gamers who played a game from the Top 30 games by player count, according to SevenJackpots data.
The share of slots grows to 35.7% of player sessions within the Top 100 games group, and reel games come at par with the 35.8% registered by the leading casino gaming category of roulette.
“Our casino experts point out that the success of these games is not a coincidence. Online casino turnover is mostly directed to games with the highest returns to player (RTP), something roulette and slots are famous for,” Industry Researcher Madjov comments.
Market Saturation and Convergence with Global Trends: Definite Signs of Maturity
The internal online casino traffic data shared by SevenJackpots reveals that the Indian real money gaming market has practically been reaching a point of saturation of diversified product offerings typical of a mature i-gambling market.
Another notable feature of Bharat’s current state of casino gaming development is the growing convergence of tastes between desi and global players, testified by the huge popularity gained by slots and other European casino classics.
“This brings our experts to conclude that Western-style casino games are slowly closing the gap in national popularity with traditional game genres like Teen Patti,” Svilen Madjov confirms and points out to Google Trends data on searches for selected casino games in India.
“Slots even had a huge spike in interest in mid-2021, surpassing most other casino products in India for a month,” Madjov adds.
RG & AML among the Major Elements of a Mature Market India still Lacks
India’s i-gaming market is famous for its fast growth and huge expansion prospects, which inevitably cause market maturing processes, and signs of this are already becoming apparent in operator data analysis.
Nevertheless, India is still lacking in some of the most fundamental aspects that distinguish the mature digital gambling markets of modern-day from the rest.
These missing aspects are widely known as Responsible Gambling (RG) and Anti-Money Laundering (AML), and are by essence government-introduced and industry-backed regulatory policies directed at protecting individuals and the public at large from various risks that can be associated with gambling.
Both RG and AML policies are now on the legislative and regulatory agenda of the nation as the formation of India’s first online gaming SROs (Self-Regulatory Organizations) is well underway under the framework of the recently amended IT Rules.
It will take some time for detailed rules to be framed and implemented by incorporated and operating SROs, and if the whole process doesn’t get delayed in litigation with States or other stakeholders, we might soon see modern-day RG and AML policies applied to certain games of skill.
These efforts will set standards based on global best practices in i-gaming regulation that might eventually spread beyond skill tournaments and internationally licensed casinos to all real money gaming genres in the country including home-licensed games of chance.
And when the current high growth rates of the online gaming industry start slowing down, we will have a truly mature online gaming market in India.
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