iPhones and Android-based smartgadgets are the hotly-contested new frontier for free-to-play casino gaming
Big money to be found on the App Store has attracted land-based and online gaming giants to the mobile casino market
In 2013, the App Store boasted north of 1 million downloads every day. Now, we all know about the Flappy Birds, the Candy Crush Sagas, and communication apps like Twitter’s Vine that shot up to become top downloads for many months. But did you know that there’s a relatively low-profile genre that is in fact making a killing? According to a report from analytics firm Distimo, games in the casino category are enjoying huge download numbers.
“While the app industry is fixated on the highest-grossing publishers — including Supercell, King and GungHo — on the top grossing leaderboards, publishers of social casino games own a sizable chunk of real estate in the top 100 of the top grossing leaderboards on the Apple App Store and Google Play,” reads the report.
Distimo pinpointed 20 publishers among the top 100 overall grossing publishers who had at least one social casino game in their stable. This situation doesn’t just apply to the App Store, either, as 19 publishers were spotted on Google Play using similar metrics. “Publishers of social casino games are a force to be reckoned with in the app stores,” the report said.
The online gaming landscape has become a very competitive area over the past few years. Poker, in particular, has become exceedingly cutthroat after 2003 when a player who won the prestigious World Series of Poker championship qualified online. Cryptologic, then operator of one of the biggest poker networks in the world and proprietor of InterCasino – the world’s first online casino site that opened in the late 90s – had processed over $30 billion in gaming sales when poker’s popularity peaked.
The big money to be found on the App Store has successfully attracted both land-based and online gaming giants to the mobile casino market. Caesar’s Entertainment, for example, owns the top social casino gaming publisher on both the Apple App Store and Google Play.
“Both casino operators and casino games manufacturers see social casino gaming as a top of the funnel user acquisition channel for finding new players, who will monetize in physical casinos, at low marketings costs,” continues the report. With the search for new players getting more and more intense, it wouldn’t be a surprise if we see more acquisitions and partnerships in the online social gaming landscape in the future.
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