A studio is a factory and a broadcaster
A live casino studio is a purpose-built facility with dozens or hundreds of tables, each with cameras, lighting, sensors and a dealer, running continuously. The largest suppliers run many studios in different jurisdictions with thousands of dealers between them: Evolution reported 24 studios, about 2,000 tables and more than 22,000 employees at the end of 2025, around 88 per cent of them working on tables as hosts and dealers. Running one is a mixture of television production, casino floor management and workforce operations, and it is where most of the segment's cost sits.
Where studios are, and why
Studio location is decided by four factors: the availability of a licence for the studio itself (many regulators require live casino studios serving their market to be licensed or approved, and some require them to be physically within the jurisdiction), the availability of a workforce with the languages the operator's markets need, cost, and connectivity. The result is a map of studio hubs, and Evolution's is typical. Its 2025 annual report lists main production studios in Riga, Malta and Tbilisi, further studios in Lithuania, Romania, Czechia, Armenia, Spain and Bulgaria, some of them built because national rules require a physical presence in the market, and studios in Argentina, Colombia, Brazil, the Philippines, British Columbia in Canada and the US states of New Jersey, Michigan, Pennsylvania and Connecticut.
A supplier serving a regulated market from outside it typically needs that market's approval for the studio; a supplier serving a market that requires in-jurisdiction studios needs to build one there. In Pennsylvania, for example, the operator must obtain Board approval for the location of its live studio, and the company running the studio must itself be licensed. Studios are a large fixed investment, which is one reason the supplier market is concentrated.
The table
Each table is a small production unit:
Cameras. Several per table: a wide shot, a close shot on the wheel or shoe, sometimes a dealer cam, sometimes a slow-motion camera for the result. Game shows use full multi-camera setups with directors.
Recognition. The physical result is translated into data by optical character recognition: cards are read as they leave the shoe, the winning number is read by sensors or cameras on the roulette wheel, and dice results are captured by cameras or sensors. The recognised result drives the settlement, and it is checked against the dealer's confirmation: New Jersey requires the simulcast control server to record dealer-verified game results before posting and to have a mechanism to void game results, and Pennsylvania's rule for live studios is the same.
The dealer interface. A screen or tablet the dealer uses to open and close betting, confirm results, and see the chat. Players' money is the operator's business, not the studio's: it is the operators that handle all monetary transactions with their players, so the dealer's screen is built around running the game, not around players' accounts.
Lighting, set and audio. Built to broadcast standards, consistent across a shift, with the set designed for the brand of the table (a supplier's generic environment, or an operator's dedicated branded set).
Physical game equipment. Wheels, shoes, cards and dice that are certified, maintained, rotated and inspected on a schedule, because the integrity of the game rests on them. Britain's technical standards expect equipment and consumables of commercial casino quality, with designated staff responsible for monitoring its integrity.
The dealers
Dealers are the product. A supplier employs them in the hundreds or thousands, recruits for presentation and language, trains them in game procedure, presentation, compliance and chat etiquette, and rotates them across tables in shifts. The operational questions:
Recruitment and training. Weeks of training before a dealer goes live, covering the procedure for each game, the exact wording of announcements, what to do when something goes wrong, and the rules of engagement with players. Pennsylvania applies its casino table game training standards to live studios, which means, for example, at least 100 hours over five weeks for blackjack and other banked card games, and 80 hours over four weeks for roulette. Turnover is high and recruitment is continuous: Evolution describes turnover among its table staff as at times significant.
Scheduling. Studios run around the clock and demand varies by hour and by market. Rosters match dealer availability, language and game qualification to the table plan, with breaks that keep a table staffed while a dealer steps away.
Languages. Players in non-English markets are served by tables in their own language, and operators pay for them: native-speaking dealers are one of the customisations sold in a supplier's more complex agreements. A supplier serving Europe needs dealers in many languages, and native speakers, not learners; Evolution reports game presenters working in 24 languages, with its Malta studio mainly serving native-language tables for regulated markets such as Denmark and Sweden.
Conduct. Dealers follow scripted procedures, and deviations (a misdeal, a result announced before recognition confirmed it, an inappropriate response in chat) are recorded and reviewed. A dealer's every round is on video: Britain's standards expect video surveillance of all dealer activity, detailed enough to confirm whether dealing procedures and game rules were followed.
Welfare. Long shifts under lights, on camera, dealing with chat that can be abusive. Suppliers have had to build moderation, support and escalation for their dealers. Evolution's 2025 report lists working conditions, strain and harassment among the risks it identifies in its own workforce, which it describes as young and often inexperienced, with over 85 per cent working in studios in front of the camera, and says staff must know how to act if a player behaves badly.
The floor
Above the dealers sits a floor operation modelled on a land-based casino: pit managers supervising tables, a control room monitoring streams and recognition, a shift lead handling incidents, and a game integrity team reviewing anomalies. Evolution, for example, runs a Mission Control Room in each major studio and a Game Integrity and Risk department that monitors all gaming activity in real time, around the clock. Procedures exist for every failure mode: a card mis-read, a wheel that stops on a partition, a stream dropping mid-round, a dealer error in the payout announcement, a player alleging a wrong result. Each has a defined resolution written into the game rules, and the resolution is applied identically across every operator on the table. Britain's standards set the principle for interrupted gaming: where the player can no longer influence the outcome the result should stand, in a single-player, single-stage game interrupted before an outcome was generated the stake should be returned, and systems must be able to void gambles and restore stakes. A round whose result cannot be established is typically voided and stakes refunded, with the video reviewed.
Dedicated environments
Large operators pay for dedicated tables: the same physical operation, in a set branded to the operator, staffed by dealers trained on the operator's tone, visible only to that operator's players. Dedicated environments differentiate the operator's casino, give it a table that does not show competitors' players in chat, and are billed separately from the supplier's commission, a revenue share of the operator's winnings: Evolution charges a monthly fee for dedicated tables that varies with the type of game, the number of tables and the active hours. The largest operators have whole dedicated environments built for them. For a supplier, dedicated tables are a recurring fee on top of commission and the deepest customer relationship.
Capacity and the table plan
A studio's capacity is its tables times their hours. The table plan decides which games run on which tables at which hours in which languages, driven by demand forecasts by market and by the operator commitments for dedicated tables. Under-provisioned popular games (blackjack seats at European evening peak) lose revenue; over-provisioned niche games waste dealers. The plan is revised continuously, and the data behind it (rounds per hour, players per table, revenue per table-hour) is the studio's core management information.
What can go wrong
Studios fail in recognisable ways: a connectivity outage taking every table offline for every operator at once; a recognition fault that settles rounds wrongly until caught; a dealer conduct incident that reaches social media; a staffing shortfall that leaves tables dark at peak; a regulatory inspection finding equipment that was not maintained to schedule. Failures of this kind reach the public record: in December 2024 Pennsylvania's regulator fined Evolution $25,000 after a power outage at its Philadelphia studio caused a server failure, so that surveillance footage from its 14 tables was not saved for nearly two days, and in August 2024 it fined the same studio operator $7,500 after an unauthorised person got into the studio suite, including an employee dressing area. The mature suppliers' procedures are the accumulated response to incidents like these. The next lesson follows the signal from the table to the player's screen.