The product that made online casino feel real
Live casino streams a real dealer at a real table to a player's screen, with the bets placed through an on-screen interface and the outcome read from the physical game by a combination of optical recognition, sensors and a human: the GLI-19 standard lets specialised devices register the result automatically where the regulator allows it, provided a manual mode exists to correct a misread card or ball position. It began as a way to convince sceptical players that online roulette was not rigged: when Evolution launched in 2006, its first studio had a few tables, a roulette wheel, one host and a basic webcam, and many players doubted the footage was live. It became a major segment of online casino: H2 Gambling Capital estimates, cited in Evolution's 2025 annual report, put live casino at 29% of global online casino gross gaming revenue in 2025, although over the previous five years it grew at about 14% a year, more slowly than RNG casino. It is also the segment where one supplier, Evolution, built a business with a stock-market value of SEK 259 billion at the end of 2023 and SEK 129 billion at the end of 2025.
This course is about how it works and how it is run: the studio, the product, the technology, the people, the economics and the regulation. It is written for people joining a live casino supplier or an operator's casino team, product managers deciding what to offer, and anyone in the industry who wants to understand why live casino behaves differently from every other product.
Why players choose it
Three reasons recur whenever suppliers and operators explain the product's appeal:
Trust. A wheel spinning on camera, a card dealt by a person, a result read out loud. The randomness is visible. For players in markets where trust in online operators is low, and for players who grew up in land-based casinos, this matters more than any RTP figure.
Social presence. A dealer who greets you, a chat window, other players' bets visible on the table. Live casino is the only online casino product with a person in it, and that presence is a large part of what players come back for.
Pace and ritual. A live roulette round has a rhythm: bets open, bets close, spin, result, payout. It is slower than an RNG game and players experience the slowness as part of the entertainment. Game shows extended this into something closer to television.
The consequence operators describe: live casino players tend to stake more per round and play longer sessions than typical slot players, and many are more loyal to a specific supplier's tables than to the operator's brand. No regulator publishes figures that separate live players out, so treat this as industry experience rather than a measured statistic. If the loyalty point holds, it helps explain why some operators sign exclusive live casino deals with a single supplier, as PokerStars did with Evolution for the United States in 2025.
The product range
Roulette. The foundation, and with blackjack and baccarat one of the three core table games. European roulette in many variants: standard tables, tables that add multipliers to the standard game, such as Lightning Roulette, auto-roulette with a mechanical wheel and no dealer, speed variants with shorter rounds, and localised tables with dealers speaking the players' language.
Blackjack. The second pillar, and the one with a capacity problem: a physical table seats seven, so suppliers invented bet-behind options, where players stake on a seated player's hand, and unlimited-seat formats in which every player receives the same first two cards and then makes their own decisions.
Baccarat. Dominant in Asian-facing markets, with squeeze variants, speed variants and side bets; the game that drives revenue for suppliers serving that region. Its weight in Asian gambling is clear from land-based Macau, where VIP and mass baccarat together produced MOP 210.6 billion of the MOP 247.4 billion gross revenue from casino games (games of fortune) in 2025, about 85%.
Poker variants, sic bo, dragon tiger, craps, dice games. Each with a following; each cheaper to add to a studio than to justify a dedicated one.
Game shows. The category that changed the segment's economics, opened, by Evolution's own account, with its Dream Catcher money wheel in 2017: money wheels, dice drops, multiplier bonuses and branded formats built as entertainment first and casino second, with hosts rather than dealers, multipliers that can reach thousands of times the stake and a viewer-friendly presentation. Game shows brought players who would never have sat at a blackjack table and they are where supplier innovation is concentrated.
First-person and hybrid products. RNG versions of live games using the same interface, and formats that mix a live element with RNG outcomes. They fill the gap when a player wants the feel without the wait.
The value chain
Suppliers build and run the studios, employ the dealers, develop the games and the interface, and deliver everything to operators through an integration. A small number of suppliers dominate, because the fixed cost of a studio network and the network effect of players following tables make scale decisive. The largest, Evolution, describes the barriers to entry as relatively low but the barriers to success as considerably higher, and the RNG market as more fragmented than live casino.
Operators integrate the supplier's lobby into their casino, market the tables, manage the players and their money, and hold the licence to offer the games to players. The most basic agreements cover the supplier's generic tables; more complex ones add dedicated tables or environments with the operator's branding, native-speaking dealers and VIP services.
Aggregators and platforms connect operators to multiple suppliers through one integration, passing bets and results between the supplier's games and the operator's player account, which holds the money.
Regulators and testing houses certify the games, the studios and the randomness of the physical equipment, and some markets require the studio to be located in the country. Several of Evolution's studios were built to meet national rules requiring a physical presence, and in New Jersey a casino licensee needs the Division of Gaming Enforcement's approval to simulcast its table games.
Revenue flows as a revenue share: the operator pays the supplier a commission calculated as a percentage of the gross gaming revenue the tables generate, and on top of that monthly fees for dedicated tables and one-off set-up fees.
What is different about running it
Everything downstream of the camera is a live broadcast operation. Studios run 24 hours a day, year-round, dealers work shifts, a dropped card or a stuck wheel needs a procedure, a stream that freezes is lost revenue for every operator on that table, and every game round is recorded because disputes are settled on video: GLI-19 requires a continuous recording of all games, available for review in a player dispute and kept for at least ninety days. RNG casino has none of these problems; live casino has all of them, all the time. The rest of the course is about managing them: the studio (lesson two), the technology (lesson three), the game integrity and dispute process (lesson four), the economics (lesson five) and the regulation (lesson six).