2020 Predictions #8: What do the Kardashians and Casino Publishers Have in Common… CA$H!
This analysis is written by Abhimanyu Kumar with special contributions from UX Reviewer’s Om Tandon and Brett Nowak, CEO of Liquid & Grit. Also supported by insights from Lloyd Melnick.
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Unless otherwise specified, all the data has been provided by the wonderful services of App Annie. Please take the numbers with a giant grain of salt. They are meant more for trend analysis based on estimations, rather than an exercise in accuracy.
As you’ve noticed from the previous prediction post, we actively refer to the categories, genres and sub-genres. This article in our prediction series will cover the Casino category. It is made up of four sub-genres - Slots, Bingo, Poker/Cards and the newest one, what we’re calling “Casual Casino”. To understand our taxonomy in details, please read this. To understand it at a glance, please look at the image below.
As the 3rd largest category by revenue in the industry, Casino has long been struggling to grow download volumes. But if there is one category that can pride itself consistent and reliable revenue generating activities on long-standing titles, it’ll probably be Casino. Especially given how it has been able to maintain a stable +20-30% YoY growth rate for the past two years. The healthy revenue growth trend over 2019 resulted in a year end revenue of $3.3B (+26% YoY) despite the downloads stagnation.
* Ad revenues not included
At the same time, the usual suspect for driving a majority of this growth was not Slots alone. Even while being the largest sub-genre in the category, Slots only drove ~40% of this growth versus ~70% in 2018. The remainder of the growth was driven by “Casual Casino” - a new Casino sub-genre born out of Coin Master’s success. Having said that, we would all agree that games like Coin Master aren’t “truly Casino” even though they are classified in the same category according to our taxonomy.
Yes, Coin Master is disruptive, but attributing Casino’s sustained growth to it is only partially justified. Given our data, it seems likely that Casual Casino will not be a mainstay for major Casino publishers, and revenue growth will be pursued through other avenues.
Let’s dive in!
Casino Downloads Market Size is Peaking
It is clear that the Casino downloads graph above showcases downloads market size stabilising over the past 3 years. No doubt this is a deeply discussed topic for a genre that still shows great returns.
While most of the reasons for this revolve around market size stagnation, target audience ageing and unsustainably high CPIs, Playtika’s downloads and UA investment trends of their cash cow Slots titles over 2019 definitely confirms these reasons.
Playtika’s Slots portfolio downloads dropping…
… likely due to turning down the UA pressure.
It is quite clear from the downloads graph above that Playtika is seeing a steady downloads decrease in their slots portfolio, with a constantly negative YoY growth rate over 2019. This is most likely fuelled by them massively cutting UA spending over the year. This is showcased in the downward trending right-side graph, where we use the “average number of games Playtika’s key slots titles are being advertised in” as a proxy for UA spend. Most definitely, this is a result of the ROAS equation no longer working at scale. And if Playtika is facing this reality, probably the entire Casino genre is too. In other words, Casino is experiencing an exhaustion of its target audience that can be tapped into profitably. Relative to other genres, Casino is smaller with high LTVs, extremely high CPIs and long pay back windows.
Given this state of the market, what options exist for publishers like Playtika with significant Casino revenue contributions? The first step would to secure the cash cows.
Securing the Casino Cash Cows
It is well known that Casino players tend to play 3-5 casino games at the same time - usually slots. They switch from one game to another when they feel that the “game got cold on them” aka they start losing. This has led to casino publishers to having a portfolio of games, major live-ops activities on them and the high importance of cross-promotion and user reactivation.
Newzoo’s casino report stating the average social casino gamer playing multiple franchises at the same time.
Source: Competitive Insights into Social Casino Games, Newzoo Report
All of this contributes to the stably increasing Casino revenue graph above. The biggest factor is probably increased investment into live-ops activities and incremental feature innovations over 2019, which is beautifully captured in Liquid and Grit’s product investment graph below. Most definitely, these trends will also continue into 2020, since older Casino titles are the primary cash cows for major Casino publishers.
2019 showcased a +20 percentage point increase to investment in live-ops events across top casino apps vs 2018.
Source: Liquid & Grit Reports
With the cash cows now secured, the next weapon in a Casino publisher’s revenue increasing arsenal would naturally be innovating or disrupting within the genre. But would it work?
Coin Master is Disrupting Casino, but Casino has Other Plans
One year hence, it is clear that Coin Master by Moon Active is the embodiment of market disruption. Not only did it give Casino a much required adrenaline shot, but also did it with absolute finesse. And it continues to do so with none other than the Kardashians!
Coin Master truly innovated on a core Casino mechanic by making random chance just one block in the core loop, not the only block. Further, it introduced light meta progression layers to drive medium-long retention while creating ample number of live-ops hooks to drive monetisation. This combined with a casual art style and influencer marketing allowed it to widen the top of the funnel and safely introduce “slots” to a much broader audience. Long story short, Coin Master gave birth to a new sub-genre by flipping all well established Casino specific product design and user acquisition principles on its head. Check out our full deconstruction on Coin Master to learn more.
Without Coin Master and Casual Casino, the Casino category actually drops its 2019 YoY revenue growth rate by half - from +26% to +13%. This observation combined with the downloads market size for Casino peaking makes it quite evident why the market is in desperate need for disruption on both the product and marketing fronts. But, does that mean Casual Casino really fuelled user growth in other Casino sub-genres as it was expected? Asked differently, was Coin Master successful in bringing more users into the traditional Slots market?
When analysing cross-app affinity across 4 top revenue generating Slots games, three things are strikingly clear -
Coin Master’s very low cross-app affinity numbers indicates that it does not really bring in any new users into Slots
Players of traditional slots games mainly prefer other traditional slots games
Players of traditional slots games players have a higher affinity towards many other sub-genre before even considering Coin Master, given the large chasm of titles between the top 10 affinity ranks and that of Coin Master
A cross-app affinity analysis indicating low overlap between Coin Master and traditional slots players.
Given all this, we believe there are three reasons for why we won’t see very many Casual Casino titles coming out from the big Casino publishers -
Keeping the app affinity data above in mind, if major casino publishers want to bring in new target audiences into their traditional casino titles, creating a Casual Casino game does not seem to be the best way to go
From the perspective of revenue maximisation through new titles, there seem to be bigger sub-genre pies to go after before considering Casual Casino
The big casino publishers are slow moving giants when it comes to quickly turning around a successful Casual Casino title, and developing such a game internally is weakened due to non-transferable audience learnings - learnings from traditional slots audiences cannot be applied to a Coin Master style game nor vice versa
On the other hand, acquiring smaller companies behind successful casual casino games could definitely be on the cards. Which brings us to the final weapon in the user and revenue growth arsenal - sub-genre diversification through M&A.
M&A Brings the Games, Casino Brings the Scale
When looking at the Top 10 Casino publishers by revenue market share over 2019, Playtika takes top spot followed by Aristocrat (Product Madness), Moon Active, Scientific Games and Zynga. Since Zynga already dabbles across genres and Moon Active is primarily Casual Casino, let’s keep them aside for now and analyse the M&A activity of the other three.
Playtika in the lead, followed by Aristocrat, Moon Active, Scientific Games and Zynga.
Acquisition maps of the Casino space split by key operating genre.
It is clear from the above acquisition map that Scientific Games is sticking to what they do best, while both Playtika and Aristocrat are diversifying and synergising.
Playtika is doubling down on its strengths of monetisation and growth of casino revenues through its internal titles, synergising with Wooga’s and Seriously’s product competencies to fuel scale, and finally diversifying through Jelly Button Games by again providing monetisation and growth support to the titles they have and will produce. Further, looking at Playtika’s currently soft-launched apps, there seems to be no sign of Casual Casino titles - except for maybe Bingo Drop, but it is currently in a very experimental state. Expect more acquisitions, new game releases and revenue diversification efforts (also outside mobile games) from Playtika, as it prepares to bulk up before an imminent 2020 IPO.
Aristocrat is following suit by driving casino revenue growth through Product Madness and Big Fish, and is focussing on genre diversification through acquisition synergies. This can be seen in the image below, where Simulation, Merge Puzzle and MOBA titles from Big Fish and Plarium are currently in soft-launch.
In the previous section, we mentioned Casino publishers probably going after bigger pies before considering Casual Casino. Not only does Aristocrat’s soft-launch slate support this, but Plarium’s massively successful RPG title “RAID: Shadow Legends” might be the best example - and we all know how big the RPG pie is. Plarium brings the game, Aristocrat brings the scale aka $$$. Read more about RAID in our our 2020 RPG predictions.
With Artistocrat’s gaming portfolio now making up for 41% of overall revenues (up from 37% in 2018), absolute gaming portfolio revenues up +34% YoY, RAID’s success under their belt and the rich soft-launch slate below, Aristocrat will likely continue revenue growth through attacking lucrative mobile sub-genres with new title releases in 2020.
Aristocrat utilising Big Fish and Plarium to enter new genres, while doubling down on already existing Casino titles from Product Madness. Also, a Revenue by Strategic Segment graph showcasing a 41% contribution to overall revenues through their mobile gaming portfolio (“Digital”).
Source 1: Aristocrat G2E 2019 Presentation
Source 2: Aristocrat FY2019 Results
To recap, here is what we speculate to be currently happening in the Casino market -
Casino is facing massive user growth problems, and this is underscored by Playtika lowering UA investment on its slots titles
Therefore if a social casino company wants to continue to grow, three options exist - secure the current cash cows, disrupt within casino, and diversify outside casino through M&A
All three of the above are being explored, but disruption within casino does not seem to be the most lucrative way to go - even though Casual Casino looks like an obvious next step, it is actually not due to a totally different audience
There is one final weapon in the arsenal that hasn’t been discussed - releasing new traditional casino titles and thereby creating new cash cows. Let’s dive into that with the sub-genre deep dives.
Bring on the New Slots!
Slots continue to remain the biggest sub-genre in Casino grossing 70% of the total category revenues. Having said that Slots YoY revenue growth rate is slowing down, as can be seen in the graph below. This is primarily driven by a natural user base decay of long-standing titles, as a majority of the sub-genre revenues are driven by these. Even though live-ops activities are running full steam on these titles, but the effect of slow user base decay is pronounced.
* Ad revenues not included
In terms of market share, there hasn’t been too much of movement in the positions of the key publishers. Playtika, Aristocrat, Scientific Games and Huuuge Games continue to fight to hold their market leader positions. Though a new publisher has thrown its hat into the ring and stolen market share from Playtika. This is China based Funtrio.
China based Funtrio gaining market share against Playtika.
* Ad revenues not included
As can be seen in the graph below, Funtrio’s slots portfolio has now crossed that of Playtika’s on a downloads volume basis, even though there is almost no product differentiation. Further Playtika has been experiencing negative YoY download growth rates for the past 7 quarters, while Funtrio is enjoying a triple digit YoY growth. And given Playtika’s reduced UA budget over 2019, the door was open for Funtrio - and they walked in.
Funtrio’s slots portfolio has now crossed that of Playtika’s on a downloads volume basis.
Funtrio increasing their UA investment and thereby driving triple digit YoY growth!
Funtrio’s trajectory does signal potential for growth of new slots titles in an already crowded sub-genre. It is only matter of time until the bigger slots publishers swoop in.
Reconciling 2019’s Predictions for Slots
2019 Prediction #1: There will be more new apps that stretch the boundary of what a Slots app can be. While existing games still won’t mess with the traditional “lobby with a bunch of multiline slots with a single currency economy” design, we will see a number of new hybrid/mashup apps that are chasing Coin Master, Pirate Kings, and Board Kings. Necessity breeds innovation, so this should be exciting to see.
Result: PARTIALLY - Relatively right on both counts, but it would’ve just been more exciting to see more Casual Casino titles from Playtika or Aristocrat.
2019 Prediction #2: Existing top apps will incrementally improve live ops and content, and experiment with new meta concepts, additional currencies, and deeper/more complex social structures.
Result: CORRECT - Given the Liquid & Grit’s product investment graph above and Slots steadily increasing revenue graph on stable downloads, this is correct.
2020 Predictions for Slots
2020 Prediction #1: Slots will continue to face downloads market size stagnation issues in 2020, but will maintain its steady revenue growth rate - just at a lower intensity.
2020 Prediction #2: Funtrio will end 2020 in the top 5 slots publishers by revenue market share, likely beating out Huuuge and probably Scientific Games.
2020 Prediction #3: Playtika, Aristocrat and Scientific Games will fight to maintain and/or gain market share with improved live-ops on existing slots titles, and 1-2 new slots title releases.
2020 Prediction #4: If publishers choose to innovate on slots gameplay while still keeping it close to traditional slots design, it will be through sub-genre mashups that have a high audience overlap. Else, just more re-themed slots games incoming.
Poker is Running Low on Chips
Special contribution by Om Tandon, Founder of UX Reviewer.
While every other genre posted double digit YoY revenue growth, Poker/Cards was clearly the runt of the litter. Poker/Cards was the least growing sub-genre of the Casino category in 2019 with only a meagre +1 % YoY growth. While the rest of the market grew at double digit rates, this can almost be interpreted as a decline. Also, given the steeply declining YoY revenue growth rate curve, absolute revenues plateauing over 2019 and downloads consistently trending downwards, the writing has been on the wall for some time now.
The major downtrend in 2019 was primarily driven by softness from Blackjack 21, even though the game’s revenue trajectory has been good.
* Ad revenues not included.
In terms of market share, Playtika continues to dominate with WSOP (+$10m, +1% YoY) and took the market leader crown from Zynga Poker. Zynga Poker continued to see its poker winnings dwindle over the year (-$17m, -16% YoY).
We saw this coming in our 2019 predictions, especially since Zynga Poker was going for a WPT brand integration to match up to WSOP’s hugely well known brand. Further, WSOP bolstered the power of its brand by offering a wide variety of poker events, implementing engagement driving collection based features and most definitely leveraging Playtika’s scaling expertise. All resulting in the crowning of a new king of this sub-genre.
* Ad revenues not included
Zynga seems to be gearing up to fight back in light of a quickly depleting user base, as it has been investing heavily in ramping up live ops and IP themed events. Though this will likely not help it regain its market leader position. From their Q3 2019 earnings report -
Zynga Poker mobile revenue and bookings grew sequentially in Q3. In the quarter, we made a series of live operations improvements and players continued to amplify their daily game play with Boosts. We also introduced a new branded partnership with WWE® for themed events. Looking ahead, we’re focused on introducing new features to provide players with more ways to compete and celebrate progression within the game.
…
In Q3, our average mobile daily active users (DAUs) were down 1% year-over-year as the addition of Empires & Puzzles and audience growth in Merge Dragons! were offset by decreases in older mobile and chat games, as well as in Zynga Poker and Words With Friends.
One game that has gradually stolen market share from both WSOP and Zynga Poker over 2019 is “Governor of Poker 3” from Youda Games - showcasing a strong +50% YoY revenue growth. It ended the year at a 6% revenue market share.
Youda Games is no stranger to poker though, as the Governor of Poker PC version has been acclaimed as one of the finest offline poker games - though only with a single player experience. The mobile version makes it a fast-paced multiplayer experience set in a Texan saga map. Combined with modern F2P meta progression systems, staple social features like leaderboards and competing against friends, and very intuitive UX/UI - this is a fun poker game through and through. Just look at that yellow revenue line steadily climbing (on stabilizing downloads)!
WSOP reigns, Zynga Poker falls, and Governor of Poker grows! And some screenshots from GoP3.
* Ad revenues not included
On the Cards side of things, while Gin Rummy and Spades Plus continue to steadily grow revenues through great live-ops, it’s Spades Royale that steals the show with a +450% YoY revenue growth! Quite simply, the game takes the popular game of Spades and converts it into a highly social mobile experience with, yet again, modern F2P meta progression systems. And it’s clearly working!
Spades Royale showing strong signs to become a card games leader! And some screenshots from the game.
* Ad revenues not included
As a side note, it is definitely very interesting to see social so tightly integrated into the core of the two new poker/card games that are making big waves.
Reconciling 2019’s Predictions for Poker/Card
2019 Predictions #1 and #2: Playtika’s WSOP will take the throne as the new Poker market leader. And Zynga’s WPT brand integration will not reap required rewards during 2019.
Result: CORRECT - As we explained earlier, Zynga might be planning a comeback, but it’s going to be a hard battle that will likely not result in Zynga gaining market leader position again.
2019 Prediction #3: Poker games will continue to dominate the card game market, followed by Solitaire and then Blackjack.
Result: CORRECT - Poker is still the highest revenue generating card game niche.
2019 Prediction #3: With Playtika’s expertise, Supertreat’s “Solitaire Harvest” will overtake GSN’s “TriPeaks” on the grossing charts.
Result: CORRECT - There has been a lot of hot movement in Solitaire, and Solitaire Grand Harvest did beat Tripeak’s Solitaire on the grossing charts. More on this in our 2020 Puzzle predictions post.
2020 Predictions for Poker/Cards
2020 Prediction #1: WSOP will remain king by the end of 2020.
2020 Prediction #2: Governor of Poker 3 will continue its growth and enter the top 3 in the sub-genre, but will not beat out WSOP and Zynga Poker.
2020 Prediction #3: Spades Royale will also continue its impressive growth and enter the top 5 in the sub-genre, but will not beat out Governor of Poker 3.
2020 Prediction #4: Given stagnating revenues and dropping downloads, the Poker/Cards market is primed for new entrants through directly competing products or massively disrupting ones. And if a disrupting product enters, it will have social gameplay at its core.
Bingo Steals a Page out of Playrix’s Playbook
Special contribution by Brett Nowak, CEO of Liquid & Grit.
The Bingo sub-genre continued its upward streak in revenue through 2019, growing a substantial +33% YoY. Despite strong top-line numbers, the rate of revenue growth has continued its downward trend. The growth rate in Q4 2019 was nearly half that of Q4 2018. If this trend continues, annual revenue growth will be less than 10% by 2022.
* Ad revenues not included
The considerable revenue growth was also propelled by a +16% YoY increase in downloads. This was primarily driven by solid growth from Bingo Scapes, supported by growth in Bingo Blitz and new entrant Bingo Story.
Bingo Blitz strengthened its grasp on the market in 2019, accounting for 49% of the sub-genre’s revenue—up from 47% in 2018 and 44% in 2017. This growth in Bingo Blitz’s market share came primarily at the expense of Bingo Bash, which fell from 19% in 2018 to 14% in 2019. So probably expected.
* Ad revenues not included
The Bingo sub-genre is consolidated. In 2019, 89% of Bingo revenue came from just five apps: Bingo Blitz (49%), Bingo Bash (14%), Bingo Pop (10%), Bingo Showdown (10%), and Bingo Party (6%). In comparison, 80% of slots revenue is distributed among 21 apps (although it helps that the slots market is 11 times larger).
Last year, DoF predicted that the market would “continue to stay stable through 2019 with all key players holding their market positions”. It is safe to say that these predictions proved accurate: Both revenue and downloads continued to increase, and the five highest-grossing Bingo apps maintained their positions despite some market share movement.
What Bingo Blitz is Doing Right
Bingo Blitz invested heavily in collection, competition, mini-game, and quest events in 2019. Bingo Blitz’s product team continued to concentrate the majority of their investments in collection events and increased their investments in competition events (+212% YoY) and mini-game events (+42% YoY).
Bingo Blitz invested heavily in collection, competition, mini-game, and quest events in 2019.
Source: Liquid & Grit Reports
Notable revenue drivers in 2019, as tracked by Liquid & Grit, included the collection event Euro Bites, the mini-game events Liberty N’ Roll and Pick-A-Diamond, and the competition feature Bingo Blitz Tournament.
Euro Bites
Liberty N’ Roll
Pick-A-Diamond
Another component of Bingo Blitz’s success was its team’s output. Bingo Blitz released the most new bingo room content of all top-grossing Bingo apps.
Bingo Blitz’ expansion releases over 2019.
Source: Liquid & Grit Reports
In last year’s predictions, DoF also anticipated “possible innovations in monetization and design”. This prediction, too, proved to be true. In fact, about a quarter of the revenue drivers analyzed in Liquid & Grit Casino Reports in 2019 came from bingo (four from Bingo Blitz and two from Bingo Bash).
The 2019 Breakout Bingo App: Bingo Scapes
The app formerly known as Bingo Scapes (now Bingo Journey!) was 2019’s breakout Bingo app. Launched in December of 2018, Avid.ly’s new app is currently the sixth highest-grossing Bingo app.
During its U.S. launch, Bingo Scapes was very similar to Bingo Blitz. It offered quests, stacked events, power-ups, and elite membership—clearly targeting Bingo Blitz’s players (see this teardown and comparison to Bingo Blitz).
Since its hard launch, Bingo Scapes has deviated from its fast-follow beginnings to capitalize on many of the most impactful trends of 2019, including clubs with purchases and competitions, event-specific currencies, exchange shops, purchase events, mini-games, and missions with battle passes.
Bingo Scapes on its way to beating out the old timers!
* Ad revenues not included
In April, the app released clubs and club battles. The initial club feature was primarily social, allowing players to chat and send currency. Similar features were released in Toy Blast, Gardenscapes, and Lost Island Blast Adventure. Club battles added competitions for these social players, including tiers, event currency, a prize exchange shop, and exclusive purchases for club members.
Bingo Scapes Clubs with a striking resemblance to Supercell’s league tiers across their titles.
In June, when revenue started to take off, Bingo Scapes released a sim-like area called Food Town. In this feature, players collect ingredients during bingo play, similar to the core gameplay in Playrix’s Township. Players then use ingredients to fill orders for Food Town XP and bingo currency. Food Town’s XP progression is separate from the main game’s progression, allowing players to upgrade and unlock additional areas and items.
Township by Playrix
Bingo Scapes
And finally in August, Bingo Scapes released a mission feature with a “Battle Pass” purchase option, a popular monetization trend over 2019.
Bingo Scapes’ battle pass feature.
Reconciling 2019’s Predictions for Bingo
2019 Prediction #1: The market will continue to stay stable through 2019 with all key players holding their market positions.
Result: CORRECT - As can be seen in the revenue market share graph above.
2019 Prediction #2: Possible innovations in monetisation and design, as mentioned in the category level predictions.
Result: CORRECT - As can be seen in all the mechanic innovations above. Bingo Scapes being the breakout hit is the cherry on the cake!
2020 Predictions for Bingo
2020 Prediction #1: Downloads and revenue will continue to grow in 2020, with heavy influence from Bingo Blitz — particularly if Playtika is pushing for an IPO. Hard-charging apps Bingo Showdown, Bingo Pop, and Bingo Scapes will also have a hand in this growth.
2020 Prediction #2: Bingo Scapes will likely surpass Bingo Party to become the fifth highest-grossing bingo app, while Bingo Showdown and Bingo Pop will duke it out for the third position.
2020 Prediction #3: Product innovation in Bingo apps will be an even bigger factor than it was in 2019 as Bingo Scapes continues to prosper by implementing the latest trends in mobile games.
2020 Prediction #4: Product teams of top-grossing casino apps will continue to shift their investments toward events over features. On average, these events will become longer and more complex, sometimes incorporating a save-progress mechanic that is already emerging in the market. Apps will continue to invest in collections and challenges, but mini-games and competitions will become staples of successful event calendars.
Casual Casino is Ripe for New Entrants
Casual Casino is the newest genre to enter the Casino category, all thanks to games like Coin Master, Board Kings and Pirate Kings. And it also turned out to be 2019’s second largest sub-genre by revenue, closing the year at $0.4B (+316% YoY). Downloads were up +27% YoY.
* Ad revenues not included
This sub-genre is dominated by Coin Master, which takes up a 81% revenue market share. In other words, the health of Coin Master defines the health of Casual Casino. It can be clearly seen that both absolute downloads and download YoY growth rates are rapidly dropping. This is primarily due to Coin Master’s dropping download volumes, most probably because of UA steam running out for the title.
While absolute revenues did grow QoQ, revenue YoY growth rates are starting to drop - though still in the triple digit range. All in all, Coin Master’s user acquisition activities (with the KARDSHIANS!) and live ops activities continue to grow sub-genre revenues. But one game can only do so much for so long. Softness is starting to set in. Check out our full Coin Master deconstruct to understand how Moon Active managed to achieve so much success.
Coin Master absolutely dominating Casual Casino.
*Ad revenues not included
Looking at the Coin Master’s success, the clones naturally started to pour in. Even though Coin Master was not the first to market, it was definitely the best to market. And none have been able to steal market share from it. Though notably, Piggy Go is one game that managed to get its foot in the door, ending the the year with a 2% market share and continued growth. Probably because it is a Coin Master meets Board Kings mashup - the two market leading apps in Casual Casino. And it is quite a polished product at that.
What do you get when Coin Master meets Board Kings?
Apart from Casual Casino’s impact (or lack thereof) to Casino that was analysed in the introduction, this sub-genre is definitely one that will continue to grow its triple digit revenue growth rate in 2020 with continued strength from Coin Master.
The dropping downloads trend means there is an opportunity for more clones entering the market and possibly new concepts taking stage with not just slots at their core. If these are going to come from Jelly Button or other publishers, we cannot wait to see.
Reconciling 2019’s Prediction for Casual Casino
2019 Prediction #1: 2019 will see a number of new hybrid/mashup apps that are chasing Coin Master, Pirate Kings, and Board Kings, thereby leading to category downloads growth through UA and expansion to non-traditional Slots markets.
Result: PARTIALLY - While the number of clones chasing Coin Master have popped up, it has not led to Casino downloads growth, as our analysis at the start of this analysis indicates.
2020 Predictions for Casual Casino
2020 Prediction #1: Coin Master will continue to dominate this sub-genre in 2020.
2020 Prediction #2: 2020 will see more clones entering the market and new concepts taking stage with not just slots at their core.
2020 Prediction #3: Big Casino publishers will buy out successful Casual Casino titles and/or Coin Master clones, but likely not release their own.
Recapping 2020 Predictions for Casino
Slots
2020 Prediction #1: Slots will continue to face downloads market size stagnation issues in 2020, but will maintain its steady revenue growth rate - just at a lower intensity.
2020 Prediction #2: Funtrio will end 2020 in the top 5 slots publishers by revenue market share, likely beating out Huuuge and probably Scientific Games.
2020 Prediction #3: Playtika, Aristocrat and Scientific Games will fight to maintain and/or gain market share with improved live-ops on existing slots titles, and 1-2 new slots title releases.
2020 Prediction #4: If publishers choose to innovate on slots gameplay while still keeping it close to traditional slots design, it will be through sub-genre mashups that have a high audience overlap. Else, just more re-themed slots games incoming.
Poker/Cards
2020 Prediction #1: WSOP will remain king by the end of 2020.
2020 Prediction #2: Governor of Poker 3 will continue its growth and enter the top 3 in the sub-genre, but will not beat out WSOP and Zynga Poker.
2020 Prediction #3: Spades Royale will also continue its impressive growth and enter the top 5 in the sub-genre, but will not beat out Governor of Poker 3.
2020 Prediction #4: Given stagnating revenues and dropping downloads, the Poker/Cards market is primed for new entrants through directly competing products or massively disrupting ones. And if a disrupting product enters, it will have social gameplay at its core.
Bingo
2020 Prediction #1: Downloads and revenue will continue to grow in 2020, with heavy influence from Bingo Blitz — particularly if Playtika is pushing for an IPO. Hard-charging apps Bingo Showdown, Bingo Pop, and Bingo Scapes will also have a hand in this growth.
2020 Prediction #2: Bingo Scapes will likely surpass Bingo Party to become the fifth highest-grossing bingo app, while Bingo Showdown and Bingo Pop will duke it out for the third position.
2020 Prediction #3: Product innovation in Bingo apps will be an even bigger factor than it was in 2019 as Bingo Scapes continues to prosper by implementing the latest trends in mobile games.
2020 Prediction #4: Product teams of top-grossing casino apps will continue to shift their investments toward events over features. On average, these events will become longer and more complex, sometimes incorporating a save-progress mechanic that is already emerging in the market. Apps will continue to invest in collections and challenges, but mini-games and competitions will become staples of successful event calendars.
Casual Casino
2020 Prediction #1: Coin Master will continue to dominate this sub-genre in 2020.
2020 Prediction #2: 2020 will see more clones entering the market and new concepts taking stage with not just slots at their core.
2020 Prediction #3: Big Casino publishers will buy out successful Casual Casino titles and/or Coin Master clones, but likely not release their own.
