The SOFTSWISS Game Aggregator expanded its global footprint in 2021 by entering the markets of Japan, Brazil, Argentina, India, and Tunisia, accounting for much of the growth of the company which saw financial results more than double over 2020 numbers.
While land-based gaming revenues present a skewed image owing to reduced or non-existent footfall during the height of the pandemic lockdowns, year-on-year growth in the online sector represents the potential for sustained growth for operators that can retain new customers.
Tatyana Kaminskaya, Head of Game Aggregator Department at SOFTSWISS said: “The common trend is that during the long lockdown in 2020 and the continuing pandemic in 2021, people have been forced to spend a lot of time at home, including at the computer. Isolation and decreased social activity have influenced a rise in demand for online entertainment.
“We can see this in the steady increase in the number of bets throughout the year. Observing this trend, we tried to provide our clients with the most diverse content to keep the audience interested and engaged. I can say with confidence that we have succeeded.”
Game aggregation is the process of compiling slots and other titles from multiple developers and offering the games to operators through a single application program interface or API, otherwise known as a module. The evolution of that programming along with a newer HTML5 markup language for web browsers made instant-play gaming on all devices possible. In the past, punters needed to download a desktop client for each casino and those packages only contained content from a single developer such as Microgaming or Playtech.
Average Monthly GGR More Than Doubled
The company’s monthly GGR (gross gaming revenues) averaged 200m EUR in 2021 compared to just 88m in 2020. The amount bet each month over the last year was more than 5b EUR compared to 2.2b the previous year for an increase in Average Monthly GGR of 130%.
SOFTSWISS COO, Andrey Starovoitov added: “These figures are the natural result of the work done over the past year by the SOFTSWISS Team on bringing in new clients and partners. Since January we have more than doubled in size: 500+ professionals have joined SOFTSWISS, which couldn’t help but affect our end-of-year results. We’re developing the best solutions from the iGaming industry every day to help our partners build successful businesses. I am very happy with the results achieved and expect even more success in the new year!”
SOFTSWISS pioneered the crypto casino but now processes fiat currencies as well. As the industry comes around to its core strengths, the percentage of cryptocurrency bets doubled over the last year from 20% of total stake to 40%.
Bitcoin is the best known and most used cryptocurrency and was the fifth most used currency with the aggregator’s games this year. Over 80% of crypto deposits were in BTC with about 1/10 of that via Ethereum (ETH 8%) and half again through Litecoin deposits (LTC 3.9%).
New Casinos and New Games
Sixty new casinos launched the aggregator platform this year, an average of five each month. More than 20 game developers and providers signed onto the service as well giving the aggregator content from more than 170 labs and studios.
Growth in this area also expanded the total game catalog to nearly 12,000 individual titles with over 3,000 of them having the user interface optimized for cryptocurrency play.
In early 2018 the Aggregator and platform provider spun its in-house game studios off into a wholly-owned subsidiary dubbed BGaming (see here). One of its creations, Elvis Frog in Vegas, clocked in on the number four spot for the most popular games of the year followed by Evolution’s Lightning Roulette in fifth place.
The top three games across the entire network in 2021 were as follows:
Sweet Bonanza (see the review here) (Pragmatic Play)
Book of Dead (see the review) (Play’n Go)
Fire in the Hole xBomb (see the review here) (Nolimit City)
Source: SOFTSWISS Game Aggregator Takes Stock of 2021, SoftSwiss News, December 28, 2021