Which Live Dealer Entertainment Games Are the most popular?
In this article, I’ll explore the most popular live dealer casino games based on player numbers and playing time.
I’ll be covering the live entertainment shows only. I’m ignoring classic table games such as blackjack, roulette, and baccarat and excluding table games tweaked to deliver multiplier wins, like Lighting Roulette, Gravity Roulette and Nexus Roulette.
I’m concentrating on the fun games that Evolution, Playtech and Pragmatic Play have developed that step outside the boundaries of traditional table games.
Some games are more popular than others, while some look great but haven’t caught on with the player base.
Based on player numbers, this is a rough guide to the best live dealer entertainment shows.
This report was written in May 2023.
Top Developers by Playing Time
Evolution comes top if you add up all the games by the same provider and rank providers against each other. Evolution has almost 22,000 players playing their games every hour.
Pragmatic Play is in second place, which is a surprise as many people consider Playtech behind Evolution’s popularity.
Pragmatic Play has more than double the number of players than Playtech, with around 5,000 per hour. They primarily play Mega Wheel and Sweet Bonanza Candyland.
Playtech has around 2,000 hourly players, most playing Adventures Beyond Wonderland. In addition, the Friday Big Quiz attracts 3,000 hourly players but only on Fridays.
Only three providers develop live dealer entertainment shows, so the list ends with these three.
Top Live Dealer Games by Playing Time
Let’s look at the average number of hourly players and how it’s changed over the last year.
We can see the popularity of the games by comparing the average figures for February 2022 and May 2023.
- Crazy Time (Evolution): rising from 10K to 12K
- Monopoly Big Baller (Evolution): increasing from 1.1K to 3.1K
- Friday Big Quiz (Playtech): steady at 3K (Fridays only)
- Mega Ball (Evolution): growing from 1.6K to 2.4K
- Mega Wheel (Pragmatic Play): rising from 1.7K to 2.3K
- Monopoly Live (Evolution): growing from 1.6K to 2.3K
- Sweet Bonanza Candyland (Pragmatic Play): rising from 750 to 2K
- Adventures Beyond Wonderland (Playtech): rising from 600 to 1.8K
- Dream Catcher (Evolution): rising from 600 to 650
- Football Studio (Evolution): rising from 480 to 600
- Boom City Live (Pragmatic Play): rising from 290 to 420
- Crazy Coin Flip (Evolution): steady at 400
- Extra Chilli Epic Spins (Evolution): declining from 620 to 380
- Deal or No Deal (Evolution): steady at 150
- Cash or Crash (Evolution): reducing from 220 to 150
- Gonzo’s Treasure Hunt (Evolution): falling from 150 to 110
- Money Drop (Playtech): reducing from 190 to 100
- The Greatest Card Show (Playtech): declining from 140 to 90
- Deal or No Deal (Playtech): dropping from 130 to 80
Most Popular Game
The most popular game is Crazy Time, and it’s not even close. It has more than 4x more players than any other game.
Furthermore, the popularity of Crazy Time is rising, which means players continue to recognise the quality of this game, and it isn’t just a fad that will fade over time.
This game is the market leader in the live game show niche.
More Popular Games
Six more games are seeing significant playing time.
Monopoly Big Baller is perhaps surprisingly at the number two spot, and the other Monopoly game by Evolution, Monopoly Live, is also among these six popular games.
It would indicate the draw of the Monopoly Bonus rounds.
Mega Ball is essentially a game of live bingo. Bingo is very popular, so it’s no surprise to see this live dealer version become so popular.
We can probably expect more live bingo games in the future, both by Evolution and other providers.
Monopoly Big Baller is also a bingo game, so we could say Live Bingo is the most popular of the top three games.
Two games often mentioned in the same sentence with Crazy Time are Sweet Bonanza Candyland and Adventures Beyond Wonderland.
However, they are not as popular as we think.
They see significant playing time but are at the bottom of what we could call the tier 1 of live game shows.
Surprisingly, Pragmatic Play’s simplistic money wheel game, Mega Wheel, is the most popular in the niche after Crazy Time.
We need to see how Funky Time, a Crazy Time spin-off, will catch on and whether it be more popular than Candyland and Wonderland.
Evolution will have another game at the top of the live game show niche if it is.
But it’s not certain. Evolution has had failures, too, the most notable being Gonzo’s Treasure Hunt. It’s barely seen any playtime at all. It belongs to the group of fun games that are played sporadically.
Some games, such as Deal or No Deal, especially Playtech’s version, are good, but not many players realise it.
So not all the games near the bottom of this list are bad. Sometimes, it’s just a failure to generate sustained hype. In the case of Deal or No Deal, that might change when the UK TV show is back on air.
What makes for a popular game?
If we try to reverse engineer our list and come up with some common denominators for what makes a successful live dealer casino game, the money wheel games seem the most popular.
Their success lies in the presentation and the bonus rounds. If the bonus rounds deliver excitement, frustration, and small wins when you expect big and big wins when you’re not expecting them, you have the receipt for a great game. Get it wrong, and players won’t return after their initial game session.
However, it’s not as easy as that. Developers have tried to come up with a new concept many times.
Games like Cash or Crash and Crazy Coin Flip have failed to capture players’ imagination and haven’t been able to join the top tier of live dealer games.
Gold Bar Roulette was too complicated, and Gonzo’s Treasure hunt was horrible!
But you need failures to know what a good game looks like; we have plenty of those.
What is the best live dealer game show?
While Crazy Time is the most popular game, it’s a simple money-wheel game with bonus rounds. It just happens to play out a bit better than its competitors. Some 19,000 players play money wheel games every hour, and the majority of that goes to Crazy Time simply because it’s the best of the bunch as it potentially offers the most significant wins.
But which game on this list was the most challenging to develop, which required the largest degree of innovation and technical skills?
It would probably be Monopoly Big Baller. First and foremost, the bonus round is second to none. You don’t see such graphics even in top-tier computer games. Then, the game uses bingo to drive the game, a concept everyone is familiar with.
This game combines two incredibly popular things, bingo and Monopoly, fantastically. The live presenter, the real bingo machine, and the 3D game combine perfectly into what we think is the most impressive live dealer game show.
Monopoly Live, in comparison, uses a money wheel to drive the game and is vastly inferior to Monopoly Big Baller in terms of excitement and fun, even if the bonus round is the same.