Entain, one of the largest sports betting and gaming operators globally, has struck a new partnership with Avanti Studios to bolster its live casino offering across multiple brands. The deal gives Entain access to Avanti’s growing library of live dealer content, a move that signals the operator’s intent to deepen engagement in a segment that continues to outpace traditional online casino growth. With live casino revenue climbing across regulated European markets, the timing carries strategic weight.
What This Partnership Means for Entain’s Live Casino Strategy
The live casino vertical has quietly become one of the most competitive battlegrounds in iGaming. Entain’s decision to integrate Avanti Studios content reflects a broader pattern among tier-one operators: diversifying supplier relationships to avoid over-reliance on a single live dealer provider. Here’s what stands out about this deal.
- Supplier diversification: By onboarding Avanti, Entain reduces concentration risk and gains differentiated content that can be deployed across its brand ecosystem, including Ladbrokes, Coral, and bwin.
- Player retention lever: Fresh live casino titles give Entain a tool to re-engage existing players and reduce churn in a segment where novelty matters more than in slots.
- Avanti Studios, still a relatively young entrant, gains distribution at a scale that few partnerships can match — a validation of its product quality.
- Competitive positioning: The deal positions Entain to better compete with rivals like Flutter and bet365, both of which have invested heavily in exclusive or semi-exclusive live dealer environments.
Why Live Casino Content Is Drawing Operator Attention
Live casino is no longer a niche add-on. Across regulated markets in the UK, Italy, and parts of Latin America, live dealer games now account for a growing share of gross gaming revenue. The format blends the social dynamics of land-based play with the convenience of digital access, and operators have noticed that live casino players tend to have higher average session values and longer retention curves than those who play RNG-based games exclusively.
Still, the supply side has been dominated by a handful of studios. Evolution remains the clear market leader, and its acquisition of NetEnt’s live operations further consolidated that position. That dominance, arguably, has made operators uneasy. When a single supplier controls too much of the content pipeline, pricing leverage shifts. And so operators like Entain’s gaming division have been actively scouting alternatives — not to replace their primary providers, but to create optionality.
Avanti Studios fits that logic. The studio has built a reputation for high-production-value game shows and classic table variants, delivered from purpose-built broadcast facilities. What remains less clear is whether Avanti can scale its output fast enough to become a meaningful share of Entain’s live casino lobby, or whether this partnership stays supplementary.
How Avanti Studios Stands to Benefit
For a studio at Avanti’s stage, landing an operator of Entain’s size changes the calculus entirely. Distribution is the single hardest problem for emerging live casino suppliers. The technology investment required to run live studios — cameras, trained dealers, real-time streaming infrastructure — is substantial, and without guaranteed volume, unit economics are punishing.
This deal gives Avanti’s live dealer platform a clear path to volume. But it also raises expectations. Entain’s compliance and technical integration standards are rigorous, and any supplier operating across its brand portfolio must meet regulatory requirements in multiple jurisdictions simultaneously. That’s a stress test few young studios have faced.
The Broader Market Dynamics at Play
Entain’s move fits within a wider industry trend that has accelerated over the past 18 months. Operators are rethinking how they structure supplier relationships across all verticals, not just live casino. The logic is straightforward: more suppliers mean more negotiating power, more content variety, and less platform risk.
Yet there’s a tension here. Too many suppliers create integration overhead, fragment the player experience, and complicate compliance workflows. The operators who get this balance right (a distinction regulators have been slow to enforce from a consumer-experience standpoint) will likely hold an edge in player lifetime value metrics.
| Factor | Entain’s Position | Industry Benchmark |
|---|---|---|
| Live casino supplier count | Expanding with Avanti addition | Most tier-one operators use 3–5 live suppliers |
| Primary live provider | Evolution (historically dominant) | Evolution holds estimated 60%+ market share in live |
| Strategic priority | Content diversification, player retention | Exclusive content and branded environments gaining traction |
| Regulatory complexity | Multi-jurisdiction deployment required | Compliance costs rising across EU-regulated markets |
What Operators and Suppliers Should Watch Next
Partnerships like this one rarely exist in isolation. If Entain’s integration of Avanti content performs well — measured by player uptake, session duration, and margin contribution — expect similar deals to follow with other mid-tier live studios. The ripple effect could reshape how emerging suppliers approach market entry, shifting from broad multi-operator launches to anchor partnerships with a single major operator.
And while the headline focuses on content, the underlying infrastructure story matters just as much. Live casino streaming quality, latency management, and dealer training are operational challenges that scale unevenly. A studio that delivers flawless streams for 500 concurrent players may struggle at 5,000. Whether Avanti has built for that kind of demand remains an open question the market will answer in the coming quarters.
Frequently Asked Questions
What is Avanti Studios?
Avanti Studios is a live casino content provider that develops and streams live dealer games, including table games and game show formats, from dedicated broadcast facilities. The company has positioned itself as an alternative to dominant suppliers in the live segment.
Which Entain brands will feature Avanti content?
Specific brand rollouts have not been confirmed publicly, though Entain operates a portfolio that includes Ladbrokes, Coral, bwin, and PartyPoker, among others. Integration across multiple brands is expected given the scale of the partnership.
Why are operators diversifying live casino suppliers?
Concentration risk. When one supplier dominates the content pipeline, operators lose pricing leverage and face platform dependency. Diversification also gives players more variety, which supports retention.
Does this affect Entain’s relationship with Evolution?
Not directly. Operators routinely work with multiple live casino providers simultaneously. The Avanti partnership supplements rather than replaces existing supplier arrangements — at least on paper.
