A strange phenomenon that often happens in our capitalist world is that multiple businesses offer very similar (and sometimes the same) product or service. In the world of tech, where software is rented, this can be very common. Five casinos, all essentially the same, just with five different logos. If you’ve noticed it, you’re not going crazy, it’s the backend showing through the paint.
The backend isn’t the brand
Most of what looks like a huge, varied casino market is actually a handful of game studios distributed through aggregators. Just one aggregator platform can provide 40,000+ titles from ~200 studios through just one API. Let’s be real – did you think casinos would handpick and manually add every game? There are thousands. Maybe a larger casino with a limited library, but smaller sites are just using bundles of Pragmatic Play, NetEnt, Evolution and dozens of other developers via a plug-and-play catalogue.
Any licensed operator can drop one of these into their site. And it’s not just casinos but sportsbooks – backend providers like Kambi provide the odds, risk management and general trading infrastructure.
The operator “just” builds the lobby, the loyalty scheme, the visual theme. And, in fairness, this is extremely important. UI keeps users coming back and determines their general experience on the site – the game math can and should be forgotten about for the most part.
Why the code has to be certified, not just built
It’s not actually just efficiency (or laziness). Like with all rented software, commercial convenience is only part of the story. It’s partly because of how regulation actually works. Under the UK Gambling Commission’s standards, RNG-driven products need to pass independent testing before they’re released. An approved test house needs to review the source code itself to confirm there’s no exploitable bias.
Once a title clears that process, it’s certified – it would be hugely inefficient for each casino to have to have every game verified themselves. Licensing that same certified build to fifty operators is far cheaper than every operator commissioning and re-certifying its own bespoke slots from scratch (though this does happen in small doses). Many use a mixed approach with some proprietary software, and happens more at the top of the market.
Evoke plc for example (the group behind 888casino and William Hill) runs its own in-house content studio (Section8) along with a proprietary platform it licenses out to other operators through its B2B division. This is a genuine, modern day vertical integration, much like Sony owning the IP to some of its best-selling PlayStation games. It’s a pattern you’ll spot in the wider sector.
Owning the stack means faster adaptation to new regulatory markets, but it also means you can sell your own infrastructure. This diversifies revenue to two different streams – even if your website takes a hit, perhaps a PR issue, still means there’s regular monthly SaaS income.
Same code, different paint
So the instinct behind the uncanny feeling can be right. It’s the same as beer companies sharing factories – and sometimes formulas – to produce a very similar and highly regulated product. Only a handful of operators with the scale to justify it actually own the code underneath.