Data & Research

Slots continue to boom post-COVID, accounting for 6% of mobile game spending

Crunching the data with App Annie

Slots continue to boom post-COVID, accounting for 6% of mobile game spending

This article is part of an ongoing series of data-driven articles from PocketGamer.biz and App Annie highlighting trends in the global mobile games sector using App Annie’s app market data.

In this week’s column, we’re considering how the booming casino genre is greater than the traditional and slots subgenre.

A rising tide

With COVID-19 shutting down physical casinos for much of 2020, the social casino sector has experienced strong growth.

Indeed, the revenue generated by Casino games rose 52 per cent year-on-year during Q1 2021 to over $2.4 billion.

On that basis, it represents 11 per cent of total game spending across iOS and Google Play.

"Traditional > slots games represented 55 per cent of total spend on casino games in Q1 2021 and 30 per cent of casino games downloads," said App Annie’s head of marketing insights Lexi Sydow.

Looking at the games with the largest audiences in terms of monthly active users (MAUs), Playtika's Slotomania remains the top dog.

Released way back in 2011, its performance over the past decade demonstrates both the power of social casino games in general and the development team’s skill in terms of live ops.

And yet the social casino sector remains as competitive as any other part of mobile games.

So while established companies such as Playtika, Aristocrat and Scientific Games Corporation continue to rank in the top 10, there are also plenty of newer companies keen to muscle in on the action.

The impact of Chinese outfit Bole Game is clear to see with three games in the top 10, while eastern European developers such as Huuuge Games (Poland) and Murka (Ukraine) are also finding success.

For more insight into the gaming sector, App Annie’s Game IQ is a vertically tailored analytics product that provides insight into dimensions such as class, genre, subgenre and tags. Games can now be analysed by broad category class (tuning), genre, subgenre, and tags (modifiers) such as IP, art style, settings, monetisation mechanic, and more.

For more information register for a demo here

PocketGamer.biz regularly posts content from a variety of guest writers across the games industry. These encompass a wide range of topics and people from different backgrounds and diversities, sharing their opinion on the hottest trending topics, undiscovered gems and what the future of the business holds.