LeoVegas establishes Blue Guru Games in-house studio

Stockholm-listed gaming operator LeoVegas has established a new in-house development studio to create exclusive games for its brands and other operators.

Blue Guru Games is 85 per cent owned by LeoVegas and will leverage the company’s iGaming experience to develop and supply games to LeoVegas’ own brands and to other operators as a B2B service.

Blue Guru Games aims to launch at least 20 games in the coming 24 months, with the first games set to be released in late 2021.

“For a long time we have created exclusive games with the help of external providers, but now the time is right to take the step to do game development entirely on our own,” said LeoVegas CEO Gustaf Hagman. “Drawing from our data and casino knowledge we will be able to drive innovation and create games that our customers truly enjoy.

“These may be everything from niche, local games for individual markets to broad international games. In addition, we will create games and unique characters that can be used in our marketing, which will build stronger loyalty to our brands. Having great flexibility in producing games is a competitive advantage, and it will also give us a new revenue stream over time.”

The new game studio is part of LeoVegas’ strategy to cost effectively control a larger share of the industry’s value chain and sits under the LeoVentures subsidiary. In addition to Blue Guru Games, LeoVentures has also invested in marketing affiliate CasinoGrounds, esports betting operator Pixel.bet, and multiplayer online casino game enabler SharedPlay.

Shares in LeoVegas AB (STO:LEO) were trading 2.4 per cent lower at SEK49.58 per share in Stockholm Tuesday afternoon.