LuckyStreak: 2023 was a transformational year for us

When the doors of LuckyStreak’s hi-tech Riga studio HQ were first opened in autumn 2014, its co-founders Ady Totah (CEO) and Erez Cywier (CTO) were excited by a vision of making a difference in the already established and fast-growing live casino vertical. The opportunity was significant if the product could stand-out.

“Yes it was exciting. It was also nerve-wracking, and as anticipated, we had to work (very) hard and retain our belief at all times. Not always easy!” says Ady.

They persisted in both, and now as LuckyStreak enters its eleventh year, we can look back on a transformative 2023, which saw milestone product upgrades, technological innovation and commercial successes, driving significant step changes in business performance.

“We’re finally out of start-up mode; we have established products, long-term commercial partners, scale, technical capability and resilience, some incredible product plans, and we’re bringing in industry experience and skills. And this is having a major positive impact on business performance.”

Investing in the Product

To be successful in this highly competitive igaming space, it is critical that your games meet the ever-increasing expectations of players and deliver a high quality gaming experience. According to Erez, “Our focus is on forever investing in the quality and security of our products; the gaming experience, our promotion toolbox, and our backoffice capabilities. It’s a continual process. “

Accordingly, our live dealer Blackjack and Baccarat games had the biggest upgrades in their history in 2023.

In June, we launched the first game with the new, super-advanced user-interface: live Blackjack. Now optimised for mobile portrait-mode, it had a clearer and more visually-appealing layout, thumb-friendly action buttons and even emojis so you can share your mood with fellow players.

Our live Baccarat upgrade followed in August with the same new slick UI and mobile-first features of Blackjack making it the most playable game available. Gameplay is enhanced further with automated dual-camera switching for the best ever view of the game.

September also saw us up our land-based game with the addition of another Dual-play Roulette game streamed live from the casino floor. Oracle Blaze Roulette is about as authentic as you can get, for both land-based casino lovers and casino operators wanting to offer more choice to players.

And we’ve absolutely not finished – just the opposite: in 2024 our premier game live European Roulette gets the upgrade treatment, and we also have a few more surprises in the works.

Enriching our offering

Our LuckyConnect content aggregation API solution is a unique offering to casino operators, as a stand-alone aggregator or in tandem with LuckyStreak’s live games, through the same API. It has a rich library of leading games providers and over 4000 high quality games.

Early in the year we announced the addition of Provably-Fair instant and crash-games provider Turbo Games. Then in Q4 we had the double boost with both renowned games provider Red Rake Gaming and relatively new studio Lucky Monaco joining the fold.

And most recently, the impressive mobile-first portfolio of PG Soft games was added to our library, boosting our offering further. The addition of these top-tier gaming providers reinforces the confidence of our customers that LuckyConnect is a premium content aggregator.

2024 will be even bigger still, with increases in our capability and capacity to bring on more first-class content providers and greater variety of games.

Technological Innovation and Security

Capacity, reliability and security are fundamental to the enjoyment of our players and confidence of our customers.

A high-quality and uninterrupted user experience is critical to success. In 2023 we further bolstered our platform security to the highest level. This work never steps and may go unnoticed but we couldn’t succeed without it, and we are in a stronger and more secure position than we ever have been.

Our microservices technology supports rapid scalability and deployment, and ensures maximum reliability and resilience of our architecture whatever the speed of growth. And we have invested further in the security of our infrastructure to give our customers and partners total peace-of-mind from ever-present online threats.

We are also very advanced in our rollout of super-high definition 1080p streaming across all our live games, to give our players the very best user experience. And whether they have ultra-fast broadband, or using mobile data in a remote place, our technology instantly adapts to the user’s connectivity rates for the very best video streaming.

In December we launched support of sweepstake and social casino currencies, to enable the growing sector of iGaming to bring our live games and aggregated content to their players, in exactly the same way as FIAT and cryptocurrencies.

Commercial Success

In 2023 we saw the number of casino operator customers we serve nearly double: up 92% year-over-year. Among the new customers joining the LuckyStreak family in 2023 were the fast-growing igaming platform provider Reevo, and Daintree the sports and casino gaming service provider. And in Q4 were partnered with Sweepium, the sweepstake platform and casino aggregator, and first customer to utilise our new sweepstake currency capabilities.

Adding Playson to the providers that Pronet Gaming take from LuckyConnect was also a notable success.

Rory Kimber joined LuckyStreak as Commercial Director in July with a brief to grow our customer base and our LuckyConnect business. Rory’s CV includes senior roles at NetEnt, Red Tiger and 1X2, and a wide network of commercial relationships in the industry. He is the second senior hire after Mark O’Donnell joined as Head of Marketing in November 2022.

The Proof is in The Pudding

2023 was a milestone year for LuckyStreak. We’ve seen all key gaming metrics grow materially over the year:

· The number of bets placed across our LuckyLive and LuckyConnect games was up a staggering 146% over the previous 12 months

· And the total value of bets placed climbed 55%

· Doubling GGR from all gaming activities – up 105%

· Gross player volumes increased by 93%

· Average stake per bet on live games was up 12%, and by 30% on LuckyConnect

· As well as through organic growth, volumes were boosted by a near-doubling in online casino customer numbers (+92%)

Ady comments: “It’s extremely gratifying that the progress and investment we made in 2023, in terms of product launches, technological development and commercial wins, have translated to one of the most successful years in our history. The metrics all tell a very strong growth story, but one we cannot put a number on is the effort and attitude of our people which is tremendous, and I’m truly grateful for everyone’s contribution“

“The challenge for 2024 is to continue that upswing; it’s a hard act to follow and we are on plan and have high expectations for this year”.