If you’ve been following the iGaming space, you know that "innovation" is a term that can be overused. But every now and then, a shift happens that actually makes you sit up, put down your coffee, and start paying real attention.
That shift might have just arrived, and its name is Avanti Studios.
We recently caught up with industry titan Gustaf Hagman (founder of LeoVegas) to talk about his new venture with Jonas Delin (founder of Authentic Gaming). If you thought the "Live Casino" meta had peaked, think again. We aren’t just talking about a new studio; we’re talking about the potential end of the studio as we know it.
The "Studio Problem"
Scaling the "Live Casino" model has been a logistical nightmare: physical studios, human error, and the massive fixed costs of training and 24/7 staffing.
Avanti is flipping the script by replacing human dealers with digital dealers. Built in the Unreal Engine, these aren't just stiff avatars. Avanti uses a high-end motion capture studio to record the exact mannerisms, smiles, and "energy" of real land-based dealers.
"It’s about trust," Gustaf noted. "You see the 8 decks being shuffled, you see a dealer change every 90 minutes—it’s the live experience, just perfectly executed every time".
The Tech Stack: AI vs. Unreal Engine
A lot of players are playing with AI video clips, but Gustaf was candid about the trade-off: AI is great for one-way clips, but it struggles with two-way communication. Avanti chose the Unreal Engine for that "real-time" feel, and to avoid the "download an app" friction, they’ve moved the whole thing to a cloud-based streaming protocol via Chrome.
The concrete differences
Obviously, once moving out of the physical world and into the software realm, scalability becomes a key theme. Three key levers that are enabled are
- Cost Reductions: We’re looking at a massive decrease in operating expenses. No studios to mop, no dealers on the payroll.
- A wider offering: Many traditional giants can’t make the math work on $2 tables because the human overhead is too high. Avanti's digital dealers don't care if the stake is $1 or $10,000—the unit economics remain pristine.
- Hyper-localisation: Imagine 170 languages and dialects, all with branded tables that can be changed for a specific football match or marketing campaign in minutes.
Will it be a smooth ride?
Whilst the rewards are great, it isn’t to say that they will come without challenges. Two of the key areas will be product and trust.
Getting the game play right will be key. Live Casino giants have perfected the experience over decades, with camera angles being just right, dealers being trained to balance when to interact with players and when not to, and much more. Building a digital version that can compete with such an experience is not a challenge for the faint of heart.
The trust element is another one that cannot be ignored. Many industry experts, like CPO of Evolution Todd Haushalter, underline the importance of trust when explaining the popularity of live casinos. They argue that players do place more trust in physical decks than RNG-based experiences.
Gustaf and his team aim to overcome this by perfecting the experience of their games making it as close to reality as can be. They also mention the general trend in society with more and more of us getting used to having actual conversations with our AI-tools - a trend that is favourable for the digital versions of live casinos.
Time will tell what the outcome is, but we are excited to be following Avanti Studios in the years to come. A few things are clear at this point, the rewards are great, it’s a bold bet and they certainly have the team to take it on.
