Talk to a handful of studios right now and you hear a familiar story. The work gets done, but the path is rougher than it was a couple of years ago. Operators are more selective about what they bring to market. Cert timelines shift at the wrong moments and unsettle planning. Compliance keeps absorbing time in small, steady bites. And the mid-tier teams that scaled during the pandemic boom are now facing a market that wants proof instead of optimism.
The market is healthy. The effort required to benefit from it is not so simple anymore. Some providers are handling the shift with a steady hand. Others admit, quietly, that they spend more time fixing short-term problems than shaping long-term strategy.
This stress test reflects conversations with product leads, compliance teams and aggregator managers, along with the 2023 and 2024 data that actually influences commercial performance. The picture has changed since 2022. Not dramatically, but clearly.
The market is growing, just not in a way that helps everyone
The market is growing, just not in a way that helps everyone.
The latest EGBA figures put Europe’s gambling market at roughly €123.4 billion in GGR for 2024, about a five percent lift year on year. Online continues to inch toward forty percent of the total. Global estimates vary, but most reputable reports place online gambling somewhere between USD 75 and 100 billion for 2024, depending on methodology.
All of that sounds positive.
It simply isn’t positive in the same way for every supplier.
A Malta-based product lead put it plainly. The demand is there, but the timing rarely lines up with release calendars. Much of the growth sits in markets where certification takes longer or where regulations shift mid-cycle.
Italy remains a stable anchor for many teams, while Spain has become more interesting than most expected a year ago. South Africa now appears in far more planning discussions than it did in 2022, especially for studios looking for clearer regulatory pathways. Germany is still uneven, although the overall direction is finally clearer than it has been in years. And beyond these markets, the remaining pockets of growth often arrive with complications attached, whether in the form of new formats, interpretation calls or expanded reporting cycles.
The market is expanding, but it isn’t automatically lifting providers who simply ship volume. Prepared teams gain ground. Overstretched teams feel the weight.
How the studio tiers are taking shape this year
The gap between studio types is easier to see now. Teams that built compliance depth early tend to move through the year with fewer disruptions, while those that scaled on momentum alone are finding that the slowdown exposes more than it hides.
Tier 1: The studios that stay upright when the pressure increases
For the largest suppliers, the year still looks controlled. Eighteen to twenty-five releases remain standard, supported by certification teams, regional ops layers and catalogs broad enough to absorb a soft month.
One studio lead described the landscape simply. They can still handle the surprises; they just take longer to untangle.
And for this group, that’s often the difference. Time to absorb friction is still a luxury they can rely on.
Tier 2: The middle group that feels every delay
This is the tier where pressure becomes visible. These teams expanded fast, spread across multiple jurisdictions and built pipelines on timing assumptions that no longer hold. A two-week certification slip can force a full reprioritization, and a regulatory tweak in a secondary market can freeze half a quarter’s output.
A product manager at a Gibraltar-licensed studio said they still believe in the roadmap, but every week starts with revisiting what “on track” means. The sentiment is common across this tier, where operational margin has become the most valuable resource.
Tier 3: The specialists exposed to every fluctuation
Smaller studios built around a single mechanic or a single region face a far sharper edge. When a mechanic cools in one market or a regulator requests a math variation, the impact is immediate.
One founder admitted their strategy made perfect sense until the market shifted beneath them. For studios in this tier, even a minor swing in demand can redraw an entire year’s planning.
Certification delays are now a strategic factor
Certification used to be slow in a predictable way. You knew which markets moved at which pace, and you planned around it. That certainty has slipped.
A compliance lead at a Baltic studio told us their team now budgets “buffer weeks” into every release because one request for an updated probability table can push a title from April into June. When that happens, marketing plans shuffle and operator slots get reassigned. The delay is rarely dramatic; it’s just disruptive enough to break the month.
Regulators are adding checks that weren’t part of the process a year ago. Labs are handling more RTP splits, more feature variations and more regional math requests. Some jurisdictions now ask for UX notes or session behavior summaries mid-cycle. None of it stops production, but all of it adds drag.
And here’s the line most teams won’t say publicly. Studios with deep certification bandwidth are the ones hitting their windows. Those that don’t have it lose ground to competitors they used to outrun.
For many teams, 2025 is the first year certification isn’t a background task. It’s a deciding factor in which markets they prioritise and which mechanics they recycle.
Compliance costs are rising faster than revenue
Ask teams what has surprised them most this year and compliance sits near the top of the list. Not because of a single major rule change, but because of the steady accumulation of smaller ones.
The pattern is easy to see. One market introduces an extra RTP version. Another adjusts a responsible gaming tag. A lab revises a formula that triggers a fresh QA pass. A regulator requests a new type of monthly report. None of these tasks are large on their own, but they land across multiple jurisdictions and pull attention away from development.
For mid-tier studios, the shift shows up most clearly in how weeks are structured. More time goes into preparing documentation, handling clarification calls and updating region-specific files. Less time remains for tuning the features that actually differentiate a release.
Larger providers can hire into the pressure. Smaller and mid-sized teams usually absorb it themselves, and while few want to say it publicly, compliance obligations are growing faster than revenue in many parts of the market.
It isn’t a crisis. It does change priorities. Some markets get the resources. Others quietly fall off the roadmap.
Release velocity and visibility are more connected than studios want to believe
Release velocity often gets dismissed as a vanity metric. In 2025, that is no longer the case. Aggregators pay closer attention to cadence than many studios assume. They don’t frame it as a rule, but studios that release consistently tend to surface more often. It isn’t about punishing slow teams. It’s about rewarding the ones that never slip.
Where the numbers start to matter
Large suppliers still tend to land between eighteen and twenty-five releases a year, with mid-tier teams clustering around ten to fourteen and specialists closer to four to eight. Those ranges aren’t just statistics. They shape how studios are perceived. When output sits in tight bands like this, even one delay can knock a studio out of its usual lane and change how often it appears on aggregator pages.
Operators pick up on those shifts early. A northern European content manager told us their team doesn’t wait for formal updates; they watch the rhythm. When a studio that normally delivers like clockwork slows down, they assume something internal is moving and quietly adjust placement rather than waiting for an explanation.
What emerges from this dynamic isn’t a push for speed. It’s a push for reliability. A steady release pattern quietly builds visibility. A stop-start pattern slowly erodes it, even when the games themselves are strong.
Who feels the pressure and who is coping with it
Pressure rarely arrives as a single moment. It creeps into planning rooms, roadmap meetings, stand-ups where someone finally says the timing won’t hold. Some studios tense up because every slip hits their whole pipeline. Others keep moving because their structure absorbs the drag. The difference isn’t size or budget. It’s how early they built the muscle for compliance, timing friction and slow, uneven markets.
References
- European Gaming and Betting Association (EGBA): Factsheets & Infographics: Europe’s gambling market reached €123.4 billion in GGR in 2024 (+5 %). – https://www.egba.eu/resources/factsheets-infographics/
- Grand View Research: Global online gambling market size was estimated at USD 78.66 billion in 2024 with a projected reach of USD 153.57 billion by 2030. – https://www.grandviewresearch.com/horizon/outlook/online-gambling-market-size/global
- G3Newswire (reporting EGBA / H2 Gambling Capital): Europe’s gambling market reached €123.4 billion in 2024; online revenue €47.9 billion. – https://g3newswire.com/european-gambling-revenue-up-five-per-cent-in-2024-with-online-closing-the-gap-on-retail/
