Among the effects for India from the rising digitalization of the global economy and the growing penetration of affordable smartphones and mobile data plans is that now, desi real money players have access to all types of casino games the world has created.

It turns out, however, that among all the various games available to Indian casino gamers from the comfort of their homes or wherever they feel inclined to play, online roulette, and particularly the electrifying live variant “Lightning Roulette,” has emerged as the clear desi favourite.

Only the Diverse Casino Game Show Category Outperforms Roulette

Recently revealed industry data has highlighted the online roulette category as the second most popular i-gaming category in Indian online casinos, contributing around a quarter of casino operator turnovers:

22.91% between January and October 2022;
rising to 26.79% between August and October 2022.

The reigning champion is the category of game shows, which attracts around a third of online casino revenues from India.

34.48% for the first ten months of 2022;
dropping slightly to 32.81% within the last three months of the observed period.

Casino game shows are an innovative i-gaming category that is in essence live adaptations of virtually anything that creative minds at game studios can make work:

vintage TV game shows (the likes of “The Wheel of Fortune” and “Deal or No Deal”);
classic board games (like Evolution’s “Monopoly Live” and “Monopoly Big Baller”);
any casino must-have games (the epic “Lightning Roulette” can also be classified as a game show);
or dice or coin-flipping based games (“Lightning Dice” and “Crazy Coin Flip”);
and even real sports (“Football Studio” and “Football Studio Dice”).

The sheer diversity of game shows makes online roulette stand out as the most prominent casino gaming category for India based on a single game or gaming concept.

The SevenJackpots data shows that all other iconic casino gaming genres also attract substantial interest in online casinos dedicated to the Indian real money gaming market, but cannot reach the popularity achieved by the roulette wheel and green betting layout:

Blackjack games are ranked third with turnover share of 16.11% (January to October 2023), shrinking to 10.37% (August to October 2022);
Baccarat – 7.45%, growing to 9.04%;
Slots – 4.59%, staying pretty stable with a slight drop to 4.54% for the last three months of the analysed period.

The revealed data and industry insights are derived from one of the latest research papers by the SevenJackpots Online Casino comparison website, titled “Top Game Shows and Live Casino Classics Captivate India”. The extensive case study is based on proprietary data on online casino turnovers and active user sessions covering the first ten months of 2022.

“Lightning Roulette” Rules the Individual Game Chart

The dominance of roulette games over the Indian online casino market is further testified by the ranking of the top games from leading providers by turnover share provided by the SevenJackpots research paper.

The most popular roulette game “Lightning Roulette” is also the most popular individual casino game, contributing roughly two times larger turnovers than the runner up – the “Crazy Time” game show:

“Lightning Roulette” has a 15.68% turnover share between January and October 2022, dropping down to 11.06% for the August to October subperiod;
“Crazy Time” brought in 6.41% of operator turnovers for the full ten-month period, rising very slightly to 6.56% after August.

“Lightning Roulette” follows the rules of classic European roulette with a single “Zero” pocket, adding the special “Lightning” feature, which strikes up to five “Lucky” numbers before each round of the game starts and assigns extra large multipliers between 50x and 500x for straight-up bets on the lightning-struck numbers.

What’s even more impressive, 9 out of the 22 individual games that exceed a 1% share of Indian casino platform turnovers are in fact roulette games, with some of the most notable examples including:

“Auto-Roulette” with January-to-October turnover share of 5.36%, and August-to-October share of 4.24%;
“Roulette” with shares of 3.43% and 2.41% respectively;
“XXXTreme Lightning Roulette”with 3.18% and 5.28%;
“Roulette 8 – Indian” with 2.84% and 2.26%;
“Instant Roulette” with 2.54% and 6.42%.

Even Old Asian Games Cannot Measure Up to Roulette

Online roulette is lengths ahead of any individual type of game offered by modern casino platforms which often boast libraries containing thousands of game titles (more than 5,500 games participated in SevenJackpots study).

This is valid not only for Western games like blackjack and baccarat, but also for any Asian or originally Indian game type that has entered the online casino turnovers chart:

Old Chinese dice game Sic Bo registered 3.06% (January-October, 2022), going down to 2.66% (August-October);
Indian card-comparison classic Andar Bahar: 2.97% and 2.69% respectively;
Dragon Tiger, another binary-bet Asian card game: 2.27% jumping to 2.88%;
“Indian poker” or Teen Patti: 1.67% and 1.25%;
Chinese counting game Fan Tan: 0.34% almost doubling to 0.66% at the end of the analysed period.

Even though all these Eastern games have achieved notably lower turnover shares compared to their Western counterparts, Indian gaming tradition has established a firm foothold in the online gambling landscape, while desi players have embraced global i-gambling culture.