eGaming Monitor festive slot charts: Who was the Christmas number one?

Take your best titles, roll out an extreme version, add a Christmas sequel and world domination will follow. Pragmatic Play’s 1000 versions are still rubbing shoulders with their originals and the advent of Christmas reskins means that Gates Of Olympus, Big Bass and Sweet Bonanza all have three titles in the top 20. Sugar Rush Xmas is the only one that seems to be on Santa’s naughty list.

Top 20 games by distribution

A ’1000’ version does of course leave scope for something more juicy in the future: Big Bass 2000, 3000 this time next year perhaps? Provided you stick with a number, that is. For those who reach the limits of word-based sequels, beware. It’s all too reminiscent of the Megaways to Mightyways, Jumboways and Infinireels jostling of the past.

Gold Blitz Ultimate (Fortune Factory Studios) didn’t quite make the cut in time for our main charts but did give a boost to sister products Gold Blitz and Gold Blitz Extreme. On current performance, it should at the very least over-exceed the extremes of boundless expectations come January. The question is, though, how do you really trump an Ultimate version? How do you best the best?

You might look to emulate the Bourne franchise, whose Identity became a Supremacy and prematurely concluded with the Ultimatum, initially envisaged to be the final film of a trilogy. Roll on a couple of years and the desire for more was only inhibited by semantics.

Unable to surpass an ‘ultimate’, the name of the next ‘final’ movie, Number 4, was a stripped-back and simple Jason Bourne – genius really, in the sense of demonstrating that less can be more. That is until the clamour started for yet another sequel, due to be launched in 2025. Presumably they could have trimmed back further to a snappy Jason, much like the biggest popstars who own a first name. Instead, they chose to summarize their own conundrum of transcending superlatives. This year’s sequel will be called The Bourne Dilemma.

So Gold Blitz Dilemma vs Big Bass 10,000 next Christmas, perhaps?

Finally, and it should be more than a footnote, we observe that Aviator is closing in on the podium…

The Christmas Charts 2024

Ok, now for the battle of the baubles. Unwrapped below are the top 20 Christmas-themed casino games, limited as per previous years (and our Halloween/Easter charts) to a single top title per studio. Games are ranked by distribution across all pages of 3,500 operators globally.

Overall, we considered 789 Christmas titles, of which 206 were launched this year. A bumper festival again, even when compared with the 141 releases in 2023 and 111 the year before. For Pragmatic Play, it’s their latest release, Gates Of Olympus X-Mas 1000 (Pragmatic Play) that tops the chart.

Almost half of our Christmas crackers were new releases, up from a third last year. Back catalogues take most spots, but it is good to rejoice in fresh content. Our second chart below looks exclusively at the new Christmas-themed games, where some fresh cheer joins the 9 from above.

Not a turkey in sight but a rooster, the usual fish and three porkers make it onto the Christmas menu – a different set of piggies, of course, to those last month who had their snouts in the game IP trough. The challenge to make a twisted and/or irreverent take on Christmas was vacated by Nolimit City and grabbed by Endorphina. Jolly Santa sounds innocent enough, but the scantily clad, gun-toting joker targets the naughty list.

It’s great to see more new names this year, including Lucksome, Octoplay and AvatarUX Studios.

The most prolific developer of Christmas slots is still Spinomenal, with only Wazdan keeping pace on the seasonal front.  Fazi, Pragmatic Play, Novomatic, Merkur and Endorphina have also stepped up their festive output since last year.

Game Distribution and Sourcing

Dealmaking is traditionally quiet before Christmas with many companies keeping their powder dry for ICE. Tell that to EveryMatrix, though, who continue to plug in new content month after month.

Biggest aggregator dealmakers

TaDa Gaming and 1Spin4Win remain the busiest studio dealmakers, securing various new aggregator partnerships in recent months.

Biggest studio dealmakers

The Big Casino Review 2024

Wishing you a belated Happy New Year and don’t forget to look out for our Casino Review 2024, including game production and market shares, operator content comparisons and more. A flavour of what to look out for can be found on our latest animated chart, showing the battle for shelf space between the top 20 studios last year.

* Please note that some charts above are populated with live data so please ensure the month of December 2024 is selected in the drop-downs to match the analysis.

**The interactive games chart at the top excludes live games and table games. Game rankings are determined by the number of game appearances on the casino homepages of more than 3,500 casino sites. To access many other charts including game rankings, live and table games, positions on subpages or to filter game performance by game theme, game feature, market or operator, please get in touch with our partner, egamingmonitor.com. Egamingmonitor covers 70,000 games, 1,700 suppliers and 3,500+ operators. 

*** The animated chart from the link above includes all game types such as live games and also considers all subpages of casino sites too.