The games

What is actually in a British casino lobby

A casino lobby is assembled rather than built. Almost every brand on this site licenses its games from the same handful of studios, which is why two sites with different names and different colours behave identically at the moment a game opens.

A «lobby» is assembled rather than built

Almost every brand on this site licenses its games from the same handful of studios, which is the single most useful thing to know about a casino «lobby» and the thing its marketing works hardest to obscure; two sites with different names, different colours and different owners will behave identically at the moment a game opens, because the behaviour belongs to the game and the game belongs to somebody else.

The supplier relationship is licensed in its own right. "Remote gambling software" is an entitlement on the Gambling Commission's «register» (a list a public authority keeps and publishes), held by the studios rather than by the operators, and three of our seven «licence holders» carry it as well, which is how a «platform» company supplies games to brands other than its own.

• Slotsthe bulk of every lobbyHow a British slot is built, what the stake limit changed, and where the return figure comes from.
• Slots by themeten themesThe themes a lobby is actually built from, each with the mechanics that usually come with it.
• The slot machine, 1895 to nowLiberty Bell to MegawaysWhere the fruit symbols came from, why a British pub machine held money back, and what a random number generator replaced.
• Live dealer tablesa studio, not a programWhere the tables are filmed, who runs the studios, and why the house edge here is fixed by the rules rather than by a setting.
• Progressive jackpotsa slice of every stakeHow a network pot is funded, and why the published return of the game is lower while the pot is low.
• Return and volatilitytwo numbers, two meaningsWhat a return figure is an average of, and why two games with the same figure feel nothing alike.
• Table gameswhere the edge is in the rulesRoulette, blackjack and baccarat, and the single rule change that doubles what the wheel takes.
• Video pokerthe paytable is the gameThe one casino game whose return you can read off the machine before you play it.

What is in a British lobby, in the order of how much of it there is

Slots are the bulk of it, by a margin that surprises people who have not counted: a mid-sized British lobby carries between eight hundred and three thousand of them, and perhaps forty table games; they are also the only product with a stake limit written into the operating licence, which is five pounds a game cycle, or two for players aged eighteen to twenty-four.

Live dealer tables are the fastest-growing part and the most expensive to run, because they are television studios with croupiers in them rather than software. Table games in software form sit underneath, cheaper to offer and considerably cheaper to play, since «the house edge» of a software roulette wheel is identical to the live one and the «minimum stake» is a fraction.

Bingo, where the licence allows it, is a separate product with a separate economy. Video poker is the smallest category and the only one whose exact return you can calculate from the screen!

The number that describes a game, and the one that describes how it feels

Every game published by a licensed studio carries a return-to-player figure, tested by an independent laboratory and published by the studio rather than by the operator. It is an average over a very large number of plays, and it is the only number on the screen that means precisely what it says.

Volatility is the other one, it is usually published as a word rather than a figure, and it describes the shape of the distribution rather than its centre. Two games with an identical return of ninety-six per cent will feel nothing alike if one pays small amounts often and the other pays almost nothing until it pays a great deal, and the second is where most modern slot design has gone.

Where the real differences between operators are

Not in the games, which are mostly the same games. The differences that matter are the size of the catalogue, whether the operator has exclusives from a studio, which live studio it uses, and whether the lobby's search and filtering are usable, which sounds trivial until you try to find one game among two thousand.

And the licence, which is where this site started. A lobby can only contain what the entitlements «permit»: four of the twenty-four brands here may not run a bingo room, three may take a bet on a computer-generated match and not a real one, and the lobby reflects the «register» (a list a public authority keeps and publishes) whether or not anybody says so.

Questions readers ask

Are the games the same at every casino?

Largely, because almost every operator licenses them from the same studios. What differs is the size of the catalogue, any exclusive titles an operator has negotiated, which live studio it uses and how usable the lobby is; the games themselves behave identically, because the behaviour belongs to the supplier.

Who makes the games, and are they licensed too?

Studios rather than operators, and yes: «remote gambling software» is its own entitlement on the Gambling Commission's register. Three of the seven licence holders on this site carry it as well, which is how a platform company supplies brands other than its own.

Does the £5 stake limit apply to everything in the lobby?

No. It applies to online slots and not to roulette, blackjack, baccarat, «live dealer» games, bingo or sports betting. A reader who has absorbed the figure as a general rule will be surprised by the first roulette table he opens.

Can an operator change a game's return figure?

Some games are supplied in more than one return configuration, and the operator chooses which to run. The figure in force is published in the game's own information panel, which is where to read it rather than on any comparison site, including this one.

By the UK Pound Casino editorial team · Last updated November 2026 · Online since 2026