Why Table Games Still Matter in a Slots-Dominated Online Casino Market

Slots account for the overwhelming majority of Britain’s online casino revenue, but they do not represent the full range of play taking place on casino platforms. Poker, blackjack, roulette and live dealer games operate very differently, giving table-based formats a role that cannot be measured by revenue share alone.

The latest Gambling Commission statistics underline the gap. Online casino games generated £5.0 billion in gross gambling yield during 2024/25, with £4.2 billion coming from slots. Around £800 million therefore came from other online casino games, including poker and traditional table formats.

Slots Dominate Revenue, but Casinos Are Built Around More Than Slots

Slots may generate more than four-fifths of online casino GGY, yet casino platforms continue to carry broader catalogs. Alongside slots, platforms like NetBet online casino in the UK also host a wide array of blackjack, roulette and live casino games, reflecting the mixed-game structure common across the regulated market.

Those products can sit next to one another while working in very different ways. Slots use software-generated outcomes without competition between players. Roulette is built around a fixed set of wheel outcomes, while blackjack gives players decisions over how a hand is played against the dealer.

Poker sits slightly apart from that model. In a conventional cash game or tournament, players compete against one another and the operator generally earns revenue through participation fees or rake rather than taking the opposing side of each hand. The Gambling Commission guidance records poker GGY through registration and participation fees, including rake taken from pots. A poker player assessing ranges, position and an opponent’s decisions is dealing with incomplete information and another person’s choices. That differs from choosing whether to hit or stand in blackjack, even if both games use cards and familiar table layouts.

Poker Provides a Natural Bridge to Other Table Formats

There is still measurable interest in casino games beyond slots. Gambling Commission research into online casino games excluding slots found that 36% of respondents had spent money on virtual roulette during the previous 12 months. Poker and live roulette were both at 29%, while live and virtual blackjack each reached 27%.

The study involved 617 respondents, so the figures should not be treated as national market shares. Even so, responses were spread widely across roulette, poker and blackjack rather than clustering around one alternative to slots.

For poker players, card-based casino games can look familiar before their underlying structure is considered. A comparison of online poker and live dealer poker shows that surface similarities only go so far. Online poker usually pits participants against other players, whereas games such as Casino Hold’em and Caribbean Stud use recognizable poker hands within a house-banked format.

Player-versus-player poker typically relies on rake or tournament fees. House-banked table games instead build the operator’s advantage into the rules and payout structure. For a poker audience, that is arguably the more useful dividing line. Two games can both involve five-card hands and still offer very different forms of decision-making.

Live Tables Have Added Another Layer to the Market

Digital casino gaming has also split traditional table games into virtual and live formats. Virtual roulette and blackjack generate outcomes through software, while live casino products stream physical tables and dealers to an online interface.

Player behavior suggests both formats have established audiences. In the same Gambling Commission research, 29% of respondents reported playing live roulette during the previous year compared with 36% for virtual roulette. Blackjack was evenly split, with 27% reporting both live and virtual versions.

Pace also appears to matter. Across seven non-slot online casino categories, between 71% and 78% of respondents considered the speed of play “just right." That helps explain why table games continue to sit alongside faster slot formats.

The Gambling Survey for Great Britain 2025, published in July 2026, found that 38% of surveyed adults had gambled online during the previous four weeks. Once people whose only online activity was buying lottery draw tickets were removed, the proportion was 16%. The survey does not track how many people move from poker into blackjack or roulette. It does show that online gambling is now an established channel, giving different game types room to coexist within the same platform.

Table Games Still Give the Casino Lobby Its Range

The revenue picture is not especially close. Slots produced £4.2 billion of the £5.0 billion generated by online casino games in 2024/25. Yet that dominance has not pushed poker, blackjack, or roulette out of the lobby.

Their value is partly in contrast. Poker offers competition against other players. Blackjack puts more emphasis on decisions within a fixed ruleset. Roulette reduces the format to wagers on a wheel, while live versions add a physical table and dealer to the digital experience.

That variety is one reason table games continue to matter even in a slots-led market. For poker players especially, the interesting differences lie in who they are playing against, how the game is structured and how much influence their decisions have over each round. Putting all of those products inside one casino lobby does not make them interchangeable. It simply makes those distinctions easier to see.