Bucharest’s live casino map keeps growing: why so many dealer studios are clustering in Romania
Everything is set up when the first player connects. A presenter in a fitted jacket stands by the table, deck of cards in hand, card zone aligned, and waits for the signal from the floor manager. The studio has multiple cameras, giving different angle shots of the presenter, table, and cards. Presenters rotate every few hours. The studio is active, and somewhere in the world a player connects to a table and starts a new game.
The studio floor
One table can have six high definition cameras shooting at once. A wide angle camera shows the entire game, an overhead angle captures the card zone, and other close-up cameras capture the wheel and dealing hand and chips. Each camera cut is broadcast quality. The studio creates a casino floor experience by using lighting rigs of specific color temperature to allow legibility of cards across various screen environments.
Each table in the studio has a Game Control Unit (GCU) which is the hardware that translates a game action into a digital signal. The GCU digitizes the result of a roll of the dice or turn of the card and sends it to the broadcast. The presenter states the outcome. A broadcast of an event requires both the physical action and the presenter stating the result.
Presenters rotate every few hours. The studio manager knows how many tables are in operation and which presenters are actively working the floor. There can be over 30 tables actively in operation. This requires detailed planning and control of the presenters. There is a training process for presenters that helps them learn the proper skills and techniques to deal to the camera. It is also important for presenters to learn how to organize and work within the rules and structures of the studio. The presenters undergo training and instruction that teaches them the skills of a broadcast host and trained casino dealer.
What Bucharest Offers
When a player selects a live casino tab across international lines, it’s often because they’re interested in genuine casino floors, and staffed presenters. That live tab will also give the player a look into a studio that is working to replicate an actual casino floor. The production studio behind those scenes may be based out of Bucharest. At Swiper Live Casino, live casino tables are produced in Bucharest, with a presenter in a studio located in Bucharest, as well as cameras aimed at a gaming surface.
It also does not hurt that Romanian talent is bilingual (or multilingual), which makes game production easier. Bucharest also has a modern and reliable internet and telecommunications infrastructure, which facilitates broadcasts.
The first large-scale studio opened in September 2016 at Grand Casino Bucharest, as a result of new local gaming regulations. The second international studio opened in 2019. 2023 brought the industry even more capacity and infrastructure with the opening of studios by OnAir Entertainment and ICONIC21 (Beter Live).
It takes a deliberate decision to set up four studios in under ten years. Being in the EU since 2007 simplified doing business for studios across the continent. Romanian licenses command respect from payment processors and service platform partners. A license from a smaller jurisdiction does not have the same effect. Romanian licenses are issued for a duration of 10 years. Long-term licenses help studios to plan, for example, to install and fit out broadcast studios with specialist equipment, to provide staff with specialized training.
A Romanian production studio
The production floor of a large studio resembles a broadcast campus. A large studio in Romania is more than 15,000 square feet, with more than 100 dealer positions and up to 32 live tables at the same time. A large, open, well-designed space with sightlines for cameras and optimal visibility for production personnel to control the audio and video feeds is essential to effective studio production. Acoustic barriers help to isolate different audio feeds.
OnAir Entertainment’s Bucharest branch employs approximately 350 people, including studio managers, technicians, and dealers. A large gaming company partnering with Pragmatic Play and situated at AFI TECH PARK, Bucharest, employs more than 4,000 people. The Ezugi studio in Bucharest’s Casino Palace employs over 180 dealers.
Those numbers reflect the scope of the industry. Those facilities employ and train dealers year-round and have dedicated infrastructure for dealing with the growth of the industry.
One country, many customers
At 93% fiber-optic coverage, according to FTTH Council Europe data, Romania leads the rest of Europe and offers reliable networks with low latency. A studio that provides live streaming to multiple customers must be equipped to handle any load that a customer may require. Bucharest has the capacity to do this.
The language aspect is equally key. OnAir Entertainment’s studio in Bucharest broadcasts in Romanian, Italian and English. Dealers are hired based on their skills in the languages spoken in the markets they serve. Thus, a Romanian dealer does not work a table in Italian, just because that table is located in Romania. Rather, the studio hires dealers based on the languages of the markets they serve. This international approach gives the studio a large reach in multiple markets.
From a cost perspective, it makes sense to operate out of a single facility and project a signal to multiple markets in Europe. Operating out of multiple facilities in multiple markets would increase costs significantly. By operating out of a single facility, the studio projects multiple signals in different languages to different markets.
Smart Studio technology enhances OnAir Entertainment’s capabilities. A single table can serve multiple online casino brands. Each online casino is able to customize the virtual background to feature the online casino’s branding. For a production facility, this technology allows a gaming studio to create multiple broadcasts to players of online casinos using a single table.
Behind the Screen
Most players viewing a live stream see a presenter situated at a table. Presenters are just one part of a larger production chain that players rarely think about.
In the case of a live stream, the process begins at the camera array on the table, and continues via the studio’s broadcast network, to the fiber infrastructure and finally the casino’s server. The server is responsible for routing the signal to players” devices.
Each component of that signal stream has a latency, and the studio’s technical team is concerned with managing that latency and ensuring the total turnaround time for a given presentation is as low as possible.
Audio is produced and routed separately from video. The camera feeds are routed to a given output by a director or an automated system. A floor manager oversees all components and automation. When a fault occurs on a table, a presenter may be replaced, or the table may be paused. When an automation fault occurs, the stream is simply rerouted.
24/7 operations
A news broadcast studio goes dark at the end of the news broadcast day. A live casino studio does not go dark.
Shift patterns in Bucharest studios cater to the global player population. Presenters cover European time zones. Traffic from the Americas is covered by nocturnal shifts. The Asian player markets are covered by early shifts. Presenters work a few hours at a time with rest built into the shifts. A presenter position is covered by a number of presenters throughout the week. All of the presenters covering a particular position are trained to cover the position and are required to hit the same camera marks.
New hires in Bucharest go through training to learn the rules of the games, along with dealing and broadcasting skills. This combined training is required for new hires to learn the technical aspects of dealing, all while maintaining the appearance of a live, rather than a pre-recorded, event.
Many of the dealers are students working a flexible schedule. The work provides dealing and broadcast training and industry experience, and the dealers provide a large and easily accessible workforce for the studios. This also explains the rapid expansion of Bucharest studios. Other cities may not have this same workforce available and able to quickly adapt to the dealing and broadcasting industries.
A city becoming a production hub for the online gambling industry
Bucharest has quickly adapted to the needs of the online gambling industry, earning a reputation as a production hub for live dealer games. Studios have created a self-reinforcing system by training dealers and staff to develop the necessary skills for live streaming. Studios and service providers specialize in the industry. Bucharest is recognized within the industry for producing the talent necessary to set up and run live dealer games. Understandably, when a studio decides to build new production facilities, Bucharest is often top-of-mind.
Romania offers a number of advantages for the online gambling industry, most notably a large, multilingual and educated workforce. Romania leads the rest of Europe in fiber-optic networks, and the cost of production makes large-scale, real-time game processing facilities viable. In 2015, Romania passed a number of key regulations for the online gambling industry, and ever since, many production facilities have opened. A player opens a game streaming session from somewhere in Europe. The feed returns to Bucharest.