Evoverse: Why case openings could be iGaming’s next big revenue opportunity

Case opening is rapidly moving beyond gaming, with an increasingly mature audience and growing interest from iGaming and US sweepstakes operators. Ivan Bebko, CEO and co-founder of Evoverse, believes the sector could become a major new revenue opportunity for established operators looking to engage existing players in new ways. In this interview, Bebko discusses the growth of the vertical, why operators already have a key advantage, how EvoCase enables brands to launch quickly, and why the future of case opening could extend far beyond gambling into collectibles, fashion and e-commerce.

Case opening has become one of gaming’s fastest-growing entertainment verticals, with billions of dollars in annual activity across the gaming ecosystem. What’s behind that growth, and why is now the right time for iGaming operators to enter the space?

The growth is being fueled by an audience that has grown up. People who were playing Counter-Strike and opening cases ten years ago are now pushing thirty, with money behind them. They’re comfortable with the mechanic and the best bit is that the prize is now a tangible asset.

The wider culture has moved as well. Blind boxes, Pokemon cards, those sealed bags with a figurine inside that you see in every shopping centre now. Nobody calls that gambling, but the mechanic is identical.

And a case isn’t a slot, which is where I think a lot of operators get it wrong. Nobody’s chasing a multiplier. They want one specific item, they know exactly which one, and it might be a skin or it might be a watch that they get their hands on two weeks later. Getting something you already wanted for a tenth of retail price is a completely different feeling to hitting a bonus round.

As for timing, the big operators still haven’t turned their full attention to the movement. They’ve spent 15 years learning acquisition, payments, and how to run something at scale. Most of this category is being led by younger brands without that background.

EvoCase is built as a turnkey platform, rather than just a frontend. If an iGaming operator wanted to get into case opening, how simple is it to launch, and how much of the work does Evoverse take care of behind the scenes?

We can launch in two to three weeks if the operator knows what they want. This is a live, fully branded platform ready to go.

It isn’t a frontend with your logo dropped on top. We build around the brand you already have, and if you need something the platform doesn’t do yet, we go and build that too.

You’ll also get the back office, the analytics, our own CRM, and the AI tooling we use for fraud and for reading player behaviour. Enough to start sending traffic on day one.

The tech is the easy half though. We’ve built a few of these now, so the most useful thing we bring is knowing how these players behave once they’re on the site, and what makes them come back. We don’t just hand over a login and wish you luck.
Commercially it’s revenue share with a small setup fee, so our incentive is the partner’s growth, not a one-off sale.

You’ve said that iGaming operators already have “the hardest part solved” because they have an existing player audience. How can operators use that to gain engagement and revenue through case openings, and where do you see the biggest opportunities for increasing player lifetime value?

They’ve already paid for the player. That’s the progress stopper that affects new case sites, and an established group already has thousands or millions of active players in a database.

Operators know how to move people around. Multi-brand operators retarget across their own brands constantly, sweepstakes especially. They already have the infrastructure and marketing playbook to make it work.

What changes is the product you’re marketing them. Push a player from one casino to another casino and you’ve offered them the same thing in a different colour. Case opening isn’t like that. You’re saying try something you haven’t done before, and people react differently to that.

Then there’s lifetime value, which is where the real money is. Every new way a player can spend time with you is another chance to earn from someone you already paid to acquire. A company that has a large active player base, case opening can create a new revenue stream from an audience already curated.

For an established iGaming operator, why should case openings be viewed as an opportunity to increase the value of an existing player base rather than simply another product to add to the portfolio?

Adding a product and building a revenue stream are two very different things.

Throw another casino into the existing mix and mostly you’re taking money out of your own pocket. The player has a budget and they’ll just split it. Case opening behaves differently because the mechanics are new and the reason somebody plays is different, meaning it doesn’t cannibalise casino spend on more traditional casino products.

There’s the novelty effect. Even for a customer who knows your brand well, a case site feels like somewhere new, and that curiosity is what gets a first deposit. You don’t get that from launching casino number four.

So for me, it’s less about asking what else goes in the portfolio and more about asking how else you can engage the players already with you. Buying new customers is the more expensive route.

There appears to be growing interest in case-opening models from the US sweepstakes sector. What are you seeing from operators and brands in that market, and what do you think makes case openings particularly attractive to the US sweepstakes audience?

There’s real interest, and it makes sense when you look at what those operators are good at.

Sweepstakes brands nailed US acquisition, which is really hard to do. They run Meta, TikTok and other paid channels effectively, they know their CPA and CPM, and they understand the performance economics. Sweeps should see this as a complementary opportunity to increase revenue, not something they need to begin from scratch.

The model sits close enough as well. A case product can potentially be structured along similar lines with the right legal framework behind it. Sweepstake operators also have the databases – a large US audience who are already comfortable with a gamified product. For them, this is diversification on a ground they know.

And I’d stress the importance of legal work. Anyone considering this needs their own lawyers, because the detail is where it goes wrong.

EvoCase supports a number of different models, from skins and rarity-driven drops to physical rewards and collectibles. What differentiates EvoCase from other case-opening solutions on the market, and how much freedom does an operator have to shape the product around its own brand and audience?

The platform covers essentially everything you need to launch and operate: skins, rarity-driven drops, physical rewards, collectibles and the mechanics around them.

That isn’t the interesting part though. Any decent platform does that. The difference is talent and technology behind it. We’re a development house first, so when a partner wants something the product doesn’t do, we quickly build it.

Anyone who’s been on a turnkey deal knows the score. You ask for one mechanic, or even a colour change, and you join a long queue. Six weeks later you’re still in it. Everyone ends up launching more or less the same site.

So the freedom here is real. Somebody comes to us with an experimental idea for a drop mechanic and our first instinct is to work out whether it’s buildable, not to explain why it’s out of scope. A full platform plus the people to extend it is what lets a partner launch something that’ll stand out in a crowded space.

Looking ahead, how do you see the case-opening opportunity developing for iGaming operators over the next few years, and what would you say to an operator that is considering entering the space now?

I’ve no doubt that the opportunity will be several times bigger in a few years. Although it’ll look considerably different than it does today. Mobile will be more dominant, while new formats and mechanics will be rolled out. The reveal moment is the actual product, and you can put a reveal almost wherever you want.

That’s the part that interests me, because it doesn’t have to be gambling at all. Fashion, jewellery, collectibles, ordinary retail. Any of them could use a mystery box to give people that same few seconds of anticipation. Eventually, I think the line between case opening, gamified commerce and normal e-commerce pretty much disappears.

For an operator thinking about it now, the window is definitely open. The vertical is in its infancy so there is time to get your feet under the table. Once the bigger iGaming groups move in and once commerce brands adopt these mechanics, entering gets far more expensive.