How a live casino table works
Each table runs inside a controlled physical studio — lighting, multiple camera angles, and a team of dealers working in shifts. The outcome of each round (the card drawn, the number the wheel lands on) is captured by an optical recognition system called GameID or OCR, which translates the physical event into digital data and syncs it to the player's interface within a few hundred milliseconds. That recognition layer is what lets the same physical result be distributed simultaneously to thousands of players in separate sessions, each with their own bet history and isolated chat. The lag between the action on the physical table and the update on the player's screen is one of the main quality signals for a live casino provider — above one or two seconds, the experience already reads as broken. Larger studios run multiple tables of the same game in parallel — several roulette or baccarat tables running at once with different dealers — to absorb demand peaks without forming an access queue, and often offer dealers in more than one language to serve different markets from the same physical setup.
Why the cost per table is higher than an RNG game
A slot or an electronic roulette (RNG) runs in software, with no marginal cost per connected player. A live casino table, by contrast, carries real fixed cost: studio, camera equipment, the GameID system, and above all the team of dealers, supervisors, and technicians staffing continuous shifts, often 24 hours a day. That cost exists regardless of how many players are betting on the table at any given moment — which is why the shared-table model, where several operators split the same broadcast, is the market's default format. To cover 24 hours of operation with breaks and shift changes, a mid-sized studio typically keeps three to four dealers per table just to keep that one table running all day, not counting floor supervisors and the technical staff supporting the stream — a fixed-cost structure that no RNG game carries.
Dedicated or shared table: what changes in the contract?
This comes down to the handle volume an operator can generate in the vertical. A shared table is the same broadcast sold by a game provider to dozens of operators at once — studio cost is spread across all of them, and access typically falls under the platform's standard revenue-share contract on GGR generated. A dedicated table is exclusive to one operator (sometimes with the dealer wearing that operator's branding), which usually requires a guaranteed minimum monthly volume or an additional flat fee, because the provider is reserving studio, staff, and time slot for that one operator alone. Dedicated-table contracts usually run a minimum of twelve months, because the provider needs to amortize the upfront investment in studio and staff training over a longer period than a simple shared-table integration, which can go live in a few weeks.
| Characteristic | Shared table | Dedicated table |
|---|---|---|
| Cost to the operator | Included in the standard revenue share | Additional flat fee or guaranteed minimum volume |
| Branding | The game provider's | Can carry the operator's own brand |
| Volume needed to justify it | Low — cost spread across several operators | High — needs to justify an exclusive studio |
| Typical use | Most white-label operators | Large operators or those with a distinct market position |
In Brazil, baccarat, roulette, and crazy-time-style game shows drive much of live casino volume, alongside blackjack — games with rules simple enough to follow on stream and a short round cycle, which favors longer sessions even on mobile connections.