SuperCasino
SuperCasino was a British interactive gambling television brand operated by NetPlay TV plc from London. It began life in April 2005 as Vegas 24/7, described at the time as the world's first interactive casino channel, and it went on to become one of the most recognisable late-night fixtures of early digital television in the United Kingdom. In its best-known form, SuperCasino broadcast live roulette and other casino games from studios in London, with viewers able to register, deposit and play along at home while the action unfolded on screen. From September 2009 its programmes were carried every night in late-night slots on Channel 5, a terrestrial platform that took the brand far beyond its original satellite audience. The dedicated channel closed on 2 March 2018, and the wider television operation was wound down after its owner, the Swedish gaming group Betsson, decided not to renew NetPlay's broadcast contracts. The SuperCasino name continued as an online casino brand after its television era ended.
Origins as Vegas 24/7
SuperCasino was launched in April 2005 as Vegas 24/7, broadcast on the Sky satellite platform. Contemporary listings place its early home in the gaming section of the Sky electronic programme guide, and the channel's founding pitch was novelty: rather than showing recorded casino programming or studio chat, it offered a live casino floor adapted for television, with real dealers, real wheels and real-money play driven by viewers at home. The channel was founded by David Wainwright, who subsequently became a pioneer in the live-dealer sector, launching live studios for more than thirty large operators. The business behind the channel later reversed into NetPlay TV plc and was listed on the London Stock Exchange, at one stage reaching a market capitalisation reported at around £80 million. The company also received investment from Playtech, the gambling software group, before eventually being acquired by Betsson. Those corporate milestones matter because SuperCasino was never simply a television programme; from the start it was a customer-acquisition business in which the broadcast was the shop window for an online casino.
Becoming Live Roulette and SuperCasino
The Vegas 24/7 brand was dropped in favour of Live Roulette on 14 August 2006, after Vegas247 Limited was acquired by Stream plc, the company that became NetPlay TV. The narrower name reflected the product that viewers most strongly associated with the service: a live roulette wheel, presented on screen, around which the whole interactive proposition was built. In October 2008 the service was integrated into NetPlay's SuperCasino family of products, which included Live Roulette, Live Blackjack and other casino games, and the television service took the SuperCasino name. The rebranding aligned the channel with the SuperCasino.com website, so that what viewers saw on television and what they could play online carried a single identity. SuperCasino was licensed and regulated by the Alderney Gambling Control Commission through an e-gambling licence, reflecting the offshore licensing structure then common among British-facing interactive gambling operators. Its broadcasts came live from studios in London, with additional broadcast facilities in Guernsey in the Channel Islands.
The Channel 5 years
The decisive step in SuperCasino's history came in 2009. In May of that year the regulator Ofcom decided that television gambling services were, for scheduling purposes, little different from teleshopping. That ruling opened a large new market: terrestrial broadcasters could carry interactive gaming in teleshopping windows, and NetPlay moved quickly to exploit it. Within weeks the company signed six airtime deals, including what was described as the first interactive TV casino on Scotland's STV, and a five-year agreement with Channel Five under which SuperCasino.com would be broadcast on the terrestrial channel in late-night teleshopping windows. SuperCasino began airing on Channel 5 in September 2009, initially on a limited number of nights each week, rising to six nights and then to seven nights a week in 2010. The programme typically ran from around midnight into the early hours, roughly between 00:00 and 04:00, and was often simulcast on related channels. NetPlay later stated that the brand produced more than seventy hours of live television a month on Channel 5 alone.
The Channel 5 partnership proved durable. In April 2015 NetPlay confirmed that it had extended the agreement until 2018, covering its existing post-midnight teleshopping airtime, significant pre-midnight advertising, and provisions for new brands and show formats. Announcing the extension, NetPlay's chief executive Bjarke Larsen described television as being at the core of the group's marketing strategy and as an important and unique source of customer acquisition. For Channel 5, the arrangement filled late-night hours with a programme that generated revenue rather than consuming a programme budget, a model that explained why the format survived for almost a decade on a national terrestrial channel.
How the programmes worked
SuperCasino's format was built around participation rather than passive viewing. A presenter and live dealers fronted continuous casino games, above all roulette in its several house variants, which over time included Live Roulette, Roulette Express and Roulette Express Premium. Viewers registered with SuperCasino, deposited funds and placed bets online or by phone while watching the wheel spin on television, creating what the industry came to call a second-screen experience: the television provided the shared live event, while the betting itself happened on the viewer's own device or account. The channel also carried blackjack and other casino games, and its online operation later supplemented its own London studio output with live-dealer games supplied by Playtech, whose dealers were streamed from a studio in Riga, Latvia. Players could take part through personal computers and, as smartphones spread, through Android and iOS devices, so the television broadcast increasingly functioned as the public face of a multi-platform casino.
Advertising and public profile
Because television was its main recruiting tool, SuperCasino invested heavily in broadcast advertising on major UK networks. Its most famous campaign was the "wanna be famous" series of advertisements, directed by Mark Lediard and built around a backing track of the same name by Dave James. The campaign gave the brand a public profile well beyond the audience that stayed up to watch live roulette after midnight, and it illustrates the economics of the model: the late-night programme itself converted viewers into players, while conventional advertising kept the name in front of the wider public during normal viewing hours. By the mid-2010s NetPlay described SuperCasino and its sister brand Jackpot247 as producing a nightly presence across British commercial television, with SuperCasino anchored on Channel 5 and Jackpot247 on ITV.
Regulation and licensing
SuperCasino operated in a part of broadcasting that existed only because regulators allowed it to. Its television presence depended on Ofcom's 2009 classification of interactive gambling services alongside teleshopping, which permitted terrestrial broadcasters to devote a limited number of hours per day to such material. Its gambling operations, meanwhile, were licensed offshore: SuperCasino held an e-gambling licence from the Alderney Gambling Control Commission, and its facilities in Guernsey reflected that Channel Islands licensing base. The combination was characteristic of British interactive gaming in the late 2000s and early 2010s, in which London studios and national television exposure sat alongside offshore licensing and regulation. The brand's broadcast area on its own channel covered the United Kingdom except Northern Ireland, a reminder that gambling law and licensing conditions varied across the UK and shaped where such services could be offered.
Ownership: from NetPlay TV to Betsson
For most of its life SuperCasino was owned by NetPlay TV plc, the AIM-listed interactive gaming company headquartered in London. NetPlay's portfolio also included Jackpot247, which broadcast on ITV, and the Vernons brand, and its strategy rested on using television as the engine of customer acquisition for online casino, bingo and sportsbook products. In February 2017 the Stockholm-listed Betsson AB agreed to acquire NetPlay TV in a recommended cash offer valuing the company at about £26 million, or 9p per share, and the acquisition was completed at the end of March 2017 after approval by NetPlay's shareholders and the High Court. Betsson presented the purchase as part of its strategy of acquiring smaller operators that could be integrated into its systems, and it took control of Jackpot247, SuperCasino and Vernons in the process. NetPlay was delisted from the London Stock Exchange following the takeover, and its back-office functions, including customer service and payments, were progressively centralised in Malta.
Closure of the channel
The dedicated SuperCasino channel closed on 2 March 2018. The television story did not end with a single switch-off, however, because the brand's main exposure by then came through its Channel 5 slot rather than its own channel. In late 2018 Betsson confirmed that it would not renew NetPlay's television contracts with ITV and Channel 5 when they expired during 2019, and that the division's London office would close, affecting around forty staff, with the brands to be operated online only from Malta. Betsson's management explained the decision as a move to a more digital-focused strategy for the brands. Staff were to remain employed through 2019 while the contracts ran down, with some offered relocation to Malta. In this way SuperCasino's television presence, which had begun on satellite in 2005 and reached a national terrestrial audience from 2009, faded out as the broadcast agreements expired rather than ending in a single abrupt cancellation.
Legacy
SuperCasino's significance lies in what it proved about the convergence of television and online gambling. It demonstrated, earlier than most, that a live studio broadcast could function simultaneously as entertainment, advertising and a working casino floor, and that viewers would play along in real time from home. The model it pioneered on Sky in 2005, and scaled through Ofcom's teleshopping ruling and the Channel 5 partnership from 2009, anticipated the live-dealer streaming that later became a standard part of online casinos, where games are now presented from dedicated studios to players on phones and computers rather than through a television channel. After television, the SuperCasino brand continued online under Betsson, operated from Malta, as one of the longest-running names in British online casino gaming. The channel itself, broadcasting in standard definition in a 16:9 picture format from London, belongs to a distinct era of British broadcasting: the brief period when interactive gambling was a nightly part of the terrestrial television landscape.
