Scientific Games will strengthen its igaming content portfolio with the acquisition of Swedish games developer Elk Studios.
The gaming solutions giant now will look to roll out Elk’s content in the North American market, as well as continuing to strengthen its position in the UK and Europe.
Terms of the deal have not been disclosed.
Based in Stockholm, Sweden, Elk specialises in mobile games, and has launched titles such as Wild Toro II, Katmandu and Cygnus. It has also created X-iter, a feature that allows players to engage with a range of predefined game scenarios and modes.
The studio’s games are already live via Scientific Games’ OpenGaming aggregator platform. Following the acquisition it will continue to develop new content independently, but benefit from its new owner’s resources such as commercial scale, market reach, game IP and data analytics.
“Acquiring Elk Studios demonstrates once again our commitment to make targeted, value enhancing investments designed to advance our cross-platform content capabilities,” Scientific Games’ president and chief executive Barry Cottle commented.
Cottle said the Elk team was “packed with talent”, and would enhance Scientific Games’ existing in-house capabilities.
“The highly synergistic combination of their top-ranked games and our leading OpenGaming ecosystem offers exciting distribution opportunities in the US and Canada,” he added.
Elk chief executive Filip Säfbeck described the studio’s acquisition as “the fruit of many years of hard work by a team that is fully committed to crafting high-quality online gaming experiences”. “We see it as the perfect time to join the Scientific Games team, given that our ambitions to grow through innovation and into the US and Canada are in total alignment,” he explained.
“This acquisition offers us a solid base to bring to market a wide range of exciting new slots more smoothly than ever to online casino partners across the globe.”
The deal comes Scientific Games after struck deals to acquire live dealer specialist Authentic Gaming, marking the company’s first foray into the vertical, in addition to its purchase of gaming content studio Lightning Box in August to support its gaming-focused growth strategy.
Scientific Games in August announced the sale of its lottery business to Brookfield Business Partners and divested its OpenBet sports betting business to IMG owner Endeavor in September, in order to pivot to a pure gaming business.
