BetMGM’s 4 Ball Extra Bet Roulette Blends Tech With Big Wins
The line between live dealer and digital is blurring fast. And BetMGM’s newest roulette hybrid proves just how far that innovation has come. In partnership with Inspired Entertainment, they’ve launched a four-ball roulette variant that blends traditional gameplay with CGI and recorded hosts, all in a cost-effective, tech-forward package.
BetMGM announced a new 4 Ball Extra Bet for roulette. © Leo Visions, Unsplash
Key Facts:
- Online casinos continue to blend traditional and live dealer-style games.
- BetMGM and Inspired Entertainment are trialing a new hybrid roulette game.
- It uses CGI and prerecorded hosts to simulate live dealer play.
- BetMGM signed an exclusive 3-month deal for the 4 Ball Extra Bet game.
BetMGM has consistently been at the forefront of the live dealer movement in online casino operations, having opened studios in Michigan, New Jersey, and Pennsylvania, as well as at their MGM Grand Casino on the Las Vegas Strip.
The MGM Grand is primarily aimed at international customers and is a partnership with Playtech, whereas their past studio partner was Evolution.
Both the New Jersey studio at the Borgata in Atlantic City and the MGM Grand Studio have had great success with a hybrid live dealer game.
A live roulette game on the actual casino floor is live-streamed to players within New Jersey in the Borgata instance or worldwide when discussing the MGM Grand.
It gives gamblers in Monmouth or Melbourne the same view as a player standing at the rail, betting alongside guests on the real casino floor. It has proven extremely popular with online punters and has a reduced cost footprint.
Since instead of paying a “host” as many online live dealers are referred to, they just use a dealer that is already busy dealing to a full roulette table on the casino floor.
The wonders of technology enable hundreds or even thousands of additional bettors to wager on this roulette table without incurring any additional costs beyond those associated with streaming the game, as well as minimal expenses for servers, software, and other related services.
However, as companies like MGM become more familiar with what the new technology can do and what their guests want to see, they can begin to truly innovate and try new concepts that both attract gamblers and keep costs low.
Inspired Entertainment Joins the Chat
As early as 2023, BetMGM initiated a partnership with a company from the UK called Inspired Entertainment. While not exactly a household name in the USA, they provide terminals, systems, and content for over 50,000 gaming machines throughout Great Britain and almost three dozen other jurisdictions worldwide.
They also produce sports-related content and amusement-style offerings in an additional 30,000 venues. While some of their developed slot content, such as Piggy Winner or Perfect Prize Pooch, may not have a fevered following, the company continues to grow across all its pipelines, notching over $300 million in revenue in 2024.
The first venture with BetMGM, almost 18 months ago, was also a hybrid dealer roulette game called MGM Bonus City.
It utilized CGI and recorded video of real dealers to provide the feel of Live Dealer Games without the need for an actual studio or a live host. This mash-up saved on labor and made the game much more secure, while few players noticed the difference.
That game would eventually be rolled out by MGM in Pennsylvania and Michigan as well. Meanwhile, the company partnered with bet365 to trial a version of this hybrid roulette game in the UK and subsequently with Rush Street Interactive for a rollout in LATAM. They rolled out a Wheel of Wins, a hybrid project similar to Caesars’.
Now they are back and partnered exclusively with BetMGM for the next three months on a newer edition of the game, which adds four balls to the wheel head-on a new inner wheel.
This allows for much larger payouts, as high as 500 to 1 in one instance if you can match colors on the outer wheel with the colors the balls land in on the inner wheel.
It utilizes the same hybrid technology as MGM Bonus City and will presumably receive just as warm a reception among New Jersey gamblers. If BetMGM is not your gambling platform of choice, don’t worry; once BetMGM’s three-month exclusive wraps up, expect this new hybrid to make its way to other operators stateside and overseas.
