Novomatic Casinos

Novomatic reached online gambling from the opposite direction to almost everyone else on this site. When Johann Graf founded the company in Vienna in 1980 there was no software to sell: the business was gaming machines — building cabinets for land venues, and running venues of its own — and it stayed that way for years before anything went online. The company that grew out of those cabinets now operates in more than 50 countries, employs around 24,000 people and supplies physical casinos and virtual ones in roughly equal standing, which makes it one of the few genuine giants covered in this section. And yet the list of Novomatic casinos above is short. That gap between the company's size and its UK online footprint is the honest theme of this page, so it's worth explaining rather than papering over.

From Viennese cabinets to Greentube

The games-and-software side of the business sits inside the Novomatic AG group and works through subsidiaries spread across Europe. The one that matters most to an online player is Greentube, the group's interactive division: founded in 1998 as an independent Viennese developer, majority-acquired by Novomatic in 2010, and since then the outfit responsible for moving the cabinet catalogue onto the web. Alongside it sit Astra Gaming and Mazooma Interactive Games, and for a few years the roster also included Extreme Live Gaming, the group's live-casino arm — a chapter that gets its own section below because it ended in a sale.

On paper the company's regulatory position is as solid as you'd expect from four decades of supplying one of the most regulated markets anywhere. Its products carry certificates of suitability in every jurisdiction where they're available, and the United Kingdom Gambling Commission is among the authorities attesting the company's legitimacy. Read that for exactly what it is, though: the certificates cover the software and nothing else. The licence that covers your money is the operator's own UKGC one, and no amount of supplier paperwork stands in for it.

The slots: around 200 titles, two of them famous

Slots are the bulk of what Greentube brought online — around 200 of them, which puts Novomatic among the bigger back-catalogues in the business. Most are adaptations of games that existed as physical cabinets first, with a smaller run of titles designed exclusively for the web. That land-first pedigree is exactly why two names tower over the rest. Book of Ra, the Egyptian-explorer game, is probably the most recognisable slot in continental Europe, and Sizzling Hot's fruit reels sit not far behind it; both earned their fame on arcade floors before a browser ever rendered them.

Finding a Book of Ra casino in the UK

Because of that fame, "Book of Ra casino" is a search of its own. There's no trick to it: any UKGC-licensed site whose lobby stocks the Greentube library qualifies, and the list at the top of this page is where we track the ones we cover. The practical caveat is the one this whole page keeps returning to: Novomatic's games sit in fewer UK lobbies than the brand's reputation implies, which is why the list above exists at all.

Presentation is the other thing to calibrate before you play. A large share of the catalogue was developed more than a decade ago, and these games have never chased the visual styling of a studio like NetEnt — what they offer instead is the straightforward, familiar gameplay that made the cabinets successful. The settings menu does let you turn the video and audio quality down, which is the control to reach for if your connection is slow. One structural note: the original catalogue was built in Flash, so these games have run in the browser — and only in the browser — since the day they went online; Novomatic simply skipped the downloadable-casino era, which the wider industry has since abandoned anyway.

Roulette deep, blackjack narrow

The table range is lopsided, and the heading above already gives you the shape of it. Roulette is the strong suit: a broad assortment of tables covering the main variants, some on classic rules and some on newer rule sets. The software is intuitive to navigate, lets you set the sound volume and graphic resolution, and keeps a history of previous winning numbers for anyone who likes tracking hot and cold streaks — consult it for entertainment, because no wheel remembers its last spin.

Blackjack is where the range thins out. There are exactly two variants: the traditional game and "Royal Crown", which plays on American rules — a modest showing next to the ten-variant shelf a supplier like Playtech keeps. There is one genuine upside to the austerity: neither variant offers side bets, and since side bets are where blackjack's return usually leaks away, the player's percentages stay consistently high. Both games let you repeat a previous bet and put the table limits and main rules inside the game interface. Beyond that, the catalogue rounds out with baccarat, video poker and Sic Bo — present, functional, and not the reason anyone seeks out this provider.

Extreme Live Gaming: the live chapter, 2014–2018

In 2014 Novomatic made a move few saw coming and acquired Extreme Live Gaming, a live-casino supplier, folding real-dealer tables into its platform. The product had a genuinely distinctive idea: it crossed live tables with the group's slot brands, producing games like Ra Roulette — a real wheel dressed in the motifs and symbols of Book of Ra. The tables spanned a wide band of betting limits, from low-stake seats suited to newcomers up to professional tables for high rollers, and streamed in high definition with the option to drop the resolution on a weak connection.

That chapter is closed. Extreme Live Gaming was sold to Pragmatic Play in 2018 and the brand was absorbed into the buyer's live division, which is why you won't find a Novomatic-badged dealer table anywhere today. At the casinos in our list, live roulette and blackjack come from the operator's other suppliers — a point worth knowing only so that an older review promising "Novomatic live casino" doesn't send you looking for something that no longer exists.

Mobile

Novomatic invested early in versions of its games built for small screens, and the mobile situation is best given as a plain number: around 70 of the games are mobile-friendly. Against a catalogue of roughly 200 that means a phone gets you a substantial selection, not the full shelf — if a particular older title is the reason you're signing up, check it runs on the device you'll actually use.

Novomatic: Company information

• Company: Novomatic AG — games and software developed through group subsidiaries across Europe
• Founded: 1980, in Vienna, by Johann Graf
• Online division: Greentube (founded 1998; majority-acquired 2010)
• Other gaming subsidiaries: Astra Gaming, Mazooma Interactive Games; Extreme Live Gaming from 2014 until its sale to Pragmatic Play in 2018
• Scale: active in more than 50 countries, around 24,000 employees
• Markets: among the leading suppliers to both land-based and online casinos
• Regulation: certificates of suitability in all jurisdictions where its products are available; legitimacy attested by authorities including the UKGC

Where Novomatic leaves a UK player

Judged as a games company, Novomatic needs nobody's promotion: some of the most-played slots on the web are its cabinet adaptations, its roulette software is genuinely good, and during the Extreme Live Gaming years its platform sat behind well-regarded live casino sites. Judged as a presence in the UK online market, it's a giant standing mostly elsewhere — the land-based empire and the continental European audience are where its weight falls, and UK lobbies stocking the Greentube library are the exception rather than the rule. So the advice here runs in one direction: start from the list, not from the game. Every casino up there has already answered the stocking question, which leaves you free to compare them on everything else that actually shapes the experience. And if none of them suits, walk away — no slot, however famous, justifies an account somewhere you don't otherwise rate.

18+. These games were engineered to keep an arcade floor busy, and they do the same work online. The defence that works is a deposit limit fixed in your account settings while your head is clear — mid-session resolve is exactly what this kind of design is built to wear down. BeGambleAware and GamCare provide free, confidential support, and GamStop self-exclusion shuts every site licensed in Great Britain at once.