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The second tier of live dealer studios, and the three routes their tables take to a lobby
ICONIC21, Imagine Live and Stakelogic Live all signed named distribution deals in the first half of 2026 — a dedicated studio, an aggregator shelf, an operator integration. Between the three announcements: no RTP, no latency figure, no table limit.
This site has spent ten posts inside the Evolution–Playtech–Pragmatic Play triangle. Underneath it, three providers closed named deals in the first half of 2026, by three different routes. None of the three announcements prints a number a player can price a bet with.
This is background, not breaking news. The dates are on each release.
Route one: the dedicated studio
ICONIC21 launched a live casino studio built with Stake, reported on 25 June: 18 tables, custom table felts, bespoke decor, personalised uniforms. Eighteen tables that answer to one operator.
What that buys is exclusivity and the schedule. Which tables open, when, and how many dealers stand at them are the operator’s decisions, not a shared floor’s. We said much the same in August about Playtech’s dedicated bet365 tables: a dedicated studio is a capacity and control purchase.
Route two: the aggregator shelf
Games Valley added Imagine Live to its aggregation platform, reported 10 June by iGaming Business. Imagine Live runs studios in Armenia, Romania and Spain and, per that piece, surpassed more than 100 active tables during 2025. Its CCO, Nadiya Attard, named Brazil as a focus market in that piece.
One integration, many lobbies. Reach without exclusivity: the same tables are on somebody else’s shelf too, and the aggregator, not the studio, owns the relationship with the operator.
Route three: the operator integration
Stakelogic Live went live with Hollywoodbets UK on 7 May, delivered through Relax Gaming aggregation — blackjack, roulette, auto roulette, and Super Wheel with five bonus rounds: Vegas Hold ‘n’ Spin, Vegas Diamonds, Vegas Pachinko, Vegas Drops and Risky 100. The announcement describes Hollywoodbets as founded in South Africa in 2000, live in the UK since 2019, and holding a UK Gambling Commission remote licence; that description is the release’s, not a regulator document.
Here the studio does not own the pipe and neither does the operator. A third party sits in the middle of the stream.
What none of them publish
Read all three end to end and the same things are missing from each: no RTP, no latency figure, no table limit. Between them they specify felts, uniforms, decor, a country list and five bonus-round names.
The house always publishes its edge. These publish the furniture. If the numbers exist, they are in the rules panel at the table, which is where you should go before the felt talks you out of it.
18+. Set the session budget and the stop-loss before you sit down, and watch the clock rather than the decor.