In barely five years, crash games have revolutionised online casino and generate millions in revenue for operators. Yet a legal fallout in Georgia  between Spribe and Aviator LLC reveals what is now at stake…

Spribe is due in a Georgian court today with its future and that of its record-breaking crash game Aviator hanging in the balance following weeks of claims and counter-claims that have involved the world’s biggest online operator Flutter Entertainment, while Spribe and its rival Aviator LLC argue over who has the right to exploit the game brand.

To cut a long story short…

Aviator LLC says it owns the rights to the super-popular Aviator crash game and over the past six months has sued Flutter for offering Spribe’s version of the game.

In August 2024, it claimed to have been awarded €330m in damages from Flutter, incidentally the same amount Flutter is said to have paid to acquire Georgian operator Adjarabet in 2019, which was founded by the owner of Aviator LLC.

Aviator LLC and Flutter settled two weeks ago, but Flutter told G&C no payment had been made to Aviator LLC as part of the settlement.

Last week Spribe said: “Unauthorised third parties are trying to reach some of our clients and sell them an ‘Aviator’ game with a very similar concept and design, claiming that it is the authentic Aviator game.”

Spribe’s Aviator has been a regular in eGaming Monitor’s top 10 games worldwide for the past year, with Spribe claiming 42 million players per month and up to 350,000 bets per minute at the 5,000 casinos offering it. “No other game gets close to those kinds of numbers,” claimed Spribe CEO David Natroshvili in a recent iGB op-ed.

According to eGaming Monitor CEO Kevin Dale, Aviator is the most popular game in Africa and Latin America, where its simple graphics make it playable on low-bandwidth mobile phones. “There is also a psychology around crash betting – similarly found in roulette – that makes people believe they have an edge over the house,” added Dale.

Numbers at Play…

Spribe also claims to have a market-leading position in India, CIS, Italy, Romania, Croatia, Spain and the UK. If we assess Europe, H2 Gambling Capital says it expects the EU online casino market to generate €25.6bn in 2025, with slots at €21.3bn, RNG table games €0.75bn and live casino at €3.4bn.

Meanwhile, Eilers & Krejcik’s Dec24 Europe Online Game Performance Report reveals that crash games represent 1.1%, or roughly €2.56bn based on H2’s forecast of European iCasino GGR.

As the visual shows, Spribe enjoys the overwhelming majority of that 1.1% and we can therefore deduce that it generated roughly €2.5bn in EU GGR last year.

One industry source also told G&C that Spribe expects EBITDA to come in at $300-400m this year, valuing the company at around $1.5bn, but even those figures seem to underestimate its performance.

Whatever the precise amount, with numbers like that flying around (sorry), it’s no surprise to see competitors fight for the market tooth and nail.

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