On 2 October 2023, GameArt announced it had been shortlisted in two categories at the EGR Italy Awards 2023, Employer of the Year and Software Supplier.
The ceremony took place on 6 November 2023 at the Rome Cavalieri in Rome, with awards handed out in 22 categories.
The studio won neither trophy, as Employer of the Year went to Betsson Group and Software Supplier to Sportradar.
GameArt's announcement quotes no executive and gives no figures, either on its staff or on its business in Italy.
Under the rules published for the 2025 edition, an independent panel of external judges scores the entries. Deloitte checks the scores and EGR takes no part in the judging.
The GameArt studio has worked with Italy since at least January 2015, when it signed a five-year deal with Sisal. That same operator collected six trophies at the 2023 ceremony.
In 2026, GameArt does not appear in any of the 32 categories on the EGR Italy Awards shortlist (ceremony held on 20 October 2026). Two of its distribution partners, EGT Digital and REEVO, do.
On the studio's news feed, the first award announced after Rome dates from 12 June 2026, when Backstreet Mayhem High Stakes won Best New Slot at the AskGamblers Awards.
An industry award tells you nothing about a game's RTP or a casino's reliability. Whether you can play online casino games legally depends on the rules where you live.
Two tickets in hand, and neither one paid out. On the evening of 6 November 2023, the EGR Italy Awards 2023 listed GameArt as a finalist twice over. The studio was up for employer of the year and for software supplier of the year. The night at the Rome Cavalieri ended without a trophy for it: Betsson Group took the first award, Sportradar the second.
A shortlist is still only a shortlist. It proves that an entry made it past a first screening, not that it won anyone over. It doesn't say who applied, on what evidence, or how far behind the winner the studio finished. GameArt's announcement, a few lines without a single figure, leaves all of these questions open.
So I read this list of winners the way you read a paytable before spinning the reels: small print first. I have worked in affiliate marketing since 2011, and I believe an award should be judged on its rules before it is judged on its press release.
What are the EGR Italy Awards?
The EGR Italy Awards are the prizes EGR (eGaming Review) runs each year for the Italian online gambling market. Operators, affiliates and service providers compete on their results over the previous twelve months. The 2023 edition crowned its winners on 6 November at the Rome Cavalieri, the Rome hotel that still hosts the ceremony in 2026.
The awards are grouped into families. General categories (employer of the year, diversity and inclusion model, rising star) sit alongside those for affiliates, operators and service providers. GameArt's two shortlistings came from two different families: Employer of the Year among the general categories, Software Supplier among the services. That meant two separate entries, each judged against its own criteria.
How are the winners chosen?
The rules posted online were written for the 2025 edition. They describe a process in which the organiser does not keep score. Nothing suggests it was different in 2023, but nothing guarantees it either. I present it as the most recent framework published, not as the one used on GameArt's night. The judging procedure published by EGR works in three stages.
An entry submitted by the company
No committee scours the market looking for the best. Companies submit their own entries, category by category. A category that receives only one entry is dropped for the year, for lack of competition.
A shortlist decided by external judges
A panel of independent judges, renewed every year and chosen for its wide range of expertise, draws up the shortlist. The remaining entries then go to the final jury. Each judge must confirm they have no conflict of interest and agree to keep everything confidential. The full list of judges is only published once scoring is over.
Scores checked by Deloitte
Each judge scores every criterion and writes a short summary. EGR's evaluation platform then calculates the ranking. Deloitte checks the scores to confirm the winners, and EGR says it plays no part in scoring or in picking winners. In case of a tie, the judges concerned meet by teleconference, and a Highly Commended mention can reward the runner-up. Individual scores stay confidential. Only the reasons behind each win are published after the ceremony.
Finalist or winner: what does each step prove?
In poker, reaching the final table of a tournament does not guarantee the title. It only proves you survived the earlier rounds. A shortlist plays exactly that role. It shows that an entry made it through the first cut, among the companies that chose to compete. The trophy goes to the best score in the eyes of a jury, based on the evidence submitted.
Two consequences follow. Absence from a list is no rejection, since nothing forces a company to apply. A shortlisting doesn't rank its holder either: with no scores published, there is no way to know whether GameArt finished second or dead last. It is the same checklist I use in the blog breakdowns for every announcement of this kind. Who judges, on what, against whom, and with what evidence?
What did GameArt's press release of 2 October 2023 say?
On 2 October 2023, GameArt posted a short item in its Company Updates section to announce that its name was on two shortlists for the EGR Italy Awards 2023. The press release of 2 October 2023 credits this double ticket to the dedication of its team. It mentions that EGR received a record number of entries that year and points to 6 November, at the Rome Cavalieri, for the results. Its only link goes to the studio's games page.
What is missing says more than what is there. No quote from an executive, no headcount, no office locations, no indicator of its Italian business. Nothing explains why a slot provider entered as employer of the year, or which tools back its bid as a software supplier. As for the record number of entries, the studio reports it on the organiser's behalf, and nobody outside can check it.
Still, I prefer this restraint to announcements that dress up a place in the final as a win. The studio claims nothing it did not get, and the date of the verdict is there in black and white. The next day's announcement, like most of the studio news published since, would prove far more talkative.
Who won GameArt's two categories on 6 November 2023?
On 6 November 2023, Betsson Group won the Employer of the Year award at the EGR Italy Awards, and Sportradar took Software Supplier. GameArt, a finalist in both, is missing from the list of winners. The 2023 winners list published by EGR also puts Sisal at the top of the night with six awards. It awards gold in the Casino content supplier category to Amusnet, ahead of Evolution and Playtech. GameArt was not in the running for that one, which is precisely the award for casino content.
Category
Family
Criteria highlighted in 2023
Winner
Known finalists
Employer of the Year
General categories
Recruitment, skills development, motivation, company culture, staff retention and engagement
Betsson Group
GameArt
Software Supplier
Service categories
User interface and experience, product quality, commercial success, innovation and differentiation, client feedback
Sportradar
GameArt, Skilrock Technologies
The criteria are those reported by Betsson for the first category and by Skilrock Technologies for the second.
Employer of the Year: the award goes to Betsson Group
Betsson Group, also rewarded for its marketing campaign with StarCasinò.Sport, took the employer of the year title. The group's press release was picked up by the Italian press the next day. It describes a category for the organisation that improves how it works internally by investing in recruitment, training and staff motivation. One key criterion was a solid plan to build company culture, keep teams on board and involve them. Betsson highlighted its training programmes, its workplace wellbeing policy and its staff benefits.
Up against a group of operators, a B2B studio was defending an entry that nobody outside the jury could read. No HR data, neither headcount nor training policy, appears in the two announcements GameArt published on 2 and 3 October 2023. The jury had a file. The public only had a headline.
Software Supplier: Sportradar takes the category
Sportradar left Rome with two service awards, Software Supplier and Sports betting supplier. A sports betting data and technology specialist won the race that a slot developer had entered. Skilrock Technologies, another finalist, had set out the criteria for this award in late September 2023 in an announcement relayed by Yogonet. It listed five: user interface and experience, product quality, commercial success, innovation and differentiation, and client feedback.
On paper, a content studio fits in there. My view is more nuanced. A category this broad favours suppliers whose tools run through an operator's entire offer, well beyond its slots. Tellingly, GameArt would later document its approach to quality and information security through certification rather than a trophy, with the ISO standards 9001 and 27001:2022 announced in March 2025.
GameArt and Italy: a story that began on Sisal's terminals
GameArt has worked with the Italian market since at least January 2015. At the time, Sisal had chosen the studio to develop slot games for its video lottery terminals (VLTs) in the Comma 6b segment, exclusively and over five years, on its INGG platform. The article in SBC News in January 2015 already placed the studio's teams across Slovenia, Italy, Malta and Serbia.
Nearly nine years later, Sisal collected six awards at the Rome Cavalieri, led by operator of the year. Its 2015 partner stayed off the winners list. The irony raises a smile but proves nothing, since Sisal's six trophies rewarded different disciplines from the ones GameArt competed in.
The day after the shortlist, on 3 October 2023, GameArt announced an expanded partnership with Planetwin365, a brand of the SKS365 Group. This announcement about Planetwin365 said far more about the studio than the previous day's. It described a provider operating under the jurisdiction of the Malta Gaming Authority, with HTML5 slots accredited in 13 countries. It also listed more than 130 titles licensed in Curaçao and another 80 certified for the MGA and regulated markets.
Italy has kept cropping up in the studio's announcements since then, like a bet left to ride from one spin to the next. In 2026, two Italian operators joined its list of announced partners: Casino di Venezia in May, then Vincitu in September.
What is left of the shortlist in 2026?
The EGR Italy Awards 2026 were presented on 20 October 2026 at the Rome Cavalieri. GameArt's name does not appear on any of the shortlists, which cover 32 categories. EGT Digital and REEVO, two platforms that distribute its games, are on them. The 2026 shortlist shows a competition that has grown, with ten finalists for Employer of the Year and thirteen for Software Supplier. Sportradar and Skilrock Technologies are back in the running there. EGT Digital is named in seven categories and REEVO in two: casino content and aggregation platforms.
Benchmark
EGR Italy Awards 2023
EGR Italy Awards 2026
Ceremony
6 November 2023, Rome Cavalieri
20 October 2026, Rome Cavalieri
Categories
22
32
GameArt
Finalist in Employer of the Year and Software Supplier
Not on the shortlist
Software Supplier
Winner Sportradar, known finalists GameArt and Skilrock Technologies
13 finalists, including Sportradar and Skilrock Technologies
From the outside, there is no way to tell whether the studio even submitted an entry. Its absence proves only one thing: its name is not on the list.
Three trophy-less years before a busy 2026
GameArt's awards record falls into two periods. Its Company Updates section, checked on 29 October 2026, lists three nomination announcements in summer and autumn 2023. Tronius Gaming, a partner of the studio, was nominated at the SBC Awards 2023 for its electronic roulette in the Land-based Betting & Gaming Product category (announced on 7 August). A double nomination at the SiGMA Balkans & CIS 2023 Awards followed (announced on 17 August), then the Rome shortlist of 2 October. None is followed on that page by news of a win, and the feed stays silent on awards until May 2026.
Spring 2026 broke that silence. On 6 May, GameArt announced it had reached the AskGamblers Awards final with Backstreet Mayhem. On 12 June, Backstreet Mayhem High Stakes won Best New Slot there. On 24 July, the studio said it had been shortlisted at the SBC Awards 2026 in the Casino/Slots Developer of the Year category. On the last day of the SBC Summit in Lisbon, the three developer awards went to Pragmatic Play, Pascal Gaming and Gameburger Studios. Those awards are split by studio size. Finally, on 20 October its announcement placed it among the nominees for Best Slot Game Provider at the SiGMA Awards 2026. The verdict came on 2 November at the Corsie Sistine in Rome: the award went to CT Interactive, and GameArt’s name appears in none of the 35 categories of the SiGMA World Awards 2026. The studio’s trade shows and ceremonies covered on Kynox, from London to São Paulo, help place these awards in GameArt’s calendar.
Independent jury or public vote: two kinds of award to read differently
Not every award is won the same way. At the EGR Italy Awards, an external jury scores entries under Deloitte's oversight. For the AskGamblers Awards, GameArt instead asked its community to vote, seven days before voting closed. Its SiGMA Awards 2026 announcement also links to a public vote form.
A public vote is like a crowded table: it proves there is a crowd, not that the dealer is any good. Above all, it measures how well a company can rally support, through the size of its network, the energy of its marketing team or the loyalty of its community. A jury measures how closely an entry matches a scoring grid. Neither tells you how your next session will go.
An award is no substitute for a licence or a certification
For a player, protection lies somewhere other than the trophy shelf. A licence puts a regulator's name on the line. A certification does the same for a test lab, market by market. An award only involves an organiser and its judges, working from an entry you will never read. GameArt has held a licence from the Maltese regulator since February 2023, and that tells you far more than two shortlists about how serious a provider is.
Before you give an award any weight, five questions are enough:
Organiser: who gives the award and who sits on the jury?
Selection: an appointed jury, a public vote or both?
Category: what does it really measure, an employer, a piece of software or a game?
Step: finalist, commendation or winner?
Evidence: are criteria and reasons published after the ceremony?
Then there is the law where you live, and it settles the matter. There is no single rulebook for online gambling. In the European Union, each country organises its own gambling services, as the European Commission's page on online gambling explains. Where online casino games are allowed, you can usually play them legally only at an operator licensed for your country. No award, Roman or otherwise, changes that, and none should become a reason to play. Reading an awards list well is about keeping control, not giving it away.
FAQs: GameArt and the EGR Italy Awards 2023
What are the EGR Italy Awards?
Annual awards from EGR for online gambling companies active in Italy, whether operators, affiliates or suppliers. The 2023 edition had 22 categories, and the 2026 edition had 32.
Which categories was GameArt shortlisted in for 2023?
Two: Employer of the Year, for the best employer, and Software Supplier, for the best software supplier.
Did GameArt win an award at the EGR Italy Awards 2023?
No. Both awards it was up for went to Betsson Group and Sportradar, and GameArt's name is not on the winners list.
When and where did the 2023 ceremony take place?
On the evening of 6 November 2023, at the Rome Cavalieri hotel in the Italian capital.
How are the winners chosen?
Companies submit entries and external judges draw up the shortlist, then score each criterion. Deloitte checks the results. This is the procedure EGR describes for its 2025 edition.
Is GameArt among the finalists of the EGR Italy Awards 2026?
No. Its name does not appear in any category on the list published for the ceremony of 20 October 2026.
Has GameArt won any other awards since 2023?
As of 3 November 2026, its news feed mentions one: Best New Slot, won on 12 June 2026 at the AskGamblers Awards by Backstreet Mayhem High Stakes. Shortlisted for Best Slot Game Provider at the SiGMA Awards 2026, the studio saw the award go to CT Interactive on 2 November 2026.
Can I play GameArt slots where I live?
Legally, only at an online casino licensed for your country, since online gambling is regulated at national or even regional level. Check the operator's licence and regulator before you sign up.
