Blask launches Categories: what players search for, independent of brand

Blask's new Categories tab measures player demand for game types and activities — a signal no operator's marketing budget can distort.

Blask has launched the Categories tab, a new demand layer that tracks what players search for by game type, not by brand. The feature is now available on every country page in the platform.

Where brand metrics measure how many users search for a specific operator, Categories captures intent queries — "online slots", "live blackjack", "sports betting" — that point to an activity rather than a destination. These searches happen before a player picks an operator. They reflect genuine market demand, not the output of any operator's acquisition budget.

What the Categories tab includes

The tab has three views. The Maturity Index shows how a country's iGaming searches divide between generic exploration and brand-directed queries, on a 0–100 scale. A category share chart tracks how demand splits across verticals month by month. A sortable table covers nine top-level categories — Online Casino, Online Betting, Live Dealer, Fantasy, Lottery, Bingo, Poker, Racing, and Prediction Markets — plus subcategories for the five that expand further.

Market data reveals what brand metrics miss

Blask data from six markets in shows how much category demand varies — and why brand-level data alone leaves operators with an incomplete picture.

The Maturity Index contrast between the United States and Brazil is the clearest example. The US sits at 72.87, meaning most iGaming searches are generic: players looking for a category, not yet committed to a brand. Brazil sits at 1.33 — nearly all searches go directly to an operator name. Two of the world's largest iGaming markets are at opposite ends of the exploration spectrum. The acquisition strategy that works in one market fails in the other, and no brand metric would surface that difference.

Germany shows a different type of signal: regulation written into search behavior. In Germany's Live Dealer category, Blackjack generated a Blask Index of 190,819 in December 2025. Roulette generated 15,350. That's a 12x gap between two products that sit in the same lobby section in most of the world. Germany's State Treaty on Gambling imposed strict conditions on live casino products after 2021, and German players shifted toward the games that remained accessible. An operator building a live lobby for Germany based on global benchmarks would miss this structure entirely.

The fastest-moving signal across all six markets is Prediction Markets. In the United States, Prediction Markets demand grew from 3,730 in December 2024 to 44,138 in December 2025 — a 12x increase year-over-year. In the UK, demand rose from 12,750 to 22,661 over the same period, up 78%. In Italy, it climbed from 140 to 1,403, up nearly 10x from a small base.

The category is accelerating because the products are gaining institutional legitimacy fast. In the past six months, Kalshi and Polymarket signed official partnership deals with the NHL, MLB, and LaLiga. Wall Street analysts now forecast prediction market volumes reaching $1 trillion by 2030, up from $51 billion in 2025. Category demand reflects this before any operator brand captures it — because most players searching for prediction markets don't yet have a brand to go to.

What operators can do with this data

Category data answers questions that brand data can't. Which verticals are growing faster than your current metrics suggest? Where is player intent moving before the market prices it in? How does demand shift in the weeks before a major tournament, or when a new regulatory framework goes live?

The Maturity Index adds a structural layer. In markets where the index is high — the US at 72.87, Germany at 16.17 — a large share of players arrives without a brand preference. Operators with strong category visibility gain acquisition opportunities that brand-focused competitors don't see. In brand-mature markets like Italy at 2.72 and Brazil at 1.33, the index signals that loyalty is already in play and that retention strategies matter more than discovery.

Availability

The Categories tab is available now on every country page in Blask. Navigate to a market, select the Categories tab, and the Maturity Index, share chart, and category table load for that country. Date range, granularity, and category selection carry across all three views simultaneously.

Access the Categories tab.