SlotCatalog’s Mickey Winitsky on Slot Data and AI Search

SlotCatalog started in 2016 around a question that still drives it: what to play, and where to play it. A decade on it reviews more than 50,000 slots and casino games, monitors the lobbies of over 2,000 casino sites every day, and in September 2026 ranked seventh among iGaming affiliates by estimated organic traffic, up 127% on the year, according to First Look Games.

Here Mickey Winitsky, SlotCatalog’s Managing Director, shares with Gambler Media why the business has moved from reviews into data, what separates the UK from Brazil and Finland, and why he thinks AI assistants will make structured data more valuable rather than less.

From a slot catalogue to a data business

SlotCatalog was founded by Fedir Havlovskyi, in 2016 around a very simple idea: what to play and where to play.

At the time, most affiliate sites started with the casino, lists of operators, bonuses and reviews, and then added slot content around that. SlotCatalog approached it from the opposite direction. The game was the starting point. If you found a slot you were interested in, we wanted to give you useful information about it and show you where you could actually play it.

That simple idea is still at the core of SlotCatalog today, but the business has evolved much further than originally imagined. What started as a large catalogue of games has become a substantial data operation. We now track games, providers, casinos, availability, lobby positions and popularity across markets. That data powers the consumer site, but it is increasingly becoming a product in its own right.

So in a way, “what to play and where to play” hasn’t changed, we’ve just become much more sophisticated at answering it.

50,000 reviewed slots and 2,000 casino lobbies checked every day

Today SlotCatalog is much bigger than I think most people realise. We reach millions of unique users every month across more than 100 countries, and the company has grown to more than 50 people.

A few months ago we passed a milestone I’m particularly proud of: more than 50,000 reviewed slots and casino games. To the best of our knowledge, that is the largest catalogue of reviewed casino games ever built. We also cover more than 1,100 game providers, around 3,000 casinos and close to 8,000 casino bonuses.

52,513

Slots and casino games reviewed by SlotCatalog

2,000+

Online casino sites monitored daily

1,280

Game providers covered

2,743

Casino reviews

7,569

Casino bonuses covered

SlotCatalog, September 2026

Behind the consumer site there is another layer of scale. Our technology monitors more than 2,000 online casino sites every day, on desktop and mobile, looking at which games appear in their lobbies and where they are positioned. That is part of what sits behind products such as SlotRank and ProviderRank.

Another important number is that virtually 100% of our consumer traffic is organic. We do not buy users to create those audience numbers. People arrive because they actively searched for a game, provider, casino or another specific piece of information. So those millions of visits are also millions of expressions of player intent.

Why SlotCatalog is no longer a traditional affiliate site

I don’t really see SlotCatalog as a traditional affiliate site anymore. The consumer site is obviously important, but the real differentiator is the data underneath it.

We want to understand games: where they are available, how prominently casinos position them, how their momentum changes over time and how that differs by country.

SlotRank and ProviderRank are examples of turning that underlying data into something useful rather than simply producing an editorial list of what we think is popular.

For players, that makes discovery better. For operators, studios and other industry partners, the same infrastructure increasingly becomes market intelligence.

Over the last year, we have also made a very deliberate move from being almost entirely B2C into building a serious B2B side of the business.

We already have a large and growing number of game providers working directly with us. For them, SlotCatalog is quite a unique platform because we sit exactly where the industry wants to be: between the game and the player. A studio can launch a game into an incredibly crowded market, but the real challenge is getting that game discovered.

We can give providers exposure to millions of highly intent players across more than 100 countries, but increasingly we can also give them data. How is their game performing? Where is it appearing? In which markets is it gaining traction? How does their visibility compare with competitors?

“A studio can launch a game into an incredibly crowded market, but the real challenge is getting that game discovered.”

So I see the next chapter of SlotCatalog as much bigger than affiliate. B2C gives us the audience and the intent. B2B allows us to turn that reach, data and market position into something valuable for the entire ecosystem.

In many ways, we are trying to build the bridge between the people creating the games and the people looking for what to play next.

Why a slot-name search is worth more than “best online casino”

This is probably one of the most misunderstood things about our traffic. Virtually 100% of it is organic, so every visit begins with intent. If somebody searches for a specific game and lands on SlotCatalog, we already know something very valuable about that player: we know what they want to play.

Compare that with buying an impression and trying to convince somebody what to play. We are starting much further down the funnel. The player has already made the first decision.

That is why game level search traffic can be extremely valuable to operators. Our job is then to answer the second part of the original SlotCatalog proposition: you’ve decided what to play, now where can you play it?

The less friction there is between those two things, the better. If somebody searches for a particular game, finds it on SlotCatalog and can then land directly on that game at an appropriate casino, that is a very different journey from sending generic traffic to a casino homepage and hoping they find what they came for.

How slot tastes differ in the UK, Brazil, Canada and Finland

This is actually one of the areas where our data has surprised me the most. There really isn’t one global slot market.

We track what casinos are putting in front of players through lobby positioning, while our organic search traffic tells us what players themselves are actively looking for. Those are two different signals: one is supply and exposure; the other is intent. We can see what casinos are pushing and what players are pulling.

When you compare countries, the differences become very visible. Our SlotPulse work has shown that markets such as Brazil, Canada, the UK and Finland do not simply have the same global hits shuffled into a slightly different order.

Brazil has shown more concentrated patterns around certain providers and highly recognisable, volatility led games. Canada has been more of a mixture of established franchises, evergreen catalogue games and newer titles.

In the UK, provider strength matters, but so does something very basic: can a player understand what a game is almost instantly when it appears in a crowded lobby?

Finland has produced a particularly interesting mix, with traditional video slots, modern volatility led products, live game show content and roulette style entertainment all achieving visibility.

The broader lesson for us is that localisation in casino gaming goes much deeper than translating a website or changing the currency. What players actively look for, and what operators give visibility to, can be fundamentally different from one country to another.

“The broader lesson for us is that localisation in casino gaming goes much deeper than translating a website or changing the currency.”

New slot releases have more than quadrupled since 2016

One thing our data keeps showing is how quickly the mechanics mix can change even when the basic slot format remains familiar.

At the same time, the overall production machine has accelerated enormously. We have gone from tracking roughly 170 new slot releases per month in 2016 to around 740 per month in 2026.

There are also interesting counterexamples. Megaways is no longer a new mechanic, but it remains a meaningful part of the market. And some themes that everyone assumes must eventually be exhausted keep returning. Our mythology analysis found thousands of Egyptian, Greek and Norse mythology games in the database, yet studios continue releasing new ones.

That is why we try not to confuse what the industry is talking about with what players are actually searching for. Organic intent, lobby visibility and release data together usually tell a more interesting story.

“We have gone from tracking roughly 170 new slot releases per month in 2016 to around 740 per month in 2026.”

Slots will borrow from video games, but the reel stays

I don’t think the reel disappears. The spin remains incredibly simple, and that simplicity is part of the reason slots work.

What I expect to become more game like is everything around the spin: progression, missions, achievements, tournaments, personalisation, recommendations and potentially more social elements. The underlying action can stay simple while the broader experience gives players more reasons to return and more ways to interact.

I think that distinction matters. The industry does not necessarily need to turn a slot into a console game. It can borrow the engagement systems that video games have spent decades developing while preserving the simplicity of the core product.

Why Megaways and Bonus Buy haven’t killed the fruit machine

iGaming has a habit of declaring old mechanics dead while players keep playing them.

Studios need innovation because they are competing for lobby space and attention, so naturally we see Bonus Buy, Megaways, Hold & Win, cascading mechanics and many other variations. Some of them become durable categories and some disappear.

But innovation on the supply side does not mean every player suddenly wants complexity. There is still a substantial audience for games they recognise immediately and know how to play. That is why classic fruit machine formats and long established titles can coexist with much more aggressive innovation.

Bonus Buy is also a good example of why you cannot look at a mechanic globally. It has become a major design feature for many studios, while regulation restricts or changes how it can be offered in certain markets. Again, geography matters.

“Bonus Buy is also a good example of why you cannot look at a mechanic globally. It has become a major design feature for many studios, while regulation restricts or changes how it can be offered in certain markets.”

Programmatic SEO needs data, not more AI-written words

We do not create thousands of pages because we want thousands of pages for Google. The pages exist because the underlying entities exist: a game, a provider, a mechanic, a casino, a market.

The SEO challenge is deciding which of those pages genuinely deserve to be indexed and making sure they contain information that is useful and specific to that entity.

AI can write another 500 word description of Gates of Olympus. We don’t need that, Google doesn’t need it and the player doesn’t need it. What is much harder to manufacture is the underlying information: availability, rankings, lobby positions, related games, mechanics, provider data, geographic differences and other proprietary signals.

For me, the future of large scale content isn’t generating more words. It is having information other websites don’t have.

“For me, the future of large scale content isn’t generating more words. It is having information other websites don’t have.”

What makes a slot game page genuinely useful

A lot of websites can describe a game. That is becoming increasingly commoditised, especially with AI. The useful part is answering the questions around the game with real information.

We can combine structured game data with availability, casino coverage, SlotRank, provider information, mechanics and categories, market signals and the wider behaviour we see across the database.

And because virtually all of our audience arrives organically, we also have a very strong intent signal. We can see what people are actively looking for. Separately, our lobby data shows what casinos are choosing to expose to them.

That combination is interesting: what casinos are pushing and what players are pulling. It is much harder to replicate than another generic game description.

How AI assistants will change the way players choose casinos

I think the biggest change may actually happen before the player reaches the casino.

Today a player might search Google for a game, read a few pages and compare casinos. In five years, much more of that discovery may happen through AI assistants or agents. Instead of searching through ten blue links, a player may simply describe what they like: the games they play, preferred mechanics, volatility, market, payment preferences or bonus conditions, and expect an answer.

That changes the interface, but it makes reliable structured data more important, not less. An AI can generate an opinion very easily. The harder question is where the underlying facts come from: which casino actually has the game, whether it is available in that market, what is trending locally, what similar players are looking for and how the game is positioned.

That is one reason I think SlotCatalog’s evolution from a review site into a data business is important. The way people ask the question may change completely. But the original question we started with in 2016, what to play and where to play, probably won’t.

“An AI can generate an opinion very easily. The harder question is where the underlying facts come from.”

7th

SlotCatalog’s rank among iGaming affiliates by estimated organic traffic

127%

Year-on-year growth in SlotCatalog’s estimated organic traffic

First Look Games, via The Business of iGaming, September 2026