FAIRFIELD – Other than a CVS on Black Rock Turnpike, a gas station on Post Road, and the Fairfield police station on Reef Road, there is at least one place in town that operates around the clock and maintains the largest workforce at that hour. But, it’s not physically open to the public.
That’s not to say people from Connecticut do not utilize the company’s services. Technically, only two clients depend on its work: DraftKings and FanDuel. You know them more for their gambling sportsbooks at casinos like Mohegan Sun and Foxwoods on the native American tribal grounds of the Mohegans and Mashantucket Pequots in the eastern part of the state.
The Fairfield company is Swedish-based Evolution, an international B2B live online casino provider with a local studio and offices on Commerce Drive. The company’s model is quite simple. They supply their live casino games to the online casinos via FanDuel and DraftKings. They generate revenue by charging the online casino platforms based on how much money they make.
“This is open 24/7 with 300 employees,” said Jacob Claesson, Evolution CEO of North America, as he gave a tour to the Fairfield County Business Journal recently “It’s all shift-based. We operate tables both in this building and across the street. All online. No players. Everyone is playing at home. We are only serving players from Connecticut. By regulation we have to be located in the state to serve the players in Connecticut.”
Evolution has worked with the Town of Fairfield since it opened its Connecticut office in 2022, according to Mark Barnhart, the town’s director of community & economic development. It has already undergone several expansions, including moving into space at a neighboring Kings Highway building. And now the business is eyeing more space in a third building as it looks to expand its workforce to 500, Claesson said.
Over a month ago Evolution announced it had signed a three-year extension of its U.S. agreement with FanDuel Casino. It marked the second extension of the original partnership, which began in 2020.
“Expanding our partnership with Evolution for Live Casino and RNG games enables us to consistently provide a top-tier experience to our customers,” Managing Director of FanDuel Casino Asaf Noifeld said at the time. “We look forward to our continued growth in the Live Casino sector.”
A tour of a virtual casino
Through a maze of 30,000 square feet, there is space for corporate offices, a control room, computer servers, studios where hundreds of workers operate tables for Black Jack, poker, roulette, craps, and a separate room for games called Cash Hunt, Pachinko, Coin Flip and Crazy Time. In those games, players place bets on a main money wheel, a Top Slot above the money wheel.
Claesson describes how Evolution operates as a middleman for the live online casino platforms DraftKing and FanDuel. In Connecticut they provide casino services for DraftKings and FanDuel, which operate under the licenses of the Mashantucket and Mohegan tribes.
With a wireless headset, laptop monitors, a camera capturing the dealer’s actions, a live feed to the control room and regulators, each game seems like a pantomime of sorts. Only that the players cannot see each other and the dealer cannot seem them.
“On the screen, as a player I see the video of the game presenter,” he said. “I see them interacting with me. And I can type in the chat to communicate with them. As a dealer, or game presenter, they see the player type into them in the chat. There is a social element between players and dealer and among the players themselves using the chat function.”
For the dealers, or presenters as Claesson likes to call them, their job in a live virtual casino is somewhat simpler than their bricks-and-mortar counterparts at Mohegan Sun and Foxwoods, he said.
“It’s a challenging job in that there is multitasking,” he added. “There are no calculations needed. The system will tell you (the dealer) when to take a card or not. You need to know the rules of the game. The system will tell you the winner.”
All the dealers work in two-hour increments and spend 30 minutes per table. In one shift, they would work four tables, then go on a break.
The company has a separate room it uses to train dealers to become adept online blackjack dealers, including how to operate card shuffling machines and “deal” the cards to a specific spot in front of the players’ spots. The training lasts for 12 days before the dealers are allowed to go on to the virtual floor.
“Everyone learns blackjack with the monitors and lights that help the dealers know where to place the cards,” Claesson said. “In the beginning, we don’t focus so much on speed. We are more concerned with the technique.”
Regulators keep watchful eye
As part of a closely regulated business, Evolution has to allow the state Department of Consumer Protection’s Gaming Division access to the dealer rooms at all times. They do this through their control room.
“If a dealer drops a card on the floor, there would be a signal that would come in here,” Claesson said while inside the control room. “They are not allowed to fix it themselves. These guys (control room operators) would look at the video and figure out how to resolve that mistake or issue. They can speak to the table directly. Or, if needed, they would come out to the floor to tell them to pick up the card.”
Through the use of CCTV the control room sees all the active tables at the same time. They also can communicate with Evolution’s thousands of employees at studios around the world, such as Canada, Georgia, Armenia, Latvia, Bulgaria, and Malta to name a few. Additionally, they communicate with the company’s headquarters in Philadelphia and studios in Michigan, where other live online casinos reside.
If something illegal takes place on the virtual gaming floor, the control room plays a central part in documenting the activity and reporting it to Evolution leadership and the state regulator. Last year a dealer was accused of cheating Draft Kings out of $47,000 during games of blackjack after a state police investigation.
The dealer, Sebastian Echeverri, was charged with first-degree larceny and cheating. The Statewide Organized Crime Investigative Task Force received a criminal referral from the Gaming Division “regarding an alleged cheating scam involving a dealer at live casino operator Evolution.”
“Records examined during the course of the investigation revealed that one or more of the three Draft Kings accounts allegedly controlled by Echeverri demonstrated a pattern of placing abnormally high bets after Echeverri had handled the cards,” the state police said.
Detectives watched CCTV and internal gaming documents supplied by Evolution to determine Echeverri was manipulating blackjack hands to give him advantageous online bets on multiple DraftKings accounts that he created.
According to Bridgeport Superior Court records, Echeverri is still waiting to make a plea in the case. The next court date is Jan. 23, 2025. Meanwhile, his records are sealed.
As one of the largest employers in Fairfield, Evolution is one of the country’s companies that operates virtually but has a brick-and-mortar presence to provide its services. As it does so, it provides jobs and business to the local economy.
“Evolution is a significant employer,” Barnhart said. “But the two universities (Sacred Heart and Fairfield) are the town’s largest employers, besides the town’s board of education itself.”
