Big Fish Games has a new owner in Aristocrat.
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How Aristocrat’s $990 million Big Fish deal will shake up social casino games

  • Posted byby Dean Takahashi
  • Updated
  • 3 min

Billion-dollar game deals are pretty rare, but one slipped by last week without much attention. Australian gambling machine maker Aristocrat Leisure announced last week it is buying social casino games maker Big Fish Games in Seattle for $990 million.

It was the second deal in a relatively short time for Big Fish. Churchill Downs, the owner of the Kentucky Derby, bought Big Fish Games in 2014 for $885 million. Aristocrat is clearly the latest company that believes that mixing gambling expertise (via its slot machines business) and non-gambling social casino games (where you can play virtual slot machines but can’t win real money) are a good fit.

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Written by

Dean Takahashi

Dean Takahashi is editorial director for GamesBeat. He has been a tech journalist since 1988, and he has covered games as a beat since 1996. He was lead writer for GamesBeat at VentureBeat from 2008 to April 2025. Prior to that, he wrote for the San Jose Mercury News, the Red Herring, the Wall Street Journal, the Los Angeles Times, and the Dallas Times-Herald. He is the author of two books, "Opening the Xbox" and "The Xbox 360 Uncloaked." He organizes the annual GamesBeat Next, GamesBeat Summit and GamesBeat Insider Series: Hollywood and Games conferences and is a frequent speaker at gaming and tech events. He lives in the San Francisco Bay Area.