Elad Kushnir (left) and Robert Antokol of Playtika.
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Playtika CEO explains how games have arrived in Israel

  • Posted byby Dean Takahashi
  • Updated
  • 1 min

Robert Antokol is the chief executive of Israel’s largest game company, Playtika. A division of Caesars Interactive, the Tel Aviv company has 1,200 employees, and it’s one of the pioneering companies behind Israel’s $1 billion gaming industry.

Playtika wasn’t the first company in the $3.4 billion social casino gaming market (as measured by market researcher Eilers Research). Antokol cofounded Playtika with Uri Shahak in 2010, well after Zynga launched Zynga Poker in 2008. But his company’s Slotomania app took off on Facebook and later on mobile. Caesars bought the company at a valuation of $150 million in 2011, and Playtika used its advantages to shoot to the top of the industry.

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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.