INTERVIEW: MERIDIANBET
At 1,300 operators and counting, Expanse Studios is just getting started
following the industry playbook. And increasingly, the industry is starting to notice.
Damjan Stamenkovic, CEO, Expanse Studios
THE IP OWNERSHIP BET Most gaming studios don’t own their content outright. They license graphics from one vendor, audio from another, mechanics from a third. It’s faster to market, lower upfront cost, and entirely standard practice.
Expanse does the opposite. Every game (all 65 proprietary titles in the current portfolio) is built in-house. No licensing fees. No shared IP. No dependencies.
This matters more than it sounds. When you license components, you’re renting margin. When you own the IP, you control monetisation, distribution timelines, and the underlying asset value that shows up on balance sheets and earnings calls. That difference compounds. “When you own the IP, you can scale without proportional cost growth,” says Damjan Stamenkovic, CEO of Expanse Studios. “Otherwise, adding revenue means adding headcount or licensing fees. Full ownership changes that math.”
The proof is in the partner count. Over 1,300 B2B operators now distribute Expanse content, with over 300 new partnerships signed in Q3 2025 alone. That’s network effects kicking in.
SUPER HELI AND THE CRASH GAME PHENOMENON
When investors ask, “What’s new at Expanse?” at gaming conferences from Las Vegas to Barcelona and Manila, they’re not making small talk. They’re asking about a company that just posted triple-digit quarter- over-quarter growth while most of the industry is consolidating, cutting, or pivoting.
10 JANUARY 2026 GIO T
he numbers from the most recent quarter in 2025 tell an unusual story. Revenue growth doesn’t just beat expectations, it quadruples year-over-year baselines. Almost one million unique players now spinning games built by a studio that, eight years ago, was a small team in Belgrade making games nobody outside the region had heard of.
For context, this is happening in an industry where growth typically means low double- digits and ‘disruption’ usually just means slightly better bonus mechanics.
Expanse Studios, a subsidiary of NASDAQ- listed Golden Matrix Group (GMGI), isn’t
If you’re not familiar with ‘crash games,’ here’s the pitch: you’re piloting a helicopter that climbs higher and higher. The longer you stay airborne, the bigger your multiplier grows. But at any random moment, the helicopter crashes. The question is: when do you cash out? It’s part skill, part psychology, part game theory. And it’s exploding globally. Super Heli, Expanse’s flagship crash title, has become the game operators request by name. Session lengths run significantly above industry averages. Retention metrics are described internally as “materially better than category norms.”
The appeal isn’t hard to understand. Crash games create a tension loop that traditional slots can’t match. Every second you wait, the stakes rise. It’s visceral in a way that spinning reels aren’t. And in social casino environments where players share results in real-time, that tension becomes social proof. On the opposite end sits Wild Icy Fruits,
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