Pragmatic Play Brings Kevin Hart to the Studio, Expands Rank Deal

Nate U · 5 November 2026

Pragmatic Play is having a busy week on the live casino side, with two separate stories showing just how far its studio ambitions now stretch. First, the supplier is putting a Hollywood face behind the dealer’s shoulder for a two-day celebrity event, and second, it has quietly expanded its branded Smart Studio tables into Rank Group’s UK brands, Grosvenor Casinos and Mecca Bingo.

Kevin Hart Joins Pragmatic Play’s Live Studio for a Two-Day Event

Pragmatic Play has recruited actor and comedian Kevin Hart to appear in its live casino studio on 6 and 7 November, the climax of a promotional campaign that’s been building since mid-October.
Hart will enter the Pragmatic Play studio and join the hosts of selected Live Casino titles across four separate sessions.

Pragmatic Play has named six Live Casino releases as Kevin’s Picks
for the event, giving players a defined shortlist of tables to watch out for across the two days.

The build-up has run in stages rather than arriving all at once.
From 19th October to 1st November, players could unlock extra rewards across a selection of live casino and slot games, followed by an exciting Prize Drop promotion in the run-up to Kevin’s live casino debut.

From 2nd to 5th November, players could randomly win a share of Free Chips across the same selection of top live game shows and tables, redeemable while playing any eligible game on 6th and 7th November.
The whole package is backed by a sizeable prize pool, with
a €1.25m prize pool ahead of four live studio sessions on 6-7 November
, and
more than 30,000 cash and multiplier prizes up for grabs
during the main event itself.

Hart’s involvement marks less a new game mechanic and more a marketing experiment in making an existing live casino line-up feel like appointment viewing. For UK players already familiar with Pragmatic Play’s regular hosts on titles such as Sweet Bonanza CandyLand, this is a chance to see the same formats given a celebrity-hosted twist for a limited window, rather than a permanent change to how the games play.

Smart Studio Tables Arrive at Grosvenor and Mecca Bingo

Away from the spotlight, Pragmatic Play has quietly deepened its long-running partnership with Rank Group, the operator behind Grosvenor Casinos and Mecca Bingo.
Pragmatic Play announced that it has agreed to deploy a suite of live casino tables to Rank Group, with the provider powering Rank Group with a selection of Smart Studio-powered live casino tables, now supplying blackjack, roulette, auto roulette, and auto speed roulette tables.

What makes Smart Studio worth watching is the customisation layer underneath the games.
The Smart Studio solution uses green-screen technology to enable operators to customise the appearance of live dealer tables, incorporating their own branding, promotional messaging and visual themes.
In practice that means Rank’s UK brands can wrap a standard blackjack or roulette feed in their own visual identity rather than offering a generic studio backdrop, and
the products can also highlight promotions and create unique experiences, making them an important asset for the group.

This isn’t Pragmatic Play’s first run at Rank’s tables; the two have worked together for years on slots and, more recently, live casino content. The new tables build on that foundation, with the supplier having
rolled out the live casino tables following another recent collaboration, as Pragmatic Play recently launched Mecca Big Bass Double Dab exclusively with Rank’s Mecca Bingo brand.
Rank’s own content team welcomed the flexibility this brings, with director of content Tom Orton noting that the
solution stands apart, giving the perfect mix of exceptional product capability and flexibility
for customising its live offering.

Where it all fits

Both stories point to the same underlying shift at Pragmatic Play: live casino is no longer just a back-end product fed to operators, it’s becoming a marketing platform in its own right. The Kevin Hart event shows the supplier experimenting with celebrity-led entertainment to pull players towards specific tables for a limited window, while the Rank Group rollout shows the quieter, more permanent work of giving operators like Grosvenor and Mecca Bingo branded, customisable versions of the same underlying games. UK players browsing either operator over the coming weeks may well notice both threads converging, with familiar live formats dressed up in new ways depending on which brand they’re playing on.

Pragmatic Play Brings Kevin Hart to the Studio, Expands Rank Deal

Kevin Hart Joins Pragmatic Play’s Live Studio for a Two-Day Event

Smart Studio Tables Arrive at Grosvenor and Mecca Bingo

Where it all fits

Sources

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