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Deanna Scott:
Hi Ravers. Deanna Scott here. Welcome to Raving On Air, sponsored by Tribal Gaming and Hospitality Magazine. Visit tgandh.com for all of your operational insights.
Deanna Scott:
Today I welcome Siobhan Lane. She’s the Senior Vice President and Chief Commercial Officer of Gaming of Light & Wonder, you may remember them as Scientific Games. Siobhan, thank you so much for joining us.
Siobhan Lane:
Thank you for having me. Great to be here.
Deanna Scott:
Before we jump into this big announcement and get an update on what’s going on at Light & Wonder, I’d love to dive into your background a little bit. You have a very impressive background, and you were recently recognized as a Top 40 Under 40 emerging leader by Global Gaming, and in 2020 recognized as one of the most influential female female leaders. So, hail to Siobhan.
Siobhan Lane:
Well, thank you. That’s very generous, but I’ve been in the gaming industry for about 15 years. Most of my career was actually with Aristocrat Technologies. I spent just over 12 years at Aristocrat and was really fortunate to be there at that time because I really got to rise through the ranks of Aristocrat while they were going through their transformation and their turnaround. They really went from a number five position in the market to a leading position in the market.
Siobhan Lane:
And I was able to grow my career at that organization and learn a lot along the way, working alongside some of the best leaders in gaming on the supplier side.
Siobhan Lane:
And then I was presented with an opportunity to come to the former Scientific Games. We’re now Light & Wonder, as you mentioned, and that was about three or so years ago. I really looked at that as just a great leaping off point. We had done so much at Aristocrat to turn that company around, and I really enjoyed that process and was offered this opportunity at Scientific Games to really help transform Scientific Games and their organization. And that’s what really fuels me and gives me a lot of passion.
Siobhan Lane:
Certainly the people I get to work with every day, but really doing the work to set an organization up for success, and I can say in the two years that I’ve been at Scientific Games, we’ve done a lot of transformation including rebranding the entire organization, which is quite the process. And, you know, excited to talk about that with you today.
Deanna Scott:
There’s no doubt that technology and the marketplace and consumer behavior has changed. And so 20 years ago, a slot manufacturing company was just that. Today with all of the different gaming channels, I assume that this is just a crazy conversation to get to the point where you’re actually going to reposition and rebrand a global company. Can you give us an idea of why this is taking place now and really what the makeup of the company will be going forward?
Siobhan Lane:
Sure, yeah, I think that’s a great question. So about 18 months ago, Scientific Games kicked off a strategic review process, and that was with the intention of really identifying what assets in our portfolio were meant to be together. And we always had a lot of debt hanging over our organization. And so it was obvious that we weren’t going to work our way out of that without divesting an asset or two.
Siobhan Lane:
And so through that strategic review process, we identified that our sports and our lottery businesses would be the assets that we would divest, and we’re on the verge of completing those divestitures now.
Siobhan Lane:
Under the strategy of the parts that remained in the business really felt like they belonged together. If you look at the market and you kind of center your strategy around content and in our industry games, everyone loves to play games to your point, spending your discretionary time or money on playing games, and so many different channels nowadays is just part of everyday life.
Siobhan Lane:
And so that’s really at the heart of our strategy is great content and great games, knowing that so many people out there just love to play games and you can access that through many different channels. And then leveraging our backend systems and platforms to enable a great player experience playing those games. And I think one dynamic that has emerged over the last couple years is a continuing convergence in the gaming industry that will inevitably be our future state.
Siobhan Lane:
So when we say convergence, we mean land-based retail casinos converging with digital channels, and mobile and online play versus retail and playing on the casino floor. So making sure that we’re really leading the way on providing a great player experience in that converged state so that casino operators can really enable a great experience for players while they’re playing those fun games.
Deanna Scott:
Yeah. It has been messy as people in all types of businesses are trying to figure out that question of what the future will hold and what things will take off. For your customers or the US markets specifically, what will they notice the most from this brand change, or will they notice anything?
Siobhan Lane:
Yeah, I hope I hope they notice a lot. I mean, we are really changing end-to-end as an organization. The inspiration for the brand really centers around our key stakeholders, with our employees really being at the heart and the center of it. We were deliberate to make this a very stakeholder-led process. We didn’t want to just change the name to change the namesake. The divestiture of the lottery business kind of prompted the decision to either keep or change our name.
Siobhan Lane:
The natural owner of the Scientific Games name is the lottery team. That’s where the name originated from. There’s a lot of equity there with the name, with the lottery business. And so the name Scientific Games will live on through that divestiture of the lottery business.
Siobhan Lane:
And so when we came to this point where we knew we had to rebrand and rename, we really went out to our employees, our customers, our key stakeholders to say, “What’s meaningful to you. What are you looking for? What would you like?” And made sure those insights really drove our decisions around that process.
Siobhan Lane:
So I do hope there is change noted. I mean, this is truly an end-to-end transformation of our culture. We have a new set of values, a new strategy, a new vision, and bringing that great experience to all of our employees at Light & Wonder because they were really the inspiration for this name at the end of the day.
Deanna Scott:
Well, you are at the beginning of a very, very large transition and we do appreciate you taking some time to give us some insight into what to expect at the Light & Wonder company. It’s very exciting and Siobhan, I really appreciate you taking some time to talk with us.
Siobhan Lane:
Thanks for the opportunity. It’s been great. I appreciate it.
Deanna Scott:
And thanks everyone for joining us for Raving On Air. As always, if you’re looking for operational insights, please go to [inaudible 00:08:45] or visit us at tgandh.com. And again, from the Raving team, be happy and safe.