March/April 2015 // Public Gaming International //
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comprehensive range of all gaming products
and services does make quite an impression.
That diversity and the ability to support our
customers as they expand into new gaming
categories becomes more and more relevant
as marketplaces mature. For instance, most
of our European lottery customers offer a
broad range of gaming products that are de-
livered through multiple channels, includ-
ing mobile and the internet. They come to
ICE to learn about new ideas, new products,
new technologies and new ways to meet the
needs of the modern consumer. So we have
been able to share with them how Scientific
Games’ consolidation of products and ser-
vices will support and help them accomplish
their business objectives as they grow along
with their own customers, the consumers.
We visited with many of our South Ameri-
can and Asian customers at ICE as well.
All gaming operators, including govern-
ment lotteries, want to understand how the
broader games-of-chance industry is evolv-
ing. ICE 2015 has been a great venue for
Scientific Games to work with our custom-
ers and build a strategic approach for long-
term, sustainable success in this industry.
Isn’t it more important than ever to make it
easier for the consumer to navigate the differ-
ent gaming and channel options?
G. Isaacs:
It is vital that we provide a
user-friendly navigational path to migrate
from one channel to another and one
game category to another. Making it easy
for the consumers to get where they want
to go, and access the game content when
and where they want, is a priority. The con-
sumer values freedom and flexibility as well
as ease-of-use. Consumers will not likely
embrace anything that limits their options
and control. They won’t necessarily trade
freedom and flexibility for convenience.
Consumers want our products and the
pathways to play our games to be intuitive.
We need to make everything easy-to-use
and intuitive. Fail to accomplish that one
straightforward goal, and you will lose the
customer. And you may not get a second
chance. The challenge to do that is straight-
forward, but not easily accomplished. There
are interesting studies that measure the will-
ingness, or lack thereof, of the consumer to
wait for the screen to generate, or to grapple
with registration forms and such. Every-
thing needs to be streamlined to minimize
even nano seconds of inefficiency.
The individual gaming operator, though,
will likely want to think strategically about
how to evolve its systems and platforms
to facilitate integration of new games and
channels in ways that make it easy for the
consumer to understand and navigate. Scal-
ability of technological infrastructure is key.
Our goal is to enable our customers, the
gaming operators, to invest in systems and
platforms that are scalable, that can evolve
with the marketplace and are flexible to in-
tegrate new technologies, game categories,
and distribution channels as the needs pres-
ent themselves in the coming years. That
is why we have created the new Scientific
Games—to bring together the entire range
of gaming platforms and technological ca-
pabilities. We are now in a position to help
ensure that the investments our custom-
ers make today in different game content,
communications networks, and technologi-
cal infrastructure will best position them
for the needs of tomorrow and the coming
years. Ongoing investment will always be
required to keep pace with the changing
marketplace. But we want to make sure
that the investments our customers make
today are scalable, can evolve with the mar-
ketplace and can be leveraged far into the
future. This accomplishes two things: one,
it controls the costs of staying current with
the best technology, and two, it ensures that
the operator is always delivering the best
consumer experience, supported with the
most advanced technologies. One thing we
all know is that competition for the enter-
tainment dollar and the recreational gaming
dollar will continue to increase. Producing
the best game content and overall consumer
experience, and providing the broadest con-
sumer access possible, is imperative.
The mission of Scientific Games is to
bring all of our resources to bear to empower
each individual customer to accomplish its
own unique goals and business objectives.
That may mean integrating the full range
of gaming categories over all channels of
distribution. We now have deeper resources
to do this. Or it may mean optimizing the
performance of a more limited set of tra-
ditional lottery gaming options distributed
over a network of land-based retailers. This
has always been our core competency and it
will continue to be.
Given the increased sophistication of the con-
sumer, their willingness and ability to try new
things and seek the best source for whatever it
is that they want to buy, will it be important
for the gaming operator to expand its portfo-
lio of gaming options, to become a one-stop-
gaming-destination?
G. Isaacs:
It will be a competitive advan-
tage to provide the consumer a path to the
different gaming options and to have those
different options within your business so the
player does not have to look elsewhere for
them. But it is not a necessity. There are lots
of ways to succeed, lots of different business
models that will work. Government lotteries
that focus on the traditional games, excel at
their ability to connect with the consumer
and deliver products with widespread ap-
peal will continue to succeed just like they
have over the last several decades. Scientific
Games has supported the lottery sector from
its inception, we are dedicated to the ongo-
ing success of our government lottery cus-
tomers, and we will always provide the tools
to drive successful performance for all of our
lottery customers.
Consumer cross over between gaming
categories is a reality. We have conducted
extensive consumer research on this topic.
The facts are there to support convergence.
In the United States, 50% of players who
play lottery instant games also play slot
machines, while 75% of players who play
slot machines play lottery draw games, and
74% of slot players play instant games.
And the trend line is clearly in the direction
of increasing consumer cross-over between
gaming categories. In Europe, less than 1%
of the total marketplace plays slots only,
