27 PUBLIC GAMING INTERNATIONAL • JULY/AUGUST 2025 Paul Jason: With the seamless transition from IGT Lottery to Brightstar, customers are retaining a trusted partner yet also getting a chance to “meet you again for the first time.” Renato Ascoli: It’s true, and this separation has distilled our own vision of what we want to mean to customers and to the industry going forward. We retain some familiar “traits,” you could say, such as prioritizing reliability and trust, and reemphasizing our commitment to a Customer First mindset. This includes ensuring that our leadership works closely and directly with customers, that we are listening to their feedback and acting on it. With the current momentum around industry evolution, as various change-agents continue to emerge and impact the lottery business, we want to offer a clear vision, ideas, and leadingedge solutions to help customers navigate the path in line with their particular goals. This relates to an aspect of the company that is new, which is our scope: With a highly experienced management team and a streamlined business now laser-focused on lottery, we can be even more agile in helping our lottery partners see and act on opportunities to achieve more for the good causes they support. Our operator role in Italy and in diverse regions around the world, along with our extensive global footprint, provide us a unique perspective that can help our customers grow and evolve their business. We also aim to further increase our speed to market in delivering exceptional products, ideas, and technology across the lottery value chain. Ultimately, Brightstar reflects this single-mindedness and an ambition to reach higher. I have heard these sentiments echoed in discussion groups with our employees, who say they are excited to be even more nimble, to further focus our investments and take our lottery customers to another level in their evolution. We’re energized about sharing our products, solutions, and operational experience to help customers fulfill their vision for the future. How will you approach the goal of advancing possibilities for customers? Renato Ascoli: With a renewed commitment to putting customers first in all that we do, we are focusing and strategically investing across four interconnected areas of the lottery business to consistently deliver value to customers, starting with enabling play anywhere. Here we have a strong foundation in our longstanding market leadership in retail point of sale technology and innovation. Consider our new terminals that ensure a smaller counter footprint with top efficiencies; our advances in lottery vending and cutting-edge optimization analytics and services; and established relationships with top retailers. We have also introduced solutions such as LotteryLink, a plugand-play device to expand access to lottery in-lane, and capabilities like our Connected Play solution to bridge the retail and digital channels, giving players a more seamless purchase and play experience. The second area of focus is game innovation to engage players with more fun and winning experiences. For example, we have given players more strategic ways to play with Cash Pop™, a draw game that is attracting new groups of players in 16 jurisdictions and growing organically into a national game. Our advanced Infinity Instants™ printing platform has opened the door to entirely new game mechanics. Our digital game studios have developed a diverse and engaging game Portfolio, with more than 200 eInstant games across categories—including bespoke licensed-branded options and recordbreaking progressive jackpots. They are now developing around three dozen new eInstant games annually bolstered by AI-driven creative and testing. And we retain our standout licensed properties, which offer recognizable titles that resonate with players across instant and eInstant formats. Third is helping to build stronger connections with players. This includes the ability to leverage AI-driven tools and predictive analytics through CRM systems and our Player Marketing Services, to help lotteries enhance player engagement, optimize campaign targeting and delivery, and drive sales growth through iLottery and Connected Play. This pillar also includes unique on-site tools such as our new Digital Menu Board solution, which enhances the visibility of instant games at the retail point of sale and is integrated with the lottery terminal application, making it easy for retailers to update their digital menu displays to reflect their inventory in real time. And our Retail Market Insights tool, the industry’s only national lottery sales database, provides lottery and retail partners with actionable data to shape promotional strategies and identify high-opportunity areas. What I’m hearing is that you want to offer customers the most advanced thinking and capabilities, and each lottery can adapt whatever tools or services they need to suit their vision of growth? Renato Ascoli: Yes, and to know that in doing so, they are collaborating with a partner that hasn’t focused their
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