Hello viewers, Tim Pool here, editor of Gambling Insider. I'm with Siobhan Lane, the Light and Wonder Gaming CEO. Siobhan, thank you for joining us today. Thank you for having me, Tim.
It's our pleasure. We're especially pleased to have you on because you're part of our CEO special. if you could talk us through what it was like to take part in that interview and, you know, sort of be in the cover and that kind of thing.
Yeah, it was a great experience. Thank you for the opportunity. And, you know, just such a great opportunity to talk about all the changes and transformation that's happening at Light Wonder, previously Scientific Games, and really focus on, you know, what we're trying to do for our creators at Light Wonder and, of course, building great products and services for our customers. So thanks for the opportunity to be able to share that. And there's a lot of exciting stuff going on.
going on. So happy to have a platform like that. Yeah, that's our pleasure. I'm going to ask you a little bit more about the kind of transformations and the rebrand later on. But I, you know, I loved a quote that you had in the interview where you said that your job is to enable kind of your team's superpowers.
I just wanted to hear more about that because, you know, as you know, we kind of, we thought that was a great thing for a CEO in the gaming industry to say. Yeah, yeah. No, I love that idea.
I'm really passionate about building great teams. And I I think the greatest teams are diverse teams. They're really complementary. And so all of us have a superpower.
And it's a great question to ask in interviews. You know, what do you bring to the table? What's your differentiator?
And so when I think about building teams and highly complementary teams, think about it as a collection of superpowers. And when you bring really high-performing people together that have those complementary superpowers, you really get this exponential impact. And it's...
quite amazing actually the power of a team and certainly individuals but again when you bring that collective superpower together it can have such a huge impact i mean at the moment i think your success is speaking for itself because our global gaming awards light and wonder was victorious yeah um thank you can you talk us through kind of how that felt and that kind of recognition for for your recent success yeah i think uh it all goes back to our creators you know for them to have the recognition we've been through a lot of change as an industry i mean the last This time we were at ICE, it was right before the pandemic, at least in the February ICE. So just it's great acknowledgement of all of our creators, hard work, all their efforts over the last few years. You know, not only has our industry gone through a lot of change, but we as an organization have gone through a lot of change. So any recognition and acknowledgement of the job our team has done to keep them motivated, to keep them aspiring to to really be the very best is so great to see. And I just.
I'm so thankful that we were able to take home that award. So thank you for that recognition. That's our pleasure. You mentioned transformation earlier.
And of course, I guess it doesn't get much bigger transformation than a total rebrand, which obviously Scientific Games went through to become Light and Wonder. I wanted to put to you, I think Flutter is a good example because you don't think of Paddy Power anymore. You think of Flutter, the global brand.
I think Light and Wonder, when I think of Light and Wonder, Scientific Games is very much in the past. and obviously the separate lottery brand anyway. Light and Wonder's front of mind, to my mind, is a successful rebrand. I mean, is that something that you guys take pride in?
And are you happy with how that kind of name change and identity change has kind of gone through? Yeah, we're very happy with it. I know it was a bit of a shock to the industry when we announced the name.
It was a shock to many of our creators as well. But really, a name is just a name at the end of the day. What is so critically important to build a brand and make a name?
name successful is you have to, we use this analogy as we were going through the naming process, a name is just an empty vessel. And you have to really fill that vessel with really meaningful things like values and behaviors and leadership and opportunities and development and really walk the talk, if you will. And I think that's what we're most proud of. We knew it was a big opportunity to go big, but because we were changing and transforming in so many ways, the scientific... games name was born with and naturally belongs with that lottery business so when we made the decision to divest lottery we knew the name would go with that business so it was a real opportunity to to go big and but more importantly make sure we're following up in filling that vessel with really meaningful things and ultimately we wanted to create a brand and a company that would retain our creators and get them excited and passionate about what we're doing here but also attract new creators to our industry or to our organization.
And so it's different, it's fresh, but that was really done with intention. So hopefully the shock has worn off. And like you said, we're very, very happy with it. We think it's been a successful rebrand. And we'll just continue to fill that vessel with amazing things and hopefully it'll be a mega brand of the future.
Yeah, I think as you say, the initial shock has worn off and it's like one that is kind of on the tip of the tongue at the moment. A final question from me, looking ahead. because we've reflected a lot on, as you say, the ongoing transformation and kind of your role in that.
Looking ahead, early 2023, what are the kind of main goals and main targets you have for the rest of this year? But I guess we're always looking a little bit further than that in this industry. Yes.
Yes, we are planning far out in our development cycles and making sure we have our eye on the horizon. And we're looking around those corners. That's really important to us. Now that we have completed the divestitures, we're a very focused company.
So making great content and games is the number one focus of ours. Building great enabling technologies and systems. So it's great to just have a streamlined organization now, be very focused. We have a healthier balance.
So we're able to invest in our creators and our technology and our games and R&D because we know that's what makes our customers successful. So we're laser focused on that and just making sure that we deliver. Right.
We want our customers to be successful. They you know, we exist because they exist is what we like to say. And yeah, all of our creators are just really laser focused now on on this streamlined organization, streamlined mission. I think the great thing about ICE is that. it is land-based gaming, but also real money digital gaming is very prevalent in the European market.
So it's just such a great demonstration of this multi-channel and continued convergence of the gaming industry. And that's really our vision. We are the leading cross-platform global game company. And so all this great content that we make, we can distribute it across those many channels of gaming.
So we're really focused on delivering on that vision. Sure. Well, Sean, best of luck with all your ventures and thanks very much for joining.
Thanks so much, Tim.