After selling its sports betting and lottery divisions for a combined $7 billion last year, gaming equipment provider Light & Wonder brought its social gaming subsidiary SciPlay back into the company’s fold.
CEO Matt Wilson told investors last week the roughly $500 million deal made strategic sense.
With the company’s focus on utilizing its land-based slot machine titles across the growing online casino business, transitioning the same popular games onto the social gaming genre was an easy decision.
“There’s not a lot of players in the industry that have the unique collection of assets that we have,” Wilson said during the company’s second-quarter earnings conference call. “Unlocking that full potential about building the world’s greatest products was key to bringing SciPlay back into the family.”
Wilson said the three businesses are “very unique” but the teams overseeing each division will naturally come together.
“SciPlay is not exactly the same as the land-based business and the land-based business is not exactly the same as iGaming, but they’re very complementary,” Wilson said.
Truist Securities gaming analyst Barry Jonas told investors in a research note that Light & Wonder, having full ownership of SciPlay, “would unlock further benefits by optimizing [research and development] investments, data driven performance benefits on the integrated customer portfolio and balance sheet flexibility.”
Light & Wonder controlled 83 percent of SciPlay and is paying $22.95 per share for the remaining 17 percent. SciPlay was split off from Light & Wonder — then known as Scientific Games — in 2019 as a separate public company. Reacquiring the business was first considered in 2021.
