I’ll wager there hasn’t been a conversation between two slot operators in the last few weeks when at least one of them didn’t say something sarcastic about Scientific Games changing its name to Light & Wonder. Criticism has always been easier than praise; so many of those conversations probably began with, “Can you believe they probably paid someone to come up with that name?”
Why on earth would anyone change the name of a highly successful gaming company? If you even remotely had that thought, it’s proof positive that you’re way too new to this industry. You’ve also probably never heard of A-1 Supply, Sircoma, Williams Manufacturing, Silicon Gaming, Mills Bell-O-Matic, Gtech, Betfair, Syntech, Spielo, Paddy Power, MultiMedia, Alliance or Star Games. Historically, changing names in gaming is as common as shifts in the weather.
Granted, names used to be good for a half century or so, but no more. Not even an industry icon like L&W’s predecessor Bally was immune. The big motivator for most recent name changes has been mergers and acquisitions (M&As). In Christian Marfels’ 2006 book Bally: The World’s Game Maker, he says, “The merger frenzy reached a peak in 2004 with the mega-mergers of MGM Mirage and Mandalay Bay and of Harrah’s Entertainment and Caesars Entertainment.”
Marfels mistakenly thought ’04 was the peak. Maybe no one could have imagined that IGT would soon be acquired by an Italian lottery company based in London, Caesars would declare bankruptcy, and a group of Aussies would take over America’s oldest slot machine company (Bally).
M&As have done more destructive damage to our industry than COVID, the mortgage crisis and high gas prices combined. They have made millions for M&A law firms, enriched stock traders, seen bank profits soar and created several billionaires. The only casualties were hard working employees, R&D budgets, stifled gaming innovation and cancelled pension funds. The latter were mainly due to the accumulation of debt and resulting interest payments. To merge or acquire another company requires money (lots and lots of it), and that generally means borrowing. I can’t think of any upside to the resulting interest payments (unless you’re a lender). Those payments have never done anything to improve our industry. And if the economy stumbles, interest can be fatal (e.g., at Caesar’s, where debt payments often exceeded cash flows, leading to bankruptcy)
One terrific sub-note about the Light & Wonder name change is that it was driven by a divestiture (the polar opposite of an M&A). The L&W folks sold off their lottery and sports betting divisions, thus reducing their debt. Also, the original lottery company that acquired Bally was called Scientific Games, so properly that name went with the sale of that lottery division.
In a recent conference call about their name change, EVP Matt Wilson quoted their new Executive Chairman Jamie Odell as saying, “games are at the center of our universe.” That is incredibly refreshing and insightful. A few recent CEOs (like Caesars’ Gary Loveman) seem to have thought that M&A profits, not product, should be their focus. Forgive the pun, but it’s a “wonder” that all CEOs haven’t seen this “light” themselves. Odell is spot on, and his philosophy should guarantee a bright future for L&W. His motto should be engraved in granite above the door of every slot machine manufacturer.
However, this rant is about name changes, not the evils of M&As. The subtitle to Marfels’ Bally history book is “Celebrating 75 Years of Innovation.” The Bally name continued to be on the side of slot machines for 82 years before it was abandoned and replaced by Scientific Games in 2014. But the parent company changed names as much as anyone.
Bally began as Lion Manufacturing Co., managed by Ray Moloney in the late 1920s. He started printing punchboards, before trying his hand at pinball machines. He wanted to compete with David Gottlieb’s successful Baffle Ball game. So, they made a new wooden pinball called the Ballyhoo under the flag of Midwest Novelty Mfg. Co. The game was a hit. Its name was lifted from a racy humor magazine, Ballyhoo, published from 1931 to 1939. They shortened it to create a new company name where it worked even better. By 1968, 90% of all slot machines in America were produced by Bally.
But there were a few detours on the way to today’s Light & Wonder. In 1974, Bally went international by signing agreements with Germany’s Wulff-Automaten (forming the very successful division Bally-Wulff).
In 1982-83, they went on a buying spree, acquiring the Health & Tennis Company, which they renamed Bally Total Fitness. They bought Six Flags and the Great America theme parks and exercise bikemaker Lifecycle.
In 1986, they bought the MGM Grand Casinos in Reno and Las Vegas, and the Golden Nugget in Atlantic City. Ironically, about this same time they also acquired a small instant lottery company named Scientific Games for a short time.
In 1987, pinball leader Williams Manufacturing went public, changing its name to WMS Industries. In 1988, they acquired the original Bally pinball division, uniting all five segment competitors (Midway, United, Gottlieb, Williams and Bally). But, by 1999, WMS abandoned pinballs to concentrate on slot machines, leaving only Stearns in the silver ball world.
Bally first went public in 1991 as Bally Manufacturing Corporation. However, weak products and fragmented leadership plagued them in the U.S. Eventually, under the guidance of Hans Kloss from the German division Bally-Wulff, a turnaround was launched. The company’s name was adjusted to Bally Gaming International. They soon spun off the casinos and fitness clubs as a separate Bally Entertainment group. Kloss, like Odell, concentrated on games and introduced innovative products like the “ProSeries” and the “Game Maker.” Those successes again made Bally profitable, but also made them a takeover target.
In a friendly bid, WMS made the first offer to acquire Bally in 1996. However, Advanced Patent Technology, a small Nevada company who had begun in gaming with the acquisition of route operator United Coin (not the pinball company), made a hostile counteroffer. After some back and forth bidding from WMS and arguments over selling Bally-Wulff, Advanced won in ’97. They rebranded the company Alliance Gaming Technologies. They changed the corporate name again in 2006 to Bally Technologies Inc.
The Scientific Games name came after an acquisition by investor Ron Perelman in 2014. Along the way, he acquired Bally, WMS, ShuffleMaster, Star Games and others to enhance their positions in video reels, table games, ETGs and lottery.
Scientific Games, that small instant lottery company that Bally once owned, was itself later acquired by Auto-Tote Corporation in 2000. Auto-Tote’s roots went back to 1917. However, in 2001, they changed their historic corporate name to match the new company they’d bought: Scientific Games.
Unlike a few of my colleagues, I think the moniker Light & Wonder is creative and fun. Nonetheless, I’d still recommend you take the “under” on a 10-year proposition bet for yet another name change. History puts the odds in our favor.
Do you mistakenly think that new names won’t work? Think again. FanDuel came out of nowhere in 2009 to now control 42% of the sports betting market. DraftKings followed in 2012, now commanding a 23% share of the market.
Lottomatica was a leader in global lottery sales, but willingly changed its name to Gtech in 2006 after an acquisition. When they purchased IGT, they changed names again in 2015 to slot leader International Game Technology. It didn’t seem to hurt their lottery business. IGT is still a global leader and now enjoys a 75% share of all U.S. lotteries.
Again, if you’re new to the industry, IGT started as Bally Distributing, changed to A-1 Supply, and morphed into SIRCOMA before finally going public and becoming International Game Technology the first time in 1981. It became IGT once again after those brief forays as Lottomatica SpA and Gtech.
For those who think the Light & Wonder name is a bit odd, I’ll argue having an unusual name can be a real plus. Practically, in the contentious world of trademark infringement and political correctness, the less conventional the name, the better. There’s nothing worse than selecting a new name, only to lose it in a court battle or finding an unexpected hidden meaning.
The World Wrestling Federation spent quite a bit on their WWF re-branding before being usurped in 2002 by the World Wildlife Fund (they had prior rights to WWF). The angry grapplers are now the WWE with “Federation” changed to “Entertainment.”
Names and/or logos can also be forced to change almost instantly based on culture, context, or even current events.
In 1955, an ambulance company called AIDS was founded in Southern California and quickly spread to southern and northern Nevada. It was very successful until a virus of the same name hit the U.S. in 1981. The had to change to AME (an unspoken acronym for Aids Medical Enterprises). Likewise, probably the only one relieved about the recent spread of the Omicron variant was Delta Airlines. They were not happy the previous deadly strain of COVID was named after them.
To the earlier question of whether L&W actually paid someone to come up with their name, the answer is “Yes.” To avoid WWF-type issues and other name blunders, L&W used the renown firms Lexicon and Landor & Fitch to sort through 2,700 different name choices.
But, perhaps to best reason for selecting a unique name like Light & Wonder is to create buzz. It took months before most gaming executives really knew who to call to service their Atronic games when they were quietly assimilated by Speillo, or Gtech, or was it Lottomatic or maybe IGT?
In contrast, just hours after the Scientific Games announcement on February 28, the world seemed to know about Light & Wonder. That was a result of the “water cooler” discussions mentioned in the opening paragraph. That’s a real plus in promoting a change, and another affirmation that strange can be good.
Some have called the new name “silly.” If you’re in that group, what would you call the name, “Flutter”? Did you know that they are the parent company behind FanDuel? While that term sounds whimsical stateside, “flutter” has long been slang for small bets in the UK. Or how about Zynga? That strange name didn’t stop them from becoming a powerhouse in social media game design, with credits like “Farmville.” The Zynga name came from co-founder Mark Pincus’ pet bulldog, who in turn lifted it from an African warrior queen. I won’t even mention Google’s shift to Alphabet or Facebook’s transformation to Meta. (!#@!@#!!).
Happily, 100% of the team members at Light & Wonder were sipping champagne when this new name was announced. It was not necessarily because they were all in love with it right away. It was because they no longer had to type out their ridiculously long email address suffix.
I’ll bet that no one celebrated more than L&W Board Member Kneeland Youngblood. Can you imagine trying to fit kneeland.youngblood@scientificgames.com into those tiny boxes on most forms?
Please note that “l&w.com,” or “light&wonder.com” will not work. Apparently, the internet email overseers don’t like strange or unusual names.
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