Barry Cottle, President and CEO of Scientific Games, lauded the performance of the firm’s Lottery division during this week’s Q2 investor update, going as far as describing the vertical as the “market leader”.
Speaking after the publication of the second quarter financials, he underlined the team’s record-breaking Q2 revenue and AEBITDA, citing strong sequential growth fueled by record US and global instant retail game sales allied to a strong draw games performance and continued momentum in ilottery.
Cottle told investors: “The instant lottery business continued its strong run, with US calendar year-to-date instant game sales up 21% over last year, and up 30% versus 2019. Internationally, our Italy instant product JV achieved record performance, up over 20% year-to-date versus last year, which was the previous best year-to-date sales ever.”
He added: “Our lottery business continues to be the market leader. And importantly, we have pre-imminent market positions and long-term client relationships, with our largest customers having been with us for more than 30 years on average.”
Expanding on operational highlights, Cottle noted: “We’ve been able to build on our success and accelerate our growth with our unique technology in IP, enabling us to provide unparalleled products and services that are revolutionizing the way lottery products are sold globally across retail and digital. This leadership position was strengthened with a number of key gains in the quarter.
“First, we were announced the winner of both the instant games and lottery systems contract for Pennsylvania. This is a huge win. They are one of the top-performing lotteries globally. And we couldn’t be more excited to continue to partner with them for the next 10 years, as we’ve done for nearly 50 years.
“Second, we extended our New Hampshire Lottery partnership for six more years and importantly, upgraded them to a Scientific Games enhanced partnership, which brings our US SGEP partners to 14 and our global partnerships to over 20. In addition, we secured three European instant contracts in the countries of Bosnia, Denmark, and Georgia.”
The CEO went on to cover progress in the firm’s ilottery business which partners 21 ilotteries globally. “A great example of this is our Pennsylvania ilottery program which continues to evolve and thrive, hitting over 2 billion in Q2 in total wagering since inception – the fastest ilottery program to reach that milestone,” he said.
“We went live with a new ilottery program in Germany, launching digital instant games with a shared prize pool, creating a great cross-platform experience with our retail and instant games.”
On the outlook for the lottery sector, he concluded: “With lottery’s long-term customer relationships, its strong recurring cash flows, a demonstrated resilience in down markets, and with multiple growth drivers ahead, lottery is a truly unique business, poised to deliver outsized returns for many years to come.”
