Light & Wonder Casinos

Light & Wonder, Inc., formerly known as Scientific Games, is a North American corporation that provides gambling products. The company is headquartered in Las Vegas, with the lottery headquarters and production plant in Georgia.

Light & Wonder is behind several well-known studios, such as Shuffle Masters, Bally Technologies, WMS, Barcrest, NYX Gaming, NextGen, Side City Studios, Bet Digital, Game360, Open Bet and Ice Cap Studios.

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The Story of Light & Wonder

In 2022, Scientific Games transformed into Light & Wonder, going as far as changing its name on the NASDAQ stock exchange from SGMS to LNW. The company became a key player in the new casino market and has several vital subsidiaries through which it operates in various sectors of the iGaming industry.

In 2017, Scientific Games merged with NYX Gaming Group. It was bought out in a $631 million deal in September 2017 from William Hill Bookmaker, which held a majority stake in NYX Gaming. It also had formed a working partnership with MGM Interactive, which gave it the franchise rights of the 007 James Bond brand name.

Scientific Games Corporation always had an active presence in the online gambling market. In November 2013, SCG acquired Bally Technologies for $3.3 billion, along with $1.8 billion of debt.

The first major takeover happened in 2006 when SGC acquired a UK-based online gambling company called The Global Draw. The next takeover was Games Media, which was also based in the UK. However, the two most important mergers happened in 2007 and 2010, respectively, when SCG bought Barcrest and Shuffle Master.

Still, in 2010, SCG next got rid of the horse racing sector, which it had dominated for quite some time in the 1960s. It sold off its entire racing division to Sporttech, ending a rich legacy in sports betting.

However, Barcrest was one of the most strategic acquisitions, and it continues to be a flagship brand with its own set of values and gaming identity.

The next big news in the market was the takeover of WMS Industries, which was, back then, the largest manufacturer of slot machines in the industry.

Early Days

This casino software provider has an illustrious history that stretches all the way back to 1932, when Harry E. Williams invented the world’s first electromechanical pinball machine. This simple machine would revolutionise the way humans interact with machines forever and usher in a new dimension of gaming into the popular imagination.

Harry is often regarded as “The Thomas Edison of Pinball" and “Father of Pinball" and has been credited with developing more than 150 gaming techniques. The spirit of this single man would evolve into the first proper luck-based game, the Advance, which American investors heavily backed. The first proper slot that came into being was the Bally Baby, which hit the market in 1936 after three years of intense engineering and re-engineering.

The company suffered a setback with the onset of World War 2 but was back on track after the end of the war in 1945 when it released its first-ever slot cabinet, Hi-Boy, which was a premium slot cabinet with a very basic 3 reels’ set up on a wooden frame.

This was a trendsetter in the market, and we saw the emergence of a truly global gambling brand with rapid expansion to European and North American markets. The next great phase in the company’s history came in the 1960s when Autotote Systems, Inc.

The company introduced the world’s first secure instant lottery game, The Instant Game, which would necessitate the introduction of proper indexing technology into the world of gambling.

A key subsidy of Autotote Systems, Inc was born in 1976; Bally went ahead to develop the company’s Slot Data Systems. This was the starting point of progressive jackpots. In 1981, Autotote Systems, Inc created another important subsidy, the WMS Industries, which would manage the brand’s pinball operations.

Between 1983 and 1985, the company initiated a string of consolidations and restructuring, resulting in the formal start of Autotote Systems, Inc in Delaware and its subsequent listing on the NASDAQ, the world’s largest stock market.

This was a key milestone as it formally brought the gambling company into the investor’s fold, and this would be a launching pad for the company to reach new heights. Backed by a flush of investments, Bally started to focus on technology and developed the world’s first full video poker game.