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// PUBLIC GAMING INTERNATIONAL // May/June 2016
PUBLIC GAMING
INTERVIEWS
Kevin
ANDERSON
Vice President, Sales and Business Development, EMEA
Scientific Games Lottery
PGRI Introduction:
In his 33-year career in the lottery and gaming indus-
try, Kevin Anderson has covered a great deal of ground professionally and
geographically. Anderson, vice president of sales and business development
EMEA at Scientific Games Lottery, a division of Scientific Games Corpora-
tion, oversees sales for a vast area of the globe stretching from Europe to
the Middle East and Africa, and he serves as global head of sports betting.
In that time he has managed lotteries in Latin America, spent six years in
Greece running sports betting for OPAP, and led the company’s joint venture
with Française des Jeux in France. We spoke with Kevin about product con-
vergence—currently a hot topic in the industry—and how Scientific Games is
providing innovative solutions to help lotteries serve the needs of consumers
across all gaming entertainment categories.
well as delivery channels. Another important
benefit from the acquisitions is scale—we are
bringing the best and most exciting licensed
properties to our clients in many sectors.
How have your lottery customers and consum-
ers benefited from the company’s expansion?
K. Anderson:
Scientific Games has more
focus on R&D than ever before. We have
centralized, larger and more diverse resources.
We have more innovation and creativity hap-
pening across the company. And we can pro-
vide more value and engagement for players.
In our development work, we are looking at
the overall player experience and how much
value we are giving players by extending game
play, offering cash and experiential prizes,
even virtual prizes and social sharing oppor-
tunities. We have found that the deeper the
consumer engagement, the greater the ben-
efit to the lottery and its stakeholders.
The gaming sector is extremely focused
on player retention, so we do everything we
can to make sure that the player journey is
satisfying and entertaining. Also, you hear
a lot about “big data” in our industry, actu-
ally in every industry. Business intelligence,
along with Scientific Games’ ability to
transform our global insights into products,
is key to innovating programs and products
that ensure our lottery customers’ success.
Paul Jason, PGRI:
How has the expansion of Scientific Games through the acquisitions of
Bally and WMS changed the company’s lottery innovation?
Kevin Anderson:
We now have a 360-degree view of the player and the global gam-
ing environment. My interactive and gaming colleagues at Scientific Games help me
think about what’s important to Europe’s gaming consumers, retailers and operators of
today and tomorrow. Coming together as one, large omni-channel company has given us
a new perspective. We now look at software and systems architecture in a new and more
complete way. We are developing technology for our customers that’s more flexible and
agile. We are creating faster solutions that can accommodate the continuous changes that
regulation and competition bring.
The mergers have driven Scientific Games’ innovation in systems solutions, content and
services that are more closely alignment with requirements of the European marketplace,
where gaming convergence has happened sooner than in other regions. We are architecting
gaming systems that are easier to implement, more cost effective to operate, and most im-
portantly, able to accommodate third-party products and services with minimal disruption.
Content remains very relevant. Scientific Games is well known for our game design capabil-
ities, and we now have four content development studios that focus on gaming consumers as
European Perspective:
Scientific Games’ 360 Degree View of the Player