Public Gaming Magazine September-October 2016

September/October 2016 // PUBLIC GAMING INTERNATIONAL //

well, with revenue growth of 11 percent or

$15.4 million—reflecting our continued

market leadership in instant games.

We already set a high bar and are stead-

fastly delivering the world’s best lottery ex-

periences through our focus on innovation

and customer partnership. I’ll leverage my

experience, my passion, and financial acu-

men to support the proven leadership of

Jim Kennedy and his long tenured team.

My charge is to ensure that our Lottery divi-

sion has the tools and support needed to be

the industry-leading gold standard: design-

ing innovative, engaging games, expanding

our successful Cooperative Services Pro-

gram, and supporting our retailers to help

increase state lotteries’ sales and profits for

their beneficiaries. I’m really looking for-

ward to working with the Scientic Games

Lottery team to add even greater value for

our customers, our players and our employ-

ees; collaboration is what I’m all about.

For the television show,

Undercover Boss,

you

took two weeks to perform in a wide variety of

jobs to see for yourself how performance and

operations at NCL could be improved. I don’t

think you’ll be able to go “undercover” in our in-

dustry, so how will you get insight into the inner

workings of our industry to reveal those kinds of

underlying opportunities for improvement?

K. Sheehan:

You are right, Paul, going

“undercover” as part of Undercover Boss

was a great opportunity for me to really ex-

perience what it was like to work at Norwe-

gian Cruise Line through the eyes of differ-

ent groups of employees. It was an amazing

experience to serve as an assistant waiter,

a deck swabber, and part of the entertain-

ment staff, to name a few of my under-

cover roles. A lot of the work was demand-

ing and quite taxing, from both a physical

and mental standpoint. I truly appreciated

getting the “inside scoop” from all the col-

leagues I was fortunate to work with … the

experience made me realize how important

it is to get perspective from employees of

all levels, value teamwork, and realize that

it takes a village to impact change and ac-

complish a vision.

When it comes to getting insight into the

inner workings of our industry, I already

know how lucky I am to have such a strong

management team in place. Jim Kennedy

and his team have been fantastic about pro-

viding me with insights into the company

and our industry. I’ll continue to lean on

them for their support and counsel. Over

the next few months, I look forward to at-

tending the Global Gaming Expo (G2E),

NASPL, and ICE Totally Gaming early in

2017. These trade shows and conferences

will be great platforms for me to meet our

customers and our team members in both

professional and social settings. And I’m al-

ready traveling quite extensively, getting to

know customers and employees across the

globe. Understanding our business, trust-

ing our leadership, listening to our custom-

ers and leveraging my extensive business

experience will help reveal our underlying

opportunities to propel our growth and de-

velopment.

Just like in the cruise line industry, gaming

is all about delivering the best customer ex-

perience. Lottery operators depend on their

retail partners to be the face of Lottery to the

customer, the players. How might Scientic

Games and lottery operators engender a more

collaborative and mutually rewarding rela-

tionship with their retail partners?

K. Sheehan:

At Scientific Games, our

focus is on delivering the world’s best lot-

tery experiences and our teams live up to

this mission every day. I think we are do-

ing pretty well at that given the growth

and success of our instant games business,

the development of innovative technolo-

gies, and the performance of our Lottery

division as a whole. But we can always im-

prove. I believe the three most important

things we can do are to 1) Ensure that we

have a strong understanding of the con-

sumer and retail channel, and we do this

through our Lottery Insights group; 2)

Based on those insights and our years of

experience, ensure that the products we

innovate for lottery operators and retailers

are appealing to consumers; and 3) Edu-

cate retailers that lottery is one of the top

retail product categories in terms of actual

sales, especially when promoted and posi-

tioned effectively. We want retailers to un-

derstand that Lottery customers typically

spend more at retail, boost other categories

and generate higher overall store sales. Lot-

tery is a journey that begins at retail with

the purchase of a game and continues as

consumers go about their lives, embracing

mobile and internet.

At NCL, you fearlessly confronted the short-

comings that needed to be improved. Can we

expect the same as you address the opportu-

nities for improvement that you see in the

Lottery industry?

K. Sheehan:

Absolutely, we will con-

front our opportunities to enter our next

phase of growth and development. How-

ever, my focus for the remainder of 2016 is

to spend time with customers and employ-

ees, doing a deep dive into the industry and

business of Scientic Games. We have three

strong businesses – Lottery, Gaming, and

Interactive. I look forward to building on

that momentum to drive continued growth

across the company, foster an even stron-

ger company culture, capitalize on conver-

gence opportunities in our three business

lines and execute fiscal discipline.

What is your vision or pathway forward for

Scientific Games?

K. Sheehan:

Our mission is to empow-

er our customers by creating the world’s

best gaming and lottery experiences. I

don’t see that mission changing. This is

a promise that the Scientic Games brand

has made. My vision and path forward

will be set in the coming months. Right

now, my focus is to rely on my already

strong team to continue their leadership

of our day-to-day business; build on the

momentum that the team and company

has already achieved; enhance our culture;

execute fiscal discipline, and ensure that

our focus on innovation and customer ser-

vice does not waver.

This is a strong company, with an expe-

rienced and passionate team in place; they

know their business, our customers and

our employees. The industry is exciting,

vibrant, and has a lot of opportunities for

growth. I feel honored and humbled at the

same time to be a part of the next stage of

Scientic Games’ journey and the next era

of helping our lottery customers grow their

net proceeds to beneficiaries.

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