New name for a new direction
In what makes it sound like a 1980’s toy company, gaming technology supplier Scientific Games is changing its name to Light & Wonder. In the Tuesday announcement, the company said, “Our new name and identity are born from our winning strategy to be the leading cross platform game company and will inspire our people to make great products for our players.”
The new name will not be official until the spring, but the company has already rebranded to Light & Wonder. Its website also has a new URL: lnw.com (which my internet security software for some reason wanted to block).
And, of course, Light & Wonder has a new logo, which is just its name with some graphical effects.
Reshaping its business in 2021
The rebranding comes, in part, because of corporate changes during the past year. In August, Scientific Games bought digital content studio Lightning Box. In October, it sold its global lottery business to Brookfield Business Partners LP for $6.05 billion. Then, in November, Scientific Games entered the live casino market with its acquisition of Authentic Gaming.
Completing its wheeling and dealing, Scientific Games bought digital content developer ELK Studios in December. In its press release, the company called these “a series of bold strategic moves to transform itself into the leading cross-platform global game company.”
And the key to everything is that Light & Wonder will provide its customers “seamless” cross-platform play.
Recent gaming rebrands
Over the last few years, a number of gaming companies have rebranded. In 2019, Paddy Power Betfair became Flutter Entertainment. Interestingly, neither Paddy Power nor Betfair, the two companies that combined to form the previously-named business, are what people think of when they talk about Flutter at this point. Flutter’s highlight brands are FanDuel, which it acquired in 2017, and PokerStars, which it grabbed in 2019 when it bought The Stars Group.
In late 2020, GVC Holdings, half-owner of BetMGM (along with, naturally, MGM Resorts International), changed its name to Entain. Entain also owns partypoker, Coral, Ladbrokes, and Sportingbet.
The biggest recent corporate rebranding in the United States was Twin River Worldwide Holdings, which has been on an acquisition spree this decade to spread its footprint around the country. The key month for Twin River was July 2020, when it closed its purchase of Bally’s Atlantic City from Caesars Entertainment and Vici Properties and bought the Bally’s name from Caesars for $20 million.
In November 2020, Twin River changed its name to Bally’s, a much more recognizable gambling brand in the US. It has since rebranded most of its casinos to the Bally’s name and acquired the Tropicana in Las Vegas, which it might also rebrand to Bally’s (it also might knock it down and build a new casino).
Related, Caesars is in the process of renaming Bally’s Las Vegas to Horseshoe Las Vegas, partly so as not to overlap with Bally’s Corporation in Vegas, but also to celebrate the move of the World Series of Poker to the Strip.