International Game Technology (IGT) has poached core members from one of Aristocrat’s most successful Australian game studios as it looks to reclaim its space among the industry’s elite suppliers and break up the Aristocrat-Light & Wonder duopoly that has dominated the Asia-Pacific region.
IGT’s CEO, Hector Fernandez, confirmed to Inside Asian Gaming that the company had secured the services of Talles Vito and other members of Big Cheers Games – creator of Aristocrat’s successful Thunder Empire and Cash Horns series – with all currently serving out non-compete clauses before they join IGT in 2027.
This, he explained, forms part of IGT’s aggressive APAC strategy which has already seen the company earlier this year recruit Aristocrat’s SVP for Asia and EMEA Lloyd Robson and head of Product Planning & Strategy Ashley Fong from Macau.
Both Robson and Fong reach the end of their own non-competes within the next month.
“When we talk Asia specifically, it’s essentially a duopoly,” Fernadez said. “We intend to be very competitive in that market, which is part of bringing this new talent on board.”
On the recruitment of Vito, Fernandez added, “He makes games for Asia and Australia, so he is really focused on the APAC region where we truly believe that we’re getting all the right ingredients in place to really take the business to where it has to be.
“When we talk about Australia, we have not performed well there. It’s quite embarrassing, actually, because we have the right to be successful there.
“Part of the new strategy, obviously, is that Lloyd will be based in Sydney, and that’s really important because it signals to our Australian customers the importance of that market.
“But bringing Talles over, who is sitting out his non-compete, he essentially has all the best games in the Australian market and he has this unique capability and experience to really tailor the game design for that market.
“As you know, the Australian market is very sophisticated but can also be very restrictive with a lot of different [regulatory] rules – and Talles has been able to stay within those rules and still provide exceptional content.”
IGT’s APAC strategy forms part of a much broader revolution taking place since the company was acquired by private equity firm Apollo last year. On Monday, IGT unveiled a brand-new logo and corporate identity that reflects not only a new beginning under the Apollo umbrella but a comprehensive restructuring of IGT’s executive team.
“As we embarked on this journey, we talked a lot about who we want to be as a business while honoring the legacy of who we had been as a business,” Fernandez explained.
“The first debate was, ‘Do we change the name?’ That was a very short debate because of the legacy of the brand. I really do believe IGT is still the most recognized gaming brand around the world.
“The second thing was, ‘What do we want to stand for? What are we trying to build?’ And we realized this was the moment in time to set a new foundation as we look forward. So, we describe the brand as fluid, frictionless and magnetic, and instead of it being your typical corporate logo, which was kind of our old brand, we decided that we wanted more of a customer and player-centric logo.”
Pointing to the company’s booth concept at G2E this week, which is based around the concept of a complete casino floor that more accurately reflects the player journey, Fernandez said IGT’s intent moving forward is “not to sell products and services anymore, but to sell holistic solutions. To find out what core issues a customer is trying to solve and then coming back with a solution versus trying to sell them individual products.
“The other thing we changed commercially is we consolidated the sales team so that one sales rep can represent all our products and services to one customer.
“We’re trying to remove all the friction of how business is historically being done. That rep can bring in product experts if needed, but it also means the customer only has one person they need to go to. That’s never been done before.”
This holistic approach will, Fernandez explains, be implemented on a global scale, meaning the Asia-Pacific region will similarly experience the new-look IGT first-hand.
“If we’re being realistic, we need to improve everywhere,” Fernandez said. “I am very pleased with the ground we have already made in North America but if you look globally, we are strong in Latin America and very strong in EMEA but not so much in APAC.
“We’ve been very methodical in mapping out the business and saying, ‘Where are we not competitive and what decisions do we need to make today that will have an impact in the future?’
“Our concept is ‘Global Strategy, Regional Execution,’ so Lloyd and Ashley will be empowered to make decisions on the ground. We’re not going to hold them to having to come back to Vegas, for example. They’ll be empowered to make decisions, but they will have the scale and the support of the global organization.
“And the cool thing from a customer perspective is there is a bit of nostalgia with IGT. Most customers started off their careers buying IGT. I do think we have lost our way and became a bit arrogant, so the message we’re being very careful to portray is, ‘Hey, we’re on this journey. It’s a transformation. We’re going to be incredibly humble. We know we’re not there yet, but we’re making all the right investments to be there.”
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