Light & Wonder to Exit Live Casino

Light & Wonder have decided to exit the live casino business after a short, but eventful period trying to gain a foothold in the industry.

In an investor presentation of the company’s 2024 year end results, CEO Matt Wilson said that the Light & Wonder would be divesting it’s live casino assets and focusing efforts elsewhere.

“Following thorough strategic review, we made decision to discontinue and divest live casino business.

The decision reflects commitment to allocating resources to the most impactful parts of the business where we have good line of sight on to meaningful returns on investment.

While still in early days of investment in the business, we strive to stay nimble as an organisation and are thus focusing on risk/reward profile of other businesses which have better visibility to superior returns than live casino.”

Light & Wonder’s foray into live casino gaming started with the announcement in 2021 that they’d be acquiring in-casino streaming specialists Authentic Gaming. The deal was finalised during 2022. This was followed by concerted efforts to transform Authentic into a provider of a broad range of both studio based and in-casino live games, positioned to compete with major providers Evolution, Playtech and Pragmatic Play.

The ARENA studio in Malta was launched. This was followed by a studio in Michigan, allowing Light & Wonder to leverage it’s formidable US gaming industry presence to supply live games in the emerging regulated iGaming market there. In 2023 their games (under the wordy title of Light & Wonder Premium Live Dealer, by Authentic Gaming) were launched at Rush Street’s BetRivers casino.

The business’ live games portfolio expanded rapidly through 2023 and 2024, with the addition of a few live game shows, now a must-have for any live games provider. During 2024 they were forced to defend one of their live game shows (RouletteX) in court, following allegations from Evolution that it was too close a copy of their Lightning Roulette game.

Light & Wonder will still offer live games from other providers as part of their Content Market Place product. CMP aggregates games from various providers, offered as a one-stop-shop of over 3,500 game titles. StakeLogic’s live games were added to the CMP in a deal struck late 2024.

What happens now to Authentic Gaming remains to be seen. It would be an ideal purchase for Pragmatic Play, who are yet to establish a presence in the US market and are playing catch up to Evolution and Playtech in this regard.