Brightstar Editorial: Elevating Lotteries and Inspiring Players

IGT Lottery’s recently announced transformation to Brightstar Lottery signals more than a name change. It represents a renewed vision for how the company aims to apply its nearly 50-year history of reliability, innovation, and leadership in lottery to enhance value for customers. 

“Brightstar is focused on putting our customers’ needs first and innovating to help lotteries remain relevant, responsible, and engaging,” said Renato Ascoli, Chief Executive Officer Global Lottery. “In an environment of shifting player expectations and a profusion of gaming choices, lottery is a unique and dynamic industry, generating funds that deliver important benefits for causes and communities around the world. Through forward-looking products and strategies to enhance digitalization, retail innovation, and sustainability, we aim to elevate lotteries and inspire players. Ultimately, Brightstar reflects this single-mindedness and ambition to reach higher.” 

As Brightstar, the company will build on IGT’s legacy of delivering unparalleled player experiences and results for its lottery customers around the globe and across the lottery value chain, including as a lottery operator, provider of retail and digital systems and technology, instant ticket services provider, and game creator.

“Close working partnerships with our customers − listening to their feedback and acting upon it – and the unique perspective we can offer as both a supplier and a successful operator, will directly inform how we shape new solutions and drive evolution to serve customers’ goals, whether in the retail or digital channel, or both,” said Marco Tasso, Chief Operating Officer of Italian and International Lottery Operations. “As various change-agents continue to emerge and impact the lottery business, we aim to fast-track innovation and offer a clear vision and solutions consciously aligned with player expectations to help customers navigate the path.”

The company’s product roadmaps have been developed to bring value to customers across four interconnected areas of the lottery business through flexible, modular, state-of-the-art solutions:

Enabling Play Anywhere

Brightstar creates unparalleled distribution opportunities across retail, self-service, and iLottery platforms, ensuring lotteries meet players wherever they choose to engage. Retail remains a critical player touchpoint, and Brightstar is driving evolution with advanced, modular terminals and self-service solutions that fit diverse retail environments. To streamline retail operations while expanding accessibility, the company offers products such as LotteryLink, a new plug-and-play device that enables in-lane lottery sales without software changes. The company has also prioritized and invested heavily in developing flexible digital solutions to evolve the retail player journey, knowing that digitalization can also help lotteries reduce their environmental impact.

Games & Content

Brightstar provides innovative ways to engage players with more fun, winning experiences. For example, proprietary technologies such as Infinity Instants™ deliver entirely new game mechanics, while the company’s unique Cash Pop™ game is giving draw-game players more strategic ways to play. Brightstar’s digital game studios have developed a diverse and engaging game Portfolio, with more than 200 eInstant games across categories—including bespoke licensed-branded options and record-breaking progressive jackpots. The studios are now developing around three dozen new eInstant games annually, bolstered by AI-driven creative and testing. And the company retains it standout licensed properties, which offer recognizable titles that resonate with players across instant and eInstant formats.

Promotions & Awareness

Smart promotional tools and awareness strategies amplify player awareness and help lotteries build a stronger connection with players. This includes the ability to leverage AI-driven tools and predictive analytics through CRM systems, and Brightstar’s Player Marketing Services to help customers enhance player engagement, optimize campaign targeting and delivery, and drive sales growth through iLottery and Connected Play. This pillar also includes unique retail point-of-sale tools such as Brightstar’s Digital Menu Board solution, which is integrated with the lottery-terminal application to dynamically update and reflect the store’s current ticket inventory in real time while enhancing the visibility of instant games.

Advanced Tools for Seamless Operations

Brightstar’s innovations in technology and back-office solutions are reshaping the lottery landscape with efficiency and scalability. With groundbreaking cloud solutions and AI-driven capabilities, lotteries can scale infrastructure, reduce time-to-market, and enable dynamic upgrades tailored to their unique needs. Upgrading the iLottery platform to Brightstar's seamless, scalable cloud solution has brought up to a 20% revenue increase to its customers. The company’s solutions to expand cashless payments across retail and self-service channels align with evolving consumer trends, ensuring easier transactions.