18 PUBLIC GAMING INTERNATIONAL • MARCH/APRIL 2026 Brightstar’s Innovation Playbook The future won’t wait – why should lottery? Paul Jason: Brightstar has returned to its roots as a 100-percent lotteryfocused company. How does that shift benefit your customers? Scott Gunn: The impact is profound. As a pure-play lottery company, every Brightstar resource—our people, capital, technology, and leadership attention—is dedicated exclusively to supporting lottery clients. Our whole corporate culture is fully immersed in lottery for the benefit of our customers. Over the past decade, lottery remained critically important within the organization, even as it existed alongside other game categories. Those divisions sometimes had divergent objectives and competed for investment and strategic focus at the corporate level. Today, that ambiguity is gone. Every discussion about innovation, technology, staffing, and investment is centered on lottery and the needs of our lottery customers. Our renewed focus draws on a deep heritage—from GTECH’s founding in Providence and decades of pioneering lottery advances, to Lottomatica’s experience operating one of the world’s largest, most competitive and innovative lotteries. Bringing that collective experience back into sharp focus is energizing for our teams and highly beneficial for our customers. Returning to our roots means aligning not just with our customers but with the interests of the government lottery sector, to act boldly with the conviction that what is good for the lottery industry is good for Brightstar. My responsibility is to ensure that we are strategically focused, operationally excellent, and properly staffed so that our customers receive the value, service, and partnership they need to succeed, and have come to expect from us. Everything we do flows from that commitment. PGRI INTERVIEWS PGRI Introduction: As Brightstar Lottery’s Chief Operating Officer North America Lottery, Scott Gunn is responsible for sales and operations throughout the U.S. and Canada, including Global Instant Ticket Services. He brings more than two decades of industry experience to the role to ensure that Brightstar’s products, technology, and services support each customer’s business objectives. While many know Scott for his leadership in public affairs and government relations since 2009, he credits an earlier period with the company — 1999 to 2009—as the most formative. During that decade, Scott held operational and general manager roles that shaped his approach to lottery leadership, customer partnership, and long-term success. His experience as a district sales manager in Texas, general manager in California, and later as a Regional Vice President gave him an unusually comprehensive view of lottery operations and the importance of aligning organizational capabilities with customer needs. Our discussion with Scott explores how he is applying those insights to Brightstar’s broader goals, preparing lottery customers for an era of digital acceleration, evolving player expectations, and heightened responsibility to protect public trust – while balancing innovation with the principles of integrity, transparency, and partnership that keep lotteries strong. Scott Gunn Chief Operating Officer, North American Lottery, Brightstar Lottery
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