Published July 24, 2024
The momentum pulsing through Scientific Games’ systems technology business is continuing at a swift pace, driving excitement across the global company’s teams and adding value for its customers. With longtime lottery systems pros firmly at the helm, the company is energizing its next era with new people and products – by continuing to invest in talent and innovative omnichannel solutions that drive lottery profits.
A major step in the current moving through the company was enhancing the organization with 17-year tech innovator Mike Cardell, Scientific Games’ new Senior VP, Americas Systems. Cardell most recently served as VP and General Manager of Next Gen Solutions at Fiserv, where he managed the modernization of enterprise account processing software solutions and cloud transformation solutions for large financial institutions and financial technology companies.
A high-level conversation with Cardell after his first 100 days left no doubt that he’s about to make a lasting impact at the industry’s fast-growing systems company.
Q: What led you to Scientific Games and the lottery industry?
Mike Cardell: My interest sparked when I looked at joining Scientific Games because the company already had a tremendous amount of success with systems and tech innovation. When I started digging deeper with the leadership team and learned more about their vision and tech offerings, I could tell Scientific Games is extremely well-positioned to advance, grow and accelerate even further into the future. That’s something I wanted to be a part of; to help build upon that success.
Coming from the highly regulated fintech sector, I've made a career of taking on new opportunities and building solutions. That’s what interests me and really excites me.
I saw many parallels between Scientific Games and lotteries to what fintech providers have been doing for financial institutions. The financial services industry is also highly scrutinized. It’s all about securely moving money, processing transactions and supporting banks and financial institutions, similar to the way lotteries support their retailers and players. Financial institutions had to evolve from brick-and-mortar locations only to adding digital, mobile and other payment options for their customers. They had to embrace offering an omnichannel experience.
Scientific Games is leading the same evolution in the lottery sector. I want to be part of building the next level of technology that seamlessly enables an engaging experience for players, retailers and lotteries.
I love focusing on the strategy of how to use technology to improve the overall user experience and drive engagement. So that’s why I knew Scientific Games would be a good fit and a great opportunity to make a difference.
At the end of the day, it’s important to recognize that we’re responsible for delivering exceptional service and technology – and results – for our partner lotteries.
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Q: How do you intend to build on the company’s success in its lottery systems business?
Mike Cardell: Scientific Games is the fastest-growing lottery systems provider in the world right now, and we don’t intend to slow down anytime soon. With that success, we’re going to focus on scaling our systems, processes and talent to ensure we continue to deliver innovative and efficient solutions to our customers long into the future.
Additionally, the lottery industry is heading toward a tipping point with digital and mobile. Some jurisdictions have robust programs, while others are still pushing to add online sales. Scientific Games knows that everything has to happen with the retailer and player in mind, all the while keeping an eye and pulse on the regulations that can enable or slow a lottery from achieving its mission. That’s why it’s important their systems partners are constantly evolving to stay in front of the challenges and future opportunities.
With the acceleration of online and mobile, lotteries are also at risk of being impacted by privately operated disrupters taking wallet share, similar to how PayPal and Venmo have disrupted financial institutions. With our systems we can help lotteries add digital, mobile and virtual wallets, effectively gaining greater insight into who their players are, how players are engaging, how their games are being played, and how to adapt to changes in retail; all the while ensuring they have the right responsible gaming tools in place.
So, the timing is right because new ways of thinking about lottery technology platforms and the entire ecosystem will benefit the lottery industry. Scientific Games’ Momentum ecosystem resonated with me. It’s aligned with where the market is going, and I am excited to come in and be able to execute on that.
Momentum is Scientific Games’ integrated ecosystem of products and applications that serve all parts of a lottery’s business. It’s high-performing games, robust systems, intuitive retail solutions and exciting digital offerings, all built to work seamlessly together. And at each point, valuable data helps build more comprehensive analytics and insights that inform the entire process, making it better, stronger and more efficient.
We’re continuing to expand our retail and digital teams to support customers on their omnichannel experience, whether they’re ready to launch iLottery now or preparing for when they finally get legislation that enables them to meet players where they are.
Q. What are your observations in your first 100 days?
Mike Cardell: The leadership team and people at Scientific Games are extremely knowledgeable and passionate about what they do. The technology talent here is phenomenal. We view technology as an ecosystem and business enabler, rather than the other way around. And there is an openness to new thoughts and ideas across the company.
Scientific Games provides a best-in-breed strategic advantage as a lottery tech partner based on the focus on data science and how we can give customers actionable insights and data-driven business intelligence so they can plan. So, they can make decisions and have a technology strategy.
Technology must be an ecosystem. All the various platforms have to interact and orchestrate with one another. Everything should be able to plug into the central gaming system and enable the lottery to serve its players and grow. The reality is that the world has disruptors and new technology that breaks through. You have to have an open integration and API strategy. And that’s what Scientific Games excels at for their customers.
Momentum is an ecosystem strategy that takes advantage of all the parts and pieces of technology that are coming together and makes it more user-friendly, effective and efficient for the lottery. So, they can respond quicker without massive efforts. That’s huge.
There is an advantage to having an ecosystem—an entire platform connected with data, insights and information—that allows a lottery to validate tickets and balance everything at the same time, understand where inventory is located, where it’s low, where games are doing well or not doing well.
When it’s a nicely tied together ecosystem, you can take the full horsepower of all that information and be able to use it and harness it to drive better, quicker, more strategic thinking and decision-making to serve the players. This improves their overall engagement and experience. It also improves how retailers support and sell lottery. At the same time, the lottery gets to balance it all and have effective and efficient operations and a really good back-end user experience.
Scientific Games is focused on enabling a lottery’s entire ecosystem to grow. From the research I’ve done and based on my experience in banking, I don’t think there is any other lottery provider positioned better to tie the entire user chain together and advance the industry.
Q: When you look back 20 years from now, what do you want your legacy at Scientific Games and the lottery industry to be?
Mike Cardell: I’d like to be thought of as a trusted partner who enjoys delivering superior experiences to customers that enable growth. From a technology perspective, I’d like to be remembered as someone who helped advance the lottery industry to match or top the pace of other industries by using technology to drive and enable our business.
Cardell brings that same competitive spirit to coaching sports for his three children when he’s not working. Based in Texas, he also likes to travel and experience new cultures with his wife. And when time allows, compete in sporting clay shoots and events.
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