The CEO of Brightstar Lottery, Vincent Sadusky, has insisted he won’t overpay for assets as part of any potential upcoming M&A that aren’t a strategic fit with the business’ core functions and objectives.
Sadusky was speaking on the earnings call for the New York-listed lottery firm on Tuesday, 24 February, when he broached the subject of rival lottery giant Allwyn shelling out just over $1.5bn last year for a 62.3% stake in leading DFS operator PrizePicks.
PrizePicks has subsequently expanded into prediction markets through a deal with Kalshi, with plans to push Polymarket contracts live too, while Allwyn merged with subsidiary OPAP last year to create a €16m lottery and gaming powerhouse.
Responding to a question fielded by Barry Jonas of Truist Securities about a rival’s M&A strategy of “acquiring a business in the US doing prediction markets”, Sadusky said: “That would be Allwyn acquiring PrizePicks. Each company in the lottery space, and there’s not that many of us, have their own strategic imperative and strategic direction.
“And, of course, everybody thinks [theirs is] the right one. We think ours is right given our many years of experience being a leader in the digital gaming space […] as well as being a leader in the land-based gaming area with IGT.
“We decided over many, many years that those businesses did not have significant synergies, were not comparable, didn’t help us win any more lottery contracts, and were not leverageable into incremental consumer sales.
“We obviously reached a very different strategic conclusion from some of our competitors that have been more active in the M&A market, acquiring companies that are involved in the igaming space, the icasino space, prediction markets, and we believe that’s a completely different business.”
Sadusky also made the point that potential acquisition targets and those companies snapped up by rivals “don’t overlap very well with our geographies,” before questioning the “strategic fit” of some of the businesses out there.
“We just don’t think it’s a smart thing to do, to go out and pay a very high multiple for a business with a potential of higher growth than lottery but [which] is not a good strategic fit,” he stated.
“If you see us investing in anything, it would be in the area of enhancing our ilottery game development [or] enhancing our platform.”
Later summarising his thoughts, he added: “We’re not interested in overpaying for things just to potentially enhance our growth that are not a good strategic fit. It would have to be a very strong strategic fit for us.”
Besides Allwyn’s aforementioned M&A moves, Greek lottery operator Intralot acquired Bally’s Interactive in 2025 for an enterprise value of €2.7bn.
The prior year, Lottomatica paid €639m for Italian betting and gaming operator SKS365, parent company of Planetwin365.
Having sold IGT Gaming to Apollo Global Management for $4.1bn in 2025, Brightstar (previously known as IGT) is actively exploring M&A, with CFO Max Chiara telling investors and analysts on the Q4 call that the firm remains “opportunistic”.
Brightstar’s revenue in Q4 rose 3% YoY to $668m, while income from continued earnings slumped 21% to $92m. Adjusted EBITDA climbed 5% to $304m, though.
The company’s shares are trading up 3% to $13.44, at the time of writing.
The post Brightstar Lottery disinterested in overpriced M&A that isn’t a strategic fit, says CEO first appeared on EGR Intel.
Vincent Sadusky hints Allwyn’s majority acquisition of DFS platform PrizePicks wouldn’t have been “a smart thing to do” for his own lottery business
The post Brightstar Lottery disinterested in overpriced M&A that isn’t a strategic fit, says CEO first appeared on EGR Intel.