Bloomberry Recruits Former Light & Wonder Executive as Solaire Bets on a New Direction

Key Points

• Daryl Bruce, formerly Director of Product Management Asia at Light & Wonder, has been appointed Vice President, Gaming Optimisation at Solaire Resorts.
• Bruce joins a leadership team already reshaped by the arrivals of Sean McCreery as COO and Greg Hawkins as President, and the departure of Cyrus Sherafat.
• Bloomberry posted a PHP125 million net loss in Q1 2026 and an 18% GGR decline at Solaire Resort Entertainment City, making these hires something more than routine.

Bruce acquired another designation in late June 2026. According to an announcement made by Bloomberry Resorts Corporation on 30 June 2026, Daryl Bruce joined Solaire Resorts as Vice President of Gaming Optimisation after completing two years as the Director of Product Management Asia at Light & Wonder, Singapore, where he was responsible for developing the product strategy for Asia before leaving there recently.

Bruce made no attempt to keep it quiet, sharing the news on LinkedIn with a post that needed no decoding: “I’m thrilled to share that I’ve joined Solaire Resorts as Vice President, Gaming Optimisation.” The role, he noted, would “bring together the key areas I’ve been fortunate to work across in my career, from gaming product and strategy to optimisation and industry partnerships, in the dynamic and innovative Philippines gaming market.”

A Career Forged Across the Casino Floor and the Boardroom

Not many executives carry real weight on both the operational floor and inside the product room, but Bruce has spent the bulk of his career straddling exactly that line. Before his time at Light & Wonder, he spent close to four years at SkyCity Adelaide across roles covering General Manager Gaming, General Manager Electronic Gaming and Casino Food and Beverage, and General Manager Gaming Machines; a span of hands-on responsibility that thins out quickly at his level.

Before SkyCity came Wymac Gaming Solutions, where he led strategy and product management with a focus on product design and business development. Stretch the timeline back further and you land on eight-plus years at Crown Resorts, a stint that pulled him across electronic table games, product management, and commercial development, sitting at the point where casino operations and technology infrastructure meet.

The VP Gaming Optimisation brief at Solaire asks nothing of Bruce that his career has not already asked of him. Spanning gaming products, strategy, performance optimisation, and industry partnerships across Solaire Resort Entertainment City in Metro Manila and Solaire Resort North in Quezon City, it maps almost exactly to the ground he has been covering for years.

The Management Overhaul That Has Been Running Since Late 2024

Bruce is walking into something mid-motion. His appointment is the latest move in a leadership restructure at Bloomberry that has been building for roughly 18 months, one that started with Tom Arasi’s departure as President and COO and carried on when Greg Hawkins, best known from Australia’s Star Entertainment Group, stepped into that seat. Hawkins coming through the door suggested change was coming; the pace and scale of what followed caught most people off guard.

Four days before Bruce’s name surfaced, Inside Asian Gaming reported on 26 June 2026 that Sean McCreery had moved into the COO seat at Solaire Resort Entertainment City. McCreery had put in a decade at Sands China as Executive Vice President of Operations before leaving in late 2025, with the Macau operator offering only that he would “embark on a new chapter in his career.” Manila turned out to be that chapter.

Damian Quayle, whose own background crosses paths with Hawkins at Star Entertainment Group, had already settled into the COO role at Solaire Resort North the year before, slotting in another piece of a leadership structure that is being put back together with clear intention, from the top down.

Then there is Cyrus Sherafat. Inside Asian gaming World confirmed his resignation earlier this year; Sherafat, Bloomberry’s Executive Vice President and Head of Gaming, is set to leave on 31 August 2026 after 12 years with the group. He became a part of this organisation in March 2014 as Senior Vice President for Casino Marketing, which was the year when Solaire Resort & Entertainment City came into operation, and reached the position of EVP and Gaming Head by July 2022. The final destination for him would be Wynn Al Marjan Island in the UAE.

Bloomberry’s Numbers Tell the Real Story

None of this is happening from a position of strength. AGBrief revealed on 30 June 2026 that Bloomberry had incurred a net loss of PHP125 million for Q1 2026, or about US$2 million, with gross gaming revenue falling 13% YoY to PHP16.8 billion, or about US$273 million. The biggest hit was experienced by Solaire Resort & Entertainment City, where gross gaming revenue dropped by 18% to PHP10 billion, or about US$162 million.

The issue of the decline in the number of VIPs is not a 2026 problem. As reported on 30 June 2026 by Inside Asian Gaming, the gross gaming revenue of VIP clients at Solaire fell by about 50% during the first nine months of 2025 due to a decrease in the number of tourists from South Korea and China, as well as because of the Middle East conflict.

Bloomberry has not been passive. The company launched Solaire Online and, more recently, FUNaloMAX to reach mass-market digital players and widen its base. The revenue those channels are generating has not come close to covering what the VIP decline took out.

Against that backdrop, Bruce’s appointment carries practical weight rather than optics. A VP of Gaming Optimisation operates in numbers; floor yield, product mix, hold percentages, game performance, and channel effectiveness. When a company posts a net loss and fresh capital spending is not an option, extracting more from what already exists becomes the only lever that actually moves things.

What Solaire Is Assembling?

McCreery brought ten years of operational experience from one of Macau’s largest integrated resort operators into this role. Hawkins had already worked through a significant hospitality and gaming restructure before he arrived at Bloomberry. Bruce has spent years at the point where casino operations and gaming technology converge. The lanes are different, and whoever is putting this team together has been deliberate about that.

Speed is the one thing nobody can commit to. Casino recovery moves on its own schedule, and the pressures Bloomberry is carrying; a sustained VIP slump, shifts in travel from key source markets, and wider macroeconomic drag across Southeast Asia, are not the kind that a new leadership group can simply absorb. A sharper team can improve the response when conditions shift, but it cannot force those conditions to shift. Bruce takes on a role with real scope inside a company that has a genuine need for someone to fill it.

Expert Analysis

Bloomberry’s rebuild follows a clear logic. Pairing McCreery’s operational grounding with Bruce’s product and optimisation background points to a two-track approach; stabilise what the business runs on, then make it produce more. As far as the company has entered the second quarter of 2026 having net losses and VIPs’ volumes under pressure, the calibre of these recruits cannot be the issue to focus on. It becomes crucial whether or not the leadership team forged in hard times can transform its collective experience into income generation before the figures force it to take other measures.