IGT Kills Its Electronic Table Games Division

Key Points

• IGT will end-of-life its ETG operations in 2027, exiting a segment it had been actively expanding just two years prior.
• The closure follows a 10% global workforce cut in March 2026 under new CEO Hector Fernandez, months after Apollo’s $6.3bn acquisition was completed.
• Apollo’s stated ambition is for IGT to become a full-service operator supplier; the ETG division apparently did not fit that blueprint.

IGT Drops ETG Division, Citing ‘Core Business Priorities’

Slot giant International Game Technology will shut its electronic table games division in 2027, the company confirmed to iGB on 15 July. IGT spokesman Phil O’Shaughnessy confirmed the decision in a statement, saying it was made “as part of our focus on core business priorities and long-term growth objectives.” He added that IGT “will continue to provide its ETG customers with the level of support they expect” as the transition plays out.

The confirmation came a day after the closure was first reported by iGB. GGRAsia then followed with IGT’s direct response, with O’Shaughnessy, identified as the company’s vice president for global communications, government relations and sustainability, reiterating the same language in an emailed statement.

Short, strategic, and carefully worded. Much like the decision itself.

The Company That Emerged From the Apollo Deal Is Not the One That Built ETGs

To understand why the ETG division is on its way out, you need to go back to July 2025, when Apollo Global Management completed its $6.3 billion acquisition of IGT’s gaming and digital business alongside fintech supplier Everi Holdings. The all-cash deal created a privately held entity combining IGT’s gaming content with Everi’s financial technology operations; the new business retained the IGT name and set up its headquarters in Las Vegas.

What it did not retain was the lottery division. That was spun off and rebranded as Brightstar Lottery, a separate publicly traded company listed on the NYSE under the ticker “BRSL”. ETGs, it now appears, were always going to be next.

When Apollo partner Daniel Cohen went before Nevada Gaming Control Board regulators in June 2025 to seek approval for the merger, he was blunt about where the business stood. He said the combined entity had “a margin profile that is significantly lower than our largest peers,” naming Aristocrat and Light & Wonder specifically. His firm’s “sole focus,” he told regulators, was “long-term value creation.” The goal, Cohen explained, was clear: “Our goal long term is to become the operator’s supplier. So if you’re the Venetian or Caesars or anyone else, you can come to IGT for basically every one of your product needs.”

ETGs do not fit that sentence.

Fernandez Inherited a Restructuring, Then Deepened It

Former Aristocrat Gaming CEO Hector Fernandez took the helm at the new IGT following his non-compete period, stepping into a company already mid-restructure. In March 2026, IGT cut approximately 700 employees, representing roughly 10% of its global workforce. The breakdown by role and region was not disclosed.

Fernandez addressed staff through an internal memo reported by the Las Vegas Review-Journal. The layoffs, he said, were not performance-related. Rather, they were “part of that effort to simplify our structure, reduce duplication and enable us to move with greater clarity and speed.” He went further: “What matters now is how we move forward together: supporting one another, focusing on our priorities and continuing the work that will define the next chapter of our company.”

GGRAsia later reported that Fernandez, speaking at the G2E Asia 2026 trade show, identified “driving business efficiencies and cash-flow creation” as key focuses for the new IGT. The ETG closure fits that framing exactly. At the Nevada hearing, Cohen had noted the business lagged Aristocrat and Light & Wonder, two companies that have delivered strong results by concentrating resources on high-volume, high-margin product lines.

IGT’s path under Apollo appears to track a similar logic.

IGT Had Been Genuinely Building the ETG Business Before Apollo Arrived

The closure is notable partly because IGT had been investing in ETGs, not just maintaining them. The company’s ETG lineup covered blackjack, baccarat and roulette, and it had pushed the Wheel of Fortune brand, one of its most recognised slot properties, into ETG format to see whether brand power could accelerate adoption.

Luigi Cacciapuoti, IGT’s vice president of speciality product and ETG, told GGB Magazine in 2024 that the company had started from scratch with its ETG offering. “We rewrote everything. Every line of code, everything is new,” he said. “We really want to offer something that at the same time would be exciting for the players and valuable for our customers. So we made sure that we are answering the needs of both.”

That investment did not translate into a business Apollo considered worth keeping.

The ETG Sector’s Structural Problem Has Always Been the Floor

IGT’s exit from ETGs does not happen in a vacuum. The broader ETG sector has long struggled to gain meaningful ground in the United States, and the reason is straightforward: floor space. ETGs require considerably more physical real estate than slot machines, and slots generate more revenue per square foot, consistently. For casino floor managers working within fixed layouts and under pressure to maximise yield, the maths rarely works in ETGs’ favour.

The category has found stronger traction in European and Asian markets, where player preferences and floor configurations differ. But in the US, the segment has remained a niche.

Even the market leader faces pressure. Interblock, the dominant ETG manufacturer and also private equity-owned, was long reported as an acquisition target for Aristocrat. A deal was never completed, reportedly due to a $200 million gap in price expectations. That Aristocrat, with its financial firepower, chose not to bridge that gap says something about how the industry values the ETG sector’s ceiling.

Layoffs, Spinoffs, Now a Division Shutdown: A Pattern Under Apollo

IGT’s March 2026 layoffs were not unique to the company. A number of other gaming firms followed suit in early 2026 due to macroeconomic headwinds within the industry. The increased tariff cost had increased the cost of production while interest rates remained high, and consumers’ discretionary expenditure was weakening. For suppliers navigating materials costs and debt management in that environment, reducing headcount became a common response.

What distinguishes IGT’s situation is the pace and breadth of change post-acquisition. Within roughly a year of Apollo completing its deal, the company shed its lottery business, cut a tenth of its workforce, and is now confirmed to be exiting a product category it had been publicly committed to building. Each move fits Apollo’s stated intention to sharpen the company around its highest-value segments.

Whether that approach delivers the margin improvement Cohen promised Nevada regulators will take time to assess. The ETG closure, though, is now settled.

Expert Analysis

IGT’s decision to exit ETGs by 2027 is less a product failure and more a portfolio edit. Apollo paid $6.3 billion to build a company that competes directly with Aristocrat and Light & Wonder at scale, and the ETG segment, despite genuine product investment, was always a relatively small and structurally constrained business. Floor space economics in the US limits ETG upside, and the category’s strongest markets are outside IGT’s core geography. The Wheel of Fortune ETG was an interesting bet; it just did not change the underlying calculus. Interblock’s entrenched position and Aristocrat’s decision not to acquire it at a premium both underscore how limited ETG growth potential appears, even to well-capitalised buyers. For IGT, the question now is whether shedding the division frees resources that actually close the gap with its two main competitors, or whether the gap persists regardless.